Shashwita Verma Download Resume

All work

What partners need from an advisory platform

IIFL · B2B partner platform

A discovery study into how IIFL's partners run and grow their business, and what a platform called AAA would have to do to feel like an adviser instead of a report.

First draft. Written from the research files and resume. Study dates, sample numbers, which directions were adopted and what can be shown publicly still need Shashwita's confirmation. Slides shown are rendered from the Figma file and still need clearance for public use. Remove this note before publishing.

At a glance

Organisation
IIFL, financial services
Product
AAA, a platform for IIFL's business partners
Research type
Foundational discovery
My role
Led the research end to end, and developed the personas and user matrices
Methods
Stakeholder and partner interviews, contextual enquiry, process analysis, competitor benchmarking, secondary research
Status
Research complete; directions proposed

The question

IIFL partners work with their own clients and lean on the platform for brokerage, payouts, client summaries and risk reports. It sits in the middle of their day.

The team needed to understand how partners really work and grow, where the platform helps and where it gets in the way, and what an advisory-led experience would mean in practice. Three questions drove the study:

  • How do partners run and grow their business day to day?
  • Where do pain points and unmet needs show up?
  • What should success look like for the platform, for partners and for the business?

How the research ran

Partners were only one voice. The business, operations and the people supporting partners each described the same system differently, so the study used several lenses on purpose.

  1. Stakeholder interviews to learn what the business wanted the platform to achieve.
  2. Partner interviews and survey responses to hear how partners work, what they rely on and where they struggle.
  3. Contextual enquiry and process analysis to see the work as it happens, not as it is remembered.
  4. Competitor benchmarking and secondary research to place partners' expectations in a wider market.

Findings were organised with affinity mapping, then reframed as "how might we" questions that product and design could pick up.

Slide stating the research goal: as IIFL moves towards an advisory-led trading experience, partners are at the centre, and research was run to understand their pain points and opportunities.
The research goal, from the report.
Slide titled Research Process with eight steps: stakeholder interviews, user interviews, contextual enquiry, process analysis, competitor benchmarking, secondary research and structural wireframes are ticked; visual designs is greyed out as a next step.
The research process, with visual design left as the next step.

What partners told us

The synthesis settled on ten themes. The ones that carried the most weight:

Data they can trust

Partners described information that was hard to reach and not always reliable, which made it hard to advise their own clients.

Advice, not only reports

Partners wanted help deciding what to do next, not just a record of what had happened.

Support and training

Partners wanted help and training they could rely on, and awareness of existing features was low.

Communication and progress

Partners wanted clearer communication from IIFL and a visible sense of progress, rewards and recognition.

Underneath all four was the same pattern: partners were working across fragmented systems, and the platform did not yet bring that together for them.

Slide titled What Stakeholders Said, with phrases used to describe the vision for AAA, such as intelligent digital manager, dynamic dashboard, virtual business coach and one-stop shop, next to a block of stakeholder statements.
How stakeholders described the vision for AAA.
Slide titled Data related issues with AAA, showing partner quotes about inaccurate or missing data, grouped by reaction such as lack of trust and frustration.
Partner quotes about data they could not rely on.
Slide titled How are partners using AAA, with partner quotes about how they check client positions and use reports.
Partner quotes about how they use the platform.
Slide titled Training Process listing pain points and expectations around training sessions, recordings and communication about new features.
Pain points and expectations around training.
Slide reading Post Data Analysis: 10 themes, which defined scope for the design.
Ten themes came out of the analysis.

Where it pointed

The research turned into four directions the team could explore, each traceable to a theme above:

  • An actionable dashboard that surfaces what a partner should do next.
  • Help and support inside the product.
  • Rewards and recognition that make progress visible.
  • Learning modules so partners can pick up features at their own pace.

These are research-backed directions and the design explorations that followed. The research files do not say which were built or released.

What this can't say

  • It does not show business impact. There is no measured change in partner activity or revenue here.
  • The themes come from interviews and survey responses, so they describe what these partners said, not every partner.
  • Directions are proposals. Adoption is not claimed.