Equiniti

EQ has grown by acquisition, resulting in a fragmented infrastructure. We are now transforming our business with a new ‘client to cash’ capability. This multi-million pound digital transformation will modernise global marketing, sales, client onboarding, billing and renewals capabilities onto the new ‘Unity’ platform for all EQ businesses (UK, US and India).

Realising the benefits from this complex change is technically challenging. However, digital transformation only succeeds with digital adoption – we only realise the benefits of Unity when every colleague fully uses the new capabilities.

Key adoption challenges for Unity include:

• Adoption of IT change is notoriously difficult
• Complex 3 year build including destructive changes (re-training required)
• Very different changes to the ways of working required for each division.

A digital adoption approach using WalkMe (WM) was selected over traditional virtual classroom training because it provides flexible and real time onboarding, training and adoption support.

Specifically:

• Ability to segment user adoption experience by role and region
• Ability to deploy WalkMe to all environments (UAT, Training and Production) enables user testing of WalkMe itself
• Flexibility to make real time changes based on user experience
• Ease of evolving content as Unity evolves
• Real time metrics to inform leadership decisions

WalkMe sits within a holistic adoption strategy including: impact assessments; leadership, manager and end user engagement; digital onboarding, training and support (WalkMe), digital resources (accessible via WM), change network, hypercare support including virtual clinics, and weekly reviews leading to continuous improvement across all change levers.

Working from the start with our external partner DGTL Ventures, use of WalkMe has evolved over time. Initially, WalkMe provided realtime digital onboarding and training tools in UAT, Training and Production environments to support user training on the new Unity platform. We tracked use of ‘Getting Started’ playlists for new user onboarding. We also demoed WalkMe resources to leaders, managers and end users in pre and post-go live user communities to drive awareness of WalkMe ‘self-service’ help.

As Unity usage has matured, we extended WalkMe use. Based on feedback and WalkMe Analytics, we brought WalkMe content to users at the point of need, e.g., branded Unity Launchers next to key system fields, embedding Permalinks in digital reference materials and using ShoutOuts to highlight key messages. The increased visibility of SWTs has led to an increase in WalkMe guidance use and a reduction in ‘how to’ questions at weekly Unity ‘clinics’.

WalkMe Analytics has also provided actionable insights on user behaviour on Unity. For example, we have created a series of invisible Launchers to troubleshoot known user problem points eg ‘Close/Won’.

WalkMe underpins full and accurate use of Unity, positively changing ways of working. This has lead to significant productivity gains, e.g., in the first 5 months of using Unity, one sales team:

• Nearly doubled their Opportunities (144 to 263)
• Doubled their pipeline (£4.8m to £9.8m)
• Now track all Activity in Unity (emails, meetings, etc)

Examples of WalkMe contributions:

• Accelerated user transition from legacy systems to Unity, e.g., 4.59 /5.0 score for ‘Overall experience of working in Unity’ for new user
• WalkMe shapes users’ daily Unity experience. On average, each Unity user has 12.8 daily interactions with WalkMe (automated and voluntary plays)
• Unity branded SmartTips and Launchers seamlessly surface ‘how to’, trouble shooter and tips to users at point of need
• Strategic Permalink placements in digital resources have increased the number of unique WalkMe users by 41% in 3 months and tripled the number of total SWT plays

Our leadership mantra is “If it’s not in Unity it didn’t happen”.

EQ’s vision is to become the leading global share registrar. Unity is now our single global source of the truth on clients. Unity usage and data integrity are therefore key user behaviours. Our digital adoption-led strategy builds on EQ’s values (Trusted, Collaborative, Improve and Commercial) to reinforce behaviour change, e.g.,

• COMMERCIAL: Opportunities were being created without completing the full process, leading to inaccurate pipelines. After adding an auto-launched SWT, 43% of plays resulted in users successfully completing the main goal and 100% of new Opportunities being created correctly (avg of 5 plays per user)
• IMPROVE: Users were struggling to ‘Close/Won’ Opportunities causing frustration and delay. We introduced a troubleshooting SWT. Within a month, it had 107 plays with 3.5 plays per user reducing support calls by 50% and a minimum time save of 107 hours.

Going forward, we are now exploring the WalkMe UI Intelligence on system data to identify new WalkMe use cases.

There are many things that make us proud about the use of WalkMe on Unity! Picking some highlights:

• User feedback: Unity has been our first use of WalkMe in EQ. Users and managers have been extremely positive about this modern digital approach to onboarding, training and supporting their teams. “Help is right where I need it when I need it.” Managers are also very happy that WalkMe onboarding is available in both Training and Production environments, as it accelerates new starters to become productive in Unity – “During my 121s, I can track a new starter’s progress as they learn how to use Unity.”
• Our collaborative partnership with DGTL Ventures: This was the program team’s first ever use of a DAP. DGTL are true experts in WalkMe. A genuine partnership has enabled EQ to learn from DGTL’s expertise to design and rapidly build WalkMe content for major Releases. In addition, we value our ongoing relationship with DGTL as they support EQ resources to action continuous improvement using WalkMe.
• Speed of build: With DGTL, we created WalkMe content for Release 1 users in just 10 weeks, from contracting with DGTL to go live. DGTL’s expertise alongside the ease of creating value-add WalkMe content allowed us to create an excellent onboarding experience on a brand new platform with a very short lead time.
  • WalkMe segmentation capability allows us to tailor each user group’s experience at the same time as enabling us to reuse WalkMe elements – a very efficient way to create clean user experiences, plus an efficient way to manage the WalkMe catalogue of content.
  • WalkMe Insights augmenting user feedback enables us to identify where a user is struggling and then to track the impact of WalkMe-based interventions.
• Flexibility of WalkMe: WalkMe allows us to respond very quickly to programme needs and user feedback. Shout Outs can be created in minutes, and users created or adjusted in just a few hours.
• The value of using a DAP within holistic change management strategy. The purpose of change management is ultimately to drive return on investment through wide and deep user adoption. Including a DAP as a key pillar in our change management strategy has enabled us to seamlessly build user capability over time as the Unity platform evolves. WalkMe creates a consistent user experience for learning new system capabilities and sharing updated best practices. This consistency of approach has in turn reduced the barriers to behaviour change as the change process itself becomes familiar.

Client to Cash (C2C) is a critical value-driver program for EQ and core to growth. It is a complex multi-phased program, spanning 5 businesses over 3 continents and removing multiple legacy systems. Unity is built on Salesforce and Conga. Three Releases have been delivered this year to complete the global marketing and sales capability. Release 4 will bring global billing into Unity. Later Releases will include Contract Management and Pricing.

WalkMe is being used to drive onboarding and deepen Unity usage for a wide range of roles including Executives, Sales, Operations, Finance, Legal and Compliance. The flexibility and adaptability of WalkMe has resulted in consistent and positive user engagement as Unity continues to evolve and extend.

Equiniti (EQ) provides expert shareholder, retirement and remediation services to customers around the world. We have a clear vision: to be the leading global share registrar / transfer agent, offering complementary services to our client base.

EQ’s 6,000 strong team supports 48% of the FTSE 100 and 35% of the S&P 500, with 35% of UK pensioners paid by our systems. We aim to care for every customer and simplify every transaction, whilst reducing our impact on the environment.