ANZ
Helping ANZ understand small businesses while building internal design capability
We helped ANZ understand their small business customers and build internal design capability — delivering research insights and training two new teams simultaneously. By working alongside ANZ's teams on real projects, we gave them the skills and confidence to run their own research and design processes.
Outcomes
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Opportunities identified across ANZ's digital channels to better serve small business customers
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Two design teams trained in research, synthesis, and design methods — equipped to run their own discovery projects independently
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Executive alignment on research findings and the product roadmap for small business digital channels
Sectors
The challenge
ANZ's small business team wanted to understand how their customers were actually using their digital tools — and whether those tools were meeting small business needs. But they had a capability gap too: two newly formed design teams who were unfamiliar with research methods and uncertain how to approach customer discovery.
ANZ asked us to tackle both challenges at once: uncover opportunities to better serve small businesses while coaching their teams to design new product features and run research independently.
Understanding how small businesses manage their money
Working alongside ANZ's teams, we ran two parallel research streams with small business owners. Through in-depth interviews and contextual research, we explored how and when small business owners managed their finances, and where ANZ's existing products supported those habits — or fell short.
The research revealed opportunities across their digital channels to better engage small business customers. We co-designed product improvements with ANZ's teams to address these opportunities.
Building the team's confidence to do it themselves
Throughout the engagement, we trained ANZ's two new design teams in research methods and synthesis techniques — giving them the confidence to run their own discovery work beyond our project.
We used the project's real findings to bring executive leadership along on the journey, presenting research insights and their implications to secure buy-in for the product roadmap. And we worked closely with the new teams to make sure they had practical tools, templates, and hands-on experience to carry the work forward.
Working with Paper Giant has been fantastic. Research can sometimes be daunting and confusing but they made the methods engaging and understandable to the team – uncovering a wealth of insights about small business owners that are used across ANZ in the process.
— Alex Turner, ANZ
