Profitability margin, up from break‑even 03 Evolve
The problem
With no system of record, a new service couldn’t scale.
LPL’s new service, Paraplanning Services, let financial advisors offload financial plan production to LPL’s internal planners. In turn, advisors could focus on growing their client base. However, because no system of record existed to deliver the service, both internal planners and advisors swivel-chaired across email, spreadsheets, scattered files and sticky notes creating a very manual, frustrating, and inefficient workflow.
01 Launch
I designed the first system of record, for both sides of the service.
Advisors request and track plans in ClientWorks. LPL’s planners work every plan from one queue, with its documents and conversation in one place. It launched at FOCUS 2023.
First, I stood up a lightweight research function where there was none.
I conducted Jobs to Be Done workshops with the internal primary users, pod managers and plan managers.
Excerpt of Jobs to Be Done from the research I stood up with LPL’s planners.
Key Insight: Having a single pane of glass was table stakes. What they really wanted was a task management system to help manage and do the work.
Then, I designed the planner experience.
The team faced many constraints (budgetary, technical, reduced dev capacity) and the clock was ticking fast with a predetermined launch date. We had to move quickly. To help us build quicker, I did the following:
set a bi-weekly cadence with the product manager to plan for emerging capabilities and maximize capacity
coached the devs to build reusable components, which they were not doing
coached a jr. product owner to write outcome-based stories and acceptance criteria
Planner
Chris, a plan manager, opens the Greenbergs’ plan from the queue and answers Elizabeth’s message without leaving it.View the screens →
Next, I tackled the advisor experience.
Advisor
Elizabeth requests a Financial Plan for the Greenbergs in a few steps, with what she’s buying always in view.View the screens →
The service went from a standing start to a line advisors adopted at scale.
The new platform digitized and unified operations for a new LPL business unit liberating planners and advisors from their swivel-chair morass of email, spreadsheets, scattered files and sticky notes.
▲Up 833%
subscriber growth post‑launch
▲Up 80%
team growth post‑launch
▲Up 220%
plans delivered per month post‑launch
▼Down 57%
plans per advisor per month post‑launch
02 Map
Product added 4 more services. Each brought its own process, compounding operational friction.
I mapped all 5 so leadership could determine how to standardize delivery and increase throughput.
The same friction showed on every map: advisor non-compliance.
Advisors sat on documents and tasks, nothing in the app made them move, and the pipeline clogged.
Which frictions were raised on each of the five process maps
Friction
Advisor non‑compliance
Raised as a real pain
Raised as a real pain
Raised as a real pain
Raised as a real pain
Raised as a real pain
Salesforce & triple‑entered notes
Felt but softer
Felt but softer
Raised as a real pain
Raised as a real pain
Raised as a real pain
The app can’t run the work
Raised as a real pain
Raised as a real pain
Felt but softer
–Not raised
–Not raised
Upfront training & free‑vs‑paid
–Not raised
Felt but softer
Raised as a real pain
Raised as a real pain
Raised as a real pain
raised as a real painfelt but softer–not raised
The system tracked status, but it couldn’t run the work.
Capacity planning, priority and task tracking, and playbooks for execution weren’t in the app. The pod carried the workflow by hand, and the app just recorded where things stood. It was the same gap I argued for leading up to launch, now visible across every production-line map.
5 process maps, 44 steps in all. Click to browse and zoom.
Key Insight: Advisors are the customer, and LPL’s brand promise has always been to work on their terms. You can’t discipline your customer, and the budget for enforcement tooling didn’t exist anyway.
5
services mapped end to end
44
steps mapped
70
pain points documented
68
opportunities identified
03 Evolve
Leadership put the maps to work.
Based on my research and mapping, leadership spun up five projects, three of which I show here. My role shifted to leading research on each, and together they addressed:
advisor behavior
our service processes
the business model
Advisor behavior
One in five active advisors had no plan, and 60 had terminated since 2022.
Leadership suspected Sales and Client Success did not set proper expectations with advisors.
My role
I led the research to confirm the hypothesis and discover what else was wrong. To do so, I interviewed Sales, Client Success, delivery managers, and advisors, synthesized the data, and provided recommendations.
What I found
57
pain points surfaced across four functions
17
themes, prioritized for leadership
What we did
We tackled the onboarding questionnaire first to get a quick win and better advisor data.
I proposed making it skills-based and objective. The team agreed, and I workshopped questionnaire design with the plan managers to derive the skills and questions that mattered.
Onboarding questionnaire, before and after
Before · Confidence based
“How proficient are you in your planning software?” 1–5
12345
A self-rating on an undefined scale. Emotional, not evidence.
After · Skills based
Planning assumptions
QHow often do you update your investment assumptions?
Data collection
QHow do you collect client data?
Impact
This enabled us to place every advisor in a readiness segment, each with its own training regimen.
My research surfaced other solutions and work that leadership approved and enacted:
Content strategy: Consolidate and redesign Client Success’s advisor-facing artifacts.
Content strategy: Author new training articles in Resource Center.
Training program: Spin up FP Accelerator, a training pilot including a dozen advisors, to address skills development.
Service process
Attacking non-compliance from the client side.
Advisors bottlenecked the data and documents every plan depended on. Since we couldn’t push harder on them, we rerouted data collection to their clients.
My role
I supervised my senior’s design work, led validation research, and negotiated the fixes into the product roadmap.
What I found
Clients successfully completed the form but misunderstood what it was asking.
While visual execution and conversational tone tested well, conceptual comprehension failed:
Taxonomic Overlap: Categories conflicted, and every user stalled at the institutional “OWNER” field.
Mental Model Mismatch: The legacy form architecture ignored how everyday consumers conceptualize retirement planning.
What we did
We rebuilt the confusing screens around how clients actually think.
Retirement goals, before and after
Before, it asked for named goals with start and end dates. After, it asks for age, timing and income, with no goal names. Click to browse all three revisions.
01
Retirement goals
Before
What testing found
7/7participants confused by the v1 form
It departed from how people actually think about a retirement goal, so it needed a rethink and a restructure of the information we asked for.
One participant
“For me retirement goal is specific to retirement and when (date or age) I want to do it and how I want to do it (how much wealth I need).”
Another
“Why would you have multiple retirement goals?”
A third
“I thought this was retirement so I’m not sure why I have to add a goal name to retirement. I already have a retirement goal. My goal is to retire.”
After
What shipped
We restructured the form around how people actually think about retirement. Production asks for retirement age, willingness to delay, part-time work plans, and a target for partial income, for both client and co-client. No goal names.
02
What goals to add
Before
What testing found
The progress indicator didn’t give a clear enough read on where users were in the flow. Some weren’t sure what a category meant before choosing it, and one wasn’t clear on what “investment” covered. Two of seven named healthcare as a missing goal, and one named estate planning.
After
What shipped
We changed the orientation of the progress indicator so it scales and shows progress at a more granular level. We added a description to each category so users understand it before deciding, and added Healthcare and Estate planning as goal categories.
Participants found this page heavy and wanted it simplified. About half said they would rather just upload a spreadsheet of their expenses.
After
What shipped
We simplified the page, and we worked with the delivery team to cut the minimum required data. After that consultation they agreed to two aggregate buckets: current annual expenses and targeted annual retirement expenses.
2aggregate buckets replaced the itemized list
Impact
The next build shipped 14 of my 34 recommendations, including:
Structural overhaul: Restructured retirement goals around age, timing and income
Scope expansion: Added Healthcare and Estate planning as goal categories
Streamlined data load: Cut living expenses to two totals
Removed jargon: Replaced the OWNER field with plain questions like “Whose income is this?”
The business model
Redesigning our business model to sharpen product‑market fit and drive utilization.
Every plan was sold as a full end-to-end engagement. This was great for beginning advisors and wrong for mature practices with their own process and staff.
The solution
Experienced advisors needed to buy à la carte services and tasks instead of buying a full engagement.
My role
I ran discovery and voice-of-customer research to shape the pilot, then tested two in-app workflows: one shared with Planning Services and one where Planning 360 and Planning Services were separated.
What I found
The results surfaced a strong signal that advisors prefer not to use the app.
Average satisfaction by workflow, 1–5
Advisors rated their offline workflow above both app flows. Click to open the full executive summary.
Executive summary and top recommendations
Validation test · 7 advisors (4 with both subscriptions, 3 Paraplanning only) · UserTesting · December 2024
Goal
Test how advisors perceived two in-app designs for Planning 360, whether combining Paraplanning and Planning 360 in one experience was a problem, and how to improve. I spoke with four advisors who held both subscriptions and three who held Paraplanning only.
Key findings
Avg. rating · Pass
The offline path advisors already used out-rated both designed flows: offline Planning 360 4.75, current Paraplanning app 3.4, designed workflow 1 3.3, designed workflow 2 3.7.
Visual design · Pass
All advisors said they were pleased with the visual design of the experience.
Content clarity · Pass
With minor exceptions, advisors found the content clear and easy to understand.
Navigation · Pass
Navigating the experience presented no major problems.
Scanning and findability · Pass
Advisors had no trouble finding task information and instructions.
Information architecture · Flag
Real work remained on the Planning 360 menu, especially key information missing from it and service-level form fields.
Usability and goal completion · Flag
Advisors liked both flows but were significantly confused in workflow 2 when pivoting from a Paraplanning request to Planning 360 tasks.
Average satisfaction, 1–5
Current offline · Planning 360the way advisors already worked
4.75
Designed in-app · workflow 1separate paths
3.3
Designed in-app · workflow 2combined flow
3.7
Current in-app · Paraplanningexisting app
3.4
The scale asks “this makes my job…” 1 = a lot harder · 2 = harder · 3 = no impact · 4 = easier · 5 = a lot easier. n=7, directional.
Top recommendations
Redesign the workflow 2 request summary
Rebuild it to hold both Paraplanning and Planning 360 as always-present sections, reconsider information load and scale, and rethink where Contact Planner sits.
Question the app as the channel
The test surfaced a strong signal that advisors prefer not to use the app. Run further discovery to learn why, and decide whether the app is the best, or only, way to field advisor requests.
Impact
The pilot found real market fit, delivered outside the app.
7×
increase in advisor engagement
Break-even → 30%
profitability margin
I recommended further discovery before building Planning 360 into the app, to learn whether it was the right channel at all.
The outcome
From a pilot run on email and spreadsheets to a scaled service with its own system.
Subscribers rose 833% after launch, and monthly plans delivered climbed 220%. My role grew with the service: from designing every screen to leading the research and service design that drove how it evolved.