Edward Jones Digital Transformation

The challenge

Edward Jones, with its distinctive model of individual financial advisors serving clients in localized offices across North America, faced a fundamental tension: how do you bring design-led digital transformation to an organization whose competitive advantage is built on deeply personal, human relationships?

The answer wasn't to digitize the advisor relationship — it was to use design to make those relationships even more valuable, by freeing advisors from administrative burden, giving them better tools and insights, and creating digital touchpoints that reinforced rather than replaced the human connection. But to get there, the organization needed to build its own design capacity — not just consume design outputs.

IBM Consulting was selected to establish a tailored design thinking adoption strategy, guide pilot projects, train their teams, and create the governance structure for sustainable transformation.

The solution

We designed a comprehensive design thinking adoption program rooted in IBM's People, Practices, and Places framework — launching three simultaneous accelerated visioning engagements focused on Edward Jones's most critical business challenges:

1. Financial Goals — Reimagining how Edward Jones can consistently deliver comprehensive, ongoing, goals-based advice to every client

2. Account Opening — Creating a best-in-class opening experience that increases branch capacity and enables branches to deepen their relationship with clients

3. Investment Portfolio — Optimizing how we create, execute and configure portfolios aligned to Edward Jones advice and guidance.

Rather than delivering designs and leaving, we built the organization's own capacity to think with design. These three pilots demonstrated the methodology's value while simultaneously delivering real products with real users. This created the foundation for Edward Jones to build customer-centric experiences at speed and scale.

🚀

Pilot Projects

Three concurrent accelerated visioning engagements to define visions for the firm's most important work — demonstrating methodology and delivering immediate, tangible value from day one.

⚖️

Design Governance Model

Operational structure defining design principles, practices, and decision-making frameworks — embedding design thinking into daily operations rather than treating it as a project-based activity.

🎨

Enterprise Design System

Comprehensive toolkit codifying best practices, an enterprise design language, and methodologies for teams, Business Analysts, and Product Owners across the firm — making good design repeatable at scale.

🎓

Enablement Program

A train-the-trainer approach creating Design Thinking Coaches, Advocates, and Practitioners who could scale adoption independently — ensuring the capability survived beyond the engagement.

What I did

As Design Governance Lead, I led design governance, team leadership, and enterprise transformation across multiple concurrent workstreams — ensuring consistency, quality, and strategic alignment across the entire program.

⚖️

Established the Design Governance Operational Model

Created the foundational structure for how design thinking would operate across Edward Jones — defining governance principles, decision-making frameworks, and an operating model that enabled design to scale without losing coherence.

🎨

Co-Created the Edward Jones Design System

Edward Jones operated with multiple fragmented design systems. We positioned the adoption program as the testing ground to consolidate into one comprehensive, unified Design System — enabling teams to move faster with consistency and alignment across the firm.

🔭

Design Governance Across 4 Workstreams

Provided governance oversight across 4 concurrent pilot projects simultaneously — ensuring consistent experiences, quality standards, and adherence to design principles. This centralized function enabled teams to move independently while maintaining firm-wide alignment.

🌟

Defined Experience Principles

Created a set of Experience Principles articulating what great customer experiences looked like at Edward Jones — becoming the north star for teams, providing guidance without prescribing solutions and enabling autonomy while ensuring alignment.

🔗

Unified Experience Design Across Siloed Workstreams

Served as the single design leader with visibility across all pilot projects. Identified opportunities for teams to borrow experiences, components, and interaction patterns from one another — eliminating redundant design work and ensuring consistent user behaviors and visual language across all of the firm's initiatives.

What we delivered

A sustainable design transformation infrastructure — not just a set of designs. The advocate network, governance model, and pilot programs combined to create lasting organizational change that continued growing after the engagement concluded. Design thinking language and methods embedded themselves into how teams across Edward Jones talked about and approached problems.

The Edward Jones Enterprise Design System

Design Governance and Enterprise Design System Driving Innovation Pilots

Program features and benefits

👥

Design Advocate Program

50 internal champions across business units trained to carry design thinking into everyday decisions — creating a distributed design capability that scales without scaling the design team.

⚖️

Design Governance Model

A tiered review framework built for a regulated financial environment — enabling faster delivery without sacrificing compliance, accessibility, or fiduciary integrity at any decision level.

🎓

Design Thinking Capability

300+ associates trained across workshops, exposure sessions, and innovation sprints — embedding a shared language and methodology that teams could apply independently without external support.

🧪

Innovation Pilot Program

Three real pilots across advisor productivity, client digital experiences, and knowledge management — demonstrating tangible design value across different problem types and business areas.

Measurable impact and value delivered

📈

Organizational Design Maturity

The advocate network continued to grow after our engagement concluded. Design thinking language and methods embedded themselves into how teams across the organization talked about and approached problems — a cultural shift that outlasted the program itself.

🏛️

Governance as Operational Policy

The governance model became operational policy at Edward Jones — accelerating design delivery across teams while maintaining the compliance and accessibility standards required in a regulated financial environment.

✅

Pilots That Proved the Value

Three pilots delivered in under a quarter each, with clear pre-defined success metrics — giving leadership the tangible, measurable evidence they needed to justify further design investment across the organization.

300+

Associates Engaged in Design Adoption

15

Co-Created Projects

600+

Wireframes & Prototypes

50

Design Thinking Advocates & Coaches

1