Visiting this small chain of islands notably known for sun, sand and sea; one would not immediately connect the Bahamas with world class banking institutions. But behind the sleepy melodic rhythm of this tourism giant, there exists a financial hub in the Bahamas that rivals all of the other Caribbean islands.
Which has helped the Bahamas obtain a strong dollar valuation of 1-1 with the US dollar; making it a force to reckon with amongst its peers.
Most financial companies are constantly evolving and striving to remain on par with their competitors. So, it was no surprise when one of the leading global asset recovery firms based in the Bahamas contacted me to lead their project which included the development of a new online payment portal integrated into their website.
Project Initiation:
As the project manager for this project, I led the discovery process to define and document the business needs of the business owner and stakeholders for this project. Once the business needs were consolidated, I crafted the project scope and attained final sign off from the CEO before initiating the project.
While having worked with many talented UX designers on branding and web development projects before, I felt this project required a deeper skillset.
This project required a UX designer who not only understood the corporate environment, but one who could translate the thoughts and desires of all stakeholders and bring this product to life.
Sourcing talent:
I interviewed over 12 UX designers for this project with varying skill levels, all located remotely around the world from as far away as Australia, Quebec and London. The chosen designer came from Canada and had an impressive background having worked for Adobe, Google and YouTube. This designer was comfortable using an iterative process and we used Kanban boards on Asana and conducted check in calls via Zoom to remain on track.
With that aspect handled I then sought out a backend programmer, who was proficient in PHP, MySql/ HTML, SEO, SEM and wordpress. While having a good programmer was key, I also needed a programmer who had an eye for design and would execute this product to the strict formats laid out by the UX designer, but with as clean coding on the backend, as not to inhibit SEO crawling bots or force long loading times.
This particular freelancer was based in Croatia, but by developing a definitive timeline in Asana and incorporating a few time buffers, we achieved each milestone effortlessly.
After the site was built and the payment processor integrated, I then facilitated all vendor relations between the client’s banking institution and their 3rd party credit card processing facility based in New York.
Challenges:
The challenging aspects of this project evolved during the integration of the payment processor with the bank’s facilities. Surprisingly, it did not arise as a result of the multi-jurisdictional nature of all of the vendors, but due to a lack of responsiveness from the client’s banking institution, which resulted in some unforeseen time delays.
Nonetheless we were able to make up for lost time during the SEO phase, as we used a team that worked on a rotation schedule, which allowed us to compress the schedule as needed.
SEO:
The final phase of this project was conducted by a very methodical White Hat SEO team based out of India, who performed a variety of services ranging from security audits, google search optimization, Google panda algorithm compliance and more to ensure the site ranked well and to mitigate negative flags from Google.
Conclusion:
The project culminated as a success-meeting every goal the client had and providing them with a secure, fast online payment processing portal that allowed them to receive payments from any sector of the world, increasing their debt collection process dramatically.
If your looking to increase the chances of success on your next project, the best start is always selecting the best project manager for the job and ensuring that communication is the skill he identifies as his super-power.
About the Author : Fabian is a project manager and marketing strategist with over 20 years of marketing and creative experience working with companies in a variety of industries such as retail, finance, government, food, and the beverage industry. His strategy involves learning your business from the inside out and providing a bespoke plan to achieve your designated objectives.
photo credit: @bonneval_sebastien via unsplash
