TD Canada has introduced a new operating model: the Next Evolution of Work (NEW), which aims to deliver faster to-market customer benefits and solutions.
“It’s about how we’re going to future proof our operating model, so that we can be really responsive to market,” says Tina Robinet, the senior vice president leading NEW.
According to Robinet, the operations model is based on agile ways of working. She says that as markets get faster with new technological advancements, customers expect companies to be just as responsive.
“As the market is getting faster and digital experiences are becoming more important, customers’ expectations are evolving. They want that same experience with financial services and banking products that they have when they go home to work on anything else. This is really about how we’re going to be able to respond faster to markets using agile ways of working,” she said.
In a blog post from TD, NEW is described as “one of the single biggest transformations ever undertaken at TD.”
The top three objectives behind NEW include:
- Delivering better customer outcomes faster
- Simplifying TD’s operating model
- Attracting and retaining talent
Robinet says typically banking involves a very long delivery cycle, and NEW administrates change with fewer layers and processes, helping it eventually innovate faster.
Currently, NEW has thousands of colleagues operating within it and the model is focusing on several new IT roles being offered in areas like software engineering and data and analytics. NEW is also opening doors for additional job opportunities for people in the tech market.
“Although this is an enterprise wide transformation…technology is the delivery engine. It’s at the core of this…So it benefits us across all of our different technology roles,” she said.
Robinet says the model has allowed TD to bring in lots of new skills and capabilities while establishing their “technology modernization strategy.”
“And as we can accelerate that technology modernization strategy with speed, it’ll incorporate lots of new different kinds of roles and technologies.”
For customers, the model will directly change the way they access services— for the better.
For example, Robinet recounts a problem customers were having with a TD service called MySpend, a real-time money management app that acts as a companion to the TD app.
Users were complaining about the way the app’s notifications would display on smartphones. Though a recent update had been tested, the Android app appeared to be blocking key information from displaying properly. This resulted in users leaving negative feedback.
Robinet says in their old model, it would have taken a while to gather the right people and information while getting approvals to make a change and fix the problem.
Now with the NEW model, the cross functional teams include everyone needed to solve certain problems, ensuring the issue is addressed quickly.
“They were able to go into the backlog quickly turn it around, they had all of the right people already at the table as part of the product groups to make the decisions. They turned that solution around very, very quickly; significantly faster than we would have in our past model for sure.”
According to TD, as part of the NEW transition, the company is doubling down on efforts to create enterprise-wide platforms that use the scale of the bank, which will improve efficiency and move away from building one-off solutions towards a model where something is built once.
In addition, this model also betters the employee experience and work environment.
Robinet says this is transforming the company’s DNA. TD expects NEW to deliver a beneficial colleague experience. The company is focusing on career development and growth as well as implementing ways for employees to learn new skill sets.
“So it opens up lots more opportunities for colleagues, especially as they’re working in these cross functional parts. They’re getting exposed to different opportunities and jobs and the different roles that we have in the bank. It really broadens the career opportunities as well as those skill sets,” Robinet said.
