TelstraSuper's Jean-Luc Ambrosi, Willis Towers Watson's Andrew Boal and Madison Financial Group's Cheyenne Walker form our hot topics panel this week, in response to questions arising from Deloitte's recent research around how organisations can best prepare for the future and embrace the ever-evolving digital era.

Ambrosi talks us through the fund's recent digital brand refreshment, Boal shares information on the upcoming launch and development of digital tools designed to support clients, and Walker tells us about Madison Financial Group's work within the relatively new RegTech space.

TelstraSuper

Jean-Luc Ambrosi, Executive General Manager, Marketing, TelstraSuper.

What is TelstraSuper doing to bring its team into the digital age?

We've just finished refreshing our brand and building our new website. We're on the journey towards an overall digital transformation as our members are going digital first and we want to be providing services on their terms.

We had a brand that was designed for paper and now we have a brand for the digital space. When you think about all of the strategic and technical components involved, the biggest lesson that I took away from this project was the idea of taking your team on the journey. It's critical because the people, at the end of the day, are going to drive the project. You need to spend time communicating with them, they need to understand why you're doing it and they also need to understand how you're going to do it. The governance that you put around a digital transformation is critical because that's what will make your people and stakeholders feel comfortable that you're making the right decision. People want to know about the risks, what's going to change and how the organisation is going to evolve and adapt to these changes.

Are you embracing short term, project based work/ team networks as opposed to traditional organisational frameworks? If so, can you provide some examples?

The launch of TelstraSuper's new digital platform was done through project based work, incorporating an agile approach. The reaction amongst TelstraSuper team members, regarding this 'new' way to work, has been really good. Initially there were many questions, some people may have felt a little unsure about new ways of working and you've got to address that very quickly, otherwise it can create a little bit of stress. Once we showed commitment towards communicating these changes, people became a lot more comfortable with the ideas because they were fully involved, wanted to do well and were very motivated. I think it's fundamental to address the 'people' aspect within any digital transformation as it can be under estimated and if you under estimate the people aspect, that's where you start taking risks - risks that you can't see on a project chart.

Willis Towers Watson

Andrew Boal, Head of Australasia, Willis Towers Watson.

What is Willis Towers Watson doing to bring its team into the digital age?

Like everyone else, we're acutely aware that the business landscape is changing rapidly and digital is impacting the markets in which we operate and how we interact with them. We're continually evolving to address the challenges and are currently working on a number of digital innovations that we're trialling with our clients. Understanding the changing landscape is one thing, but it's important we gauge our clients' response to the tools we're using to make sure we're improving the client experience when they deal with us. As an example, we're launching a digital tool for our broking clients to seamlessly share their data with us, to replace previous manual processes. We're also working with a number of superannuation funds to develop digital tools for them to use to educate their members and help them to plan a more personal retirement experience.

Internally, our colleagues use a range of digital tools to communicate with each other and share information. We're a global organisation, so these tools are essential to help us work together in teams across geographies and functions. Our clients benefit from access to the best Willis Towers Watson expertise, regardless of where they or our team members are located.

Are you embracing short term, project based work/ team networks as opposed to traditional organisational frameworks? If so, can you provide some examples?

The rule of thumb is that we embrace a project-based approach where it makes sense for our business objectives and clients. The way Willis Towers Watson is structured is that these projects are led by dedicated project managers who bring in relevant team members from across the business (locally and globally) as appropriate. A key part of the value we bring through these networks is we uncover a true diversity of perspectives and ideas. Our people are flexible in how we work together and we're experienced at pulling together diverse teams for client projects before moving on to the next assignment.

Madison Financial Group

Cheyenne Walker, Head of Risk and Professional Standards, Madison Financial Group.

What is Madison Financial Group doing to bring its team into the digital age?

At Madison, our focus is to help build extraordinary advice businesses that are focused on delivering excellent client advice. To that end, when we think about supporting our community digitally, we have focused on getting the basics right first. We support our practices with the advice process through our partnership with Opex and we have augmented our governance and compliance support with a digital portal (proprietary) called Compliance Logic. It enables the advisers to implement a process of self-regulation when it comes to policy, files, audits and risk management. In terms of ongoing learning and professional development, Knowledge Collective - our online education portal - is designed to host webinars, podcasts, video learning and other relevant resources to support the ongoing education of our community.

The majority of our content is sourced directly from our network or our peers as we're true believers in the power of sharing knowledge as opposed to traditional teaching and structured organisational frameworks. It is important to our leadership team that we devote time to learn and explore all things digital from a global (not just local) perspective and not just focus on advice and financial services. We seek to understand how people engage with all services so we can learn and adapt for the needs of our community.

In Australia, we are so isolated from the world movers in Europe and the US, that it's important for us to keep abreast of global changes and technology trends. We recognised that compliance costs will keep increasing and major regulation changes will continue. Therefore, we wanted to use technology to improve efficiencies and be more effective. We went to market to buy technology but there was no system available to meet our needs which were designed for Australian Licensees - hence we built our own system "Compliance Logic". RegTech started overseas and we are excited to bring it to market here in Australia.

Are you embracing short term, project based work/ team networks as opposed to traditional organisational frameworks? If so, can you provide some examples?

Yes, as a function of being a privately owned boutique group, our entire culture is around 'test and learn' and our approach has to be nimble, innovative and collaborative. We adopt the principles of understanding the real problem (not what we think it is), work collaboratively with our community and pilot small, minimal marketable products/services and evolve as our community's needs evolve. I think Compliance Logic is a good example of this. Setting the foundations of good governance on the journey to self-regulation is a very important need/problem to solve in our profession. We are also piloting a number of other digital client engagement and portfolio management services.

Missed last week's insight piece? You can read our Q&A with Deloitte's Juliet Bourke here.