Sun Life

The Advisor Portal program was a program designed to improve advisor and Client experience through new platforms: a new intranet (Advisor hub) and an enhanced CRM, Salesforce Financial Services Cloud (FSC). The Change Management team was challenged to successfully transition 4000 Advisors, staff and their support leaders across Canada to these platforms as quickly as possible, with limited resources…all while increasing adoption.

Advisors didn’t see the value of using leads and opportunities, finding it cumbersome to enter the information – and we wanted to have a platform to help launch new features and accomplish other benefits, including:

• Increase our Salesforce “Power Users” (Power users – defined as Advisors who enter 5 leads, prospects or opportunities and have 10 activities per month – have 81% higher wealth sales and 56% higher insurance sales, so it’s important we increase our number of power users.)
• Improve end to end advisor experience by making it easier to navigate and learn while doing
• Deliver creative solutions quickly for technical and process gaps that might otherwise be costly (too expensive or too much time or too many resources required
• Enable self sufficiency in the build of creative solutions empowering the team to make changes quickly and without development teams
• Leverage data and analytics for future adoption improvements (technical or processes)

With this in mind, the team leveraged WalkMe as a digital adoption strategy to:

• Accelerate onboarding of the by providing in-app guidance
• Reduce costs and resources associated with training and support
• Increase sustainable adoption of existing and new objects and capabilities

To successfully accelerate onboarding and improve adoption of our platforms, specifically for Salesforce Financial Services Cloud, the following WalkMe functions were delivered for high impact and or new/changed objects and processes:

• 51 Smart WalkThrus
• 117 SmartTips
• 22 Launchers
• 2 ShoutOuts
• 9 Onboarding tasks
• 1 Menu & Search
• 9 Resources
• 2 Shuttles
• 2 Surveys

The combination of functions allowed the team to elevate the Self-Serve element of our three-pronged training approach, and focus our people efforts on the other two elements: facilitator-led training and consultative support.

This three-pronged approach ensured that we were taking an inclusive approach to learning by providing advisors with basic understanding of the tool through Self-Serve options (i.e., what can I do and how do I do this?); advanced understanding through facilitator led training (i.e., how do I tailor this and what’s in it for me?;) and application support (i.e., how do I integrate this in a meaningful way into my practice?)

Using WalkMe also enabled the team to deliver on our vision and strategy to create a meaningful, relevant, and cohesive content experience that helps Advisors spend less time looking for content and spend more time with Clients. We did this through a combination of improving end to end experience through easy navigation, enabling users to “learn while doing,” and creating automation steps that reduces clicks (Quick Actions*).

*During a national session, we had one advisor share (about Quick Actions) “How did we not have this before? I can create an Opportunity without even knowing how to create one…saves me so much time and headspace!”

• Enhances Advisor experience. WalkMe provides Advisors the information they need, where and when they need it in a simplified way, without crowding pages or, ultimately overwhelming them (less visually appealing and difficult to navigate through). This allows them to focus on what matters most, building relationships with Clients.
• Enables users to have just-in-time training directly on the platform. With many of our Advisors and support staff working virtually, the pandemic presented us with an opportunity to creatively solve for how Advisors received digital training and support. With WalkMe, Advisors don’t have to wait for basic answers or rely on a technical trainer for support, WalkMe helps them through the steps in a simple and consistent way.
• Activates new features on the platform for improved adoption and Client experience. Our Advisors are busy and inundated by information, often missing new feature announcements. WalkMe allows us to push the information directly to them when they access the tool.
  • For example, in Salesforce Financial Services Cloud (FSC), we enabled new capabilities like Life Events & Relationships, which allows Advisors to track important events in Clients’ lives for meaningful touchpoints and to ensure they don’t miss financial opportunities. Observations from WalkMe analytics showed that Advisors were interacting the most with WalkMe functions for those objects, showing high interest in these objects – and this insight allowed the team to put in place and evolve best practices for these new capabilities, knowing they were of great interest.

Our mandate as a Digital Adoption team is to enable Advisors to grow and enhance their practice and provide better Client experiences through sustainable adoption of digital tools. To effectively deliver on this mandate, we provide training and support using various tactics.

By leveraging WalkMe for the Advisor Portal program, we were able to:

• Reduce face to face facilitator led training session requirements, freeing our trainers to spend more time where they have a bigger impact. We eliminated 2000 hours of basic training, delivered by 48 trainers (core functionality and navigation) and saved the organization $80K at launch.
• Reduce support requests faster, allowing the team to reduce full time employee hours required (2 resources for the year totaling $110K), resume run rates quicker, and effectively support other initiatives. When the organization first launched Salesforce in 2016, support call volumes took 3 years to normalize. With the launch of FSC (using WalkMe as a solution), support call volumes were normalized within 9 months.
• Minimize adoption risks associated with a transition to a new tool. WalkMe data & analytics showed that Advisors were engaged from Day 1, especially with new Salesforce functions, and that adoption quickly ramped up within 3 months of migration to FSC. The team was also able to leverage analytics to quickly identify and manage adoption gaps for meaningful, but low usage objects and functions.

Our vision is to be the primary advice-based organization to holistically address a Client’s financial wellness needs.

To achieve our vision, we commit to upholding four main principles:

1. Remaining fiercely Client-centric by unequivocally putting Clients first.
2. Advocating for the value of advice so Clients can make important decisions grounded in their plans and goals.
3. Addressing holistic needs to ensure Clients have the protection they need. We also tend to their wealth and health concerns.
4. Investing in the right digital tools and resources. Clients receive the best of both human interaction and technology to support their needs.

By investing in WalkMe, we were able to quickly transition Advisors to Salesforce Financial Services Cloud, maximizing the benefits as a customer relationship management tool and business tool. In doing so, Advisors were able to focus on Clients first.

Additionally, WalkMe as a solution allowed the team to support a successful launch, significantly reducing costs, time, and effort.

The team’s role was to successfully support the change management plan for the project by executing on a unique training strategy: one that would concurrently accelerate onboarding to the new platform, increase the number of adopters within the first 3 months of the transition, and minimize costs and resources.

WalkMe was embraced and leveraged as both a short-term and long-term execution tactic. Through the support of our WalkMe partners, we were able to successfully transition Advisors to the new Salesforce with minimal risk to the business.

Perceptions of the Advisor: “I don’t have to go to one place to learn about a tool and remember how to apply it to another place. This is great!”

With WalkMe, learning can happen while doing. This means Advisors don’t have to know how to use the tool to use it, which improves willingness to try and to adopt tools/capabilities.

Perceptions of the trainer: “I don’t have to spend time training on the basic functions of the platform.”

With WalkMe in place, we are maximizing the value of our field trainers, allowing them to focus on delivering elevated and more advanced training.

Perceptions of the organization: “There are more creative and cost-effective solutions to drive digital tool adoption than technical enhancements or investing in more/better people resources.”

With WalkMe, we are now able to identify a potential Salesforce training or adoption need, evaluate how WalkMe can be used as a solution, build our own solution, and deliver it quickly – all while ensuring a consistent end-user experience.

Based on the successes realized from delivery, there is great appetite to continue using WalkMe as a solution for not just driving adoption but ultimately advisor productivity such as serving up sales opportunities to advisors in the tool during sales campaigns.

We are most proud of the amazing savings and results realized through the implementation of WalkMe. In addition to the mentioned cost and resource savings, WalkMe scores showed that after almost 9 months post implementation, 73.5% of Advisors are still engaged with WalkMe, with top engagement being in the most valuable objects and functions of Salesforce Financial Services Cloud.

Our WalkMe adoption scores were exceptionally high when compared to other organizations, achieving a score of over 700. (Our own adoption results also reflect that success, showing that within 3 months of transitioning to Salesforce Financial Services Cloud , Advisor adoption of individual objects continued to increase and were upwards of double the usage than the same month the year before.

We are also proud of having embraced WalkMe as a tool, enabling future management of sales and adoption tactics in a cost-effective way that works with Advisors!

At Sun Life, our Purpose is clear: to help our clients achieve lifetime financial security and live healthier lives.

Anchored by our proud history, we continuously look for ways to bring innovative, insightful and simple solutions to Canadians, so they can feel confident that they have a financial partner that cares about their well-being and that they can trust.

We continue to build that trust through our unwavering commitment to our clients. When we help clients with their financial management needs, and their health and well-being goals we are enabling them to gain the freedom to live their lives their way, from now through retirement.

Every day, we do what we do to give our clients peace of mind for their futures and for their families’ futures – to make Life brighter under the sun.