our services
Customer profiles / journey research
Concept validation
Customer mindset
Agile UX design & information architecture
Design system
A better world starts with you, but all help is, of course, welcome. Especially when it comes to financing. Major investments are needed to solve the climate problem. The European Investment Bank (EIB) is one of the main financiers of innovative climate projects. Still, many start-ups, SMEs, and even financial institutions don’t even know the EIB exists, let alone what it does. Such a shame. That is why the EIB is making its digital services more and more accessible.
situation
Wanted: innovators
The EIB has many opportunities to support innovative climate projects and wants as many European organisations and people as possible to benefit from them. But when you think of subsidies, you quickly think of slow processes and piles of paperwork. The EIB wants to get rid of that spectre. That’s why they developed a new, fresh brand identity and are now making it tangible with Essense – formats, services, methods, everything. Together, we’re exploring what it means to keep up with the times. How do you lower the barriers to sustainable innovation? And how do you better address the target group? But also: how do you organise that internally?
approach
Online driven approach
Because we believe in small steps instead of major reorganisations, we kickoff with several clearly defined projects. For starters, we are working on an online portal to make financial services more understandable and accessible for younger generations and people who are not financially savvy. And we are improving internal collaboration and knowledge sharing with a renewed intranet. Whatever we work on, we always start by mapping customer insights. We conduct extensive target group research through desk research and interviews. We validate existing insights and retrieve new ones to improve digital services. And, of course, we validate the improvements with the EIB, their customers, and relevant stakeholders.
This is easier said than done at a large international organisation during a pandemic. But, if you want to make complex matters understandable for the outside world, you must first have a common understanding within the organisation – and thus involve all stakeholders. That’s why we mainly facilitate innovation through interactive, online sessions – for example, through the effective use of Miro. It means that we visualise a lot with wireframes and designs, coach a lot, and inspire at least as much with our knowledge from other projects.
result
A digital ecosystem for climate innovation
Secretly, the (partly) forced online approach is exactly what the EIB needs. Because while we improve the customer experience, employees learn to collaborate better and how to share knowledge. The organization gets to know its target groups better and better and discovers how to translate insights into tangible actions. By really understanding the complexity of their services and differences in culture, local regulations, and digital maturity, the EIB makes financing understandable and accessible. That’s how they allow climate innovations to lift off – without CO2 emissions, obviously.
Sander Kruitwagen
Head of Operations