Enterprise Intelligence.

30% of the country's payments ran through BNP.
No one was selling them.

An unmatched view of Belgian consumer purchasing behaviour, accumulated on the Bancontact network. On the merchant side · 1500 retailers listed in ATOS, 901 registered on Easy Banking Business, 234 active, only 15% regular. No service was turning that data into value for those accepting the payments.

BNP was aiming for 2020 to become Acquirer in its own right · lifting POS marketshare from 7% to 20%, and opening acquiring to large retailers via Corporate Banking by Q2 2018. The service to design wasn't a data gadget, it was the spearhead of a positioning strategy.

My mandate held in four verbs · frame, test, align, defend. Confront the opportunity with the field, get Banking, IT, Legal and Marketing in the same room, carry the recommendation up to the steering committee.

6 months · 4 internal functions · 6 SMEs on the ground · freelance Service Designer

At the close · 6 SMEs tested → 1 firm purchase commitment · 0 refusals. The sponsor signed off the investment.

Strategyzer · Lean Canvas + Value Proposition Canvas, the native methodology of the CXC department. Toolkit calibrated to validate a mature B2B revenue hypothesis. Léonidas signed before the first line of code.

How I framed the six months.

From opportunity to market signal. A four-act methodological journey, from Design Thinking through to a prototype tested under real conditions.

Exit deliverable · MVP prioritised in user stories, signed off by Banking · IT · Legal · Marketing.

Nine segments. One key target.

From Liberal Pro to Corporate Banking SME. Map built on the interviews + the Levels of Interest matrix (Ideation Report, Oct 2017) · key target retained for the concept · B2C multi-shops without internal data support.

Six shopkeepers on their floor. Léonidas among them.

Ninety minutes each, behind the counter, watching what gets decided in a day.

1. 01

   The multi-shop chocolatier

   "I see my sales, but not who makes them."

   Léonidas — future signer of the purchase commitment. Seven points of sale. Pricing calls made blind.

2. 02

   The independent fashion retailer

   "I know my best customers. Not my best days."

   Single boutique, central Brussels. No POS, manual register. Basket evolution by instinct.

3. 03

   The restaurateur

   "My accountant gives me the figures too late."

   Restaurant 35 covers. Monthly reporting lagging 6 weeks. Misses seasonal waves.

4. 04

   The liberal professional

   "No time for Excel. Give me 3 numbers."

   Medical practice 2 practitioners. No back-office team. Maximum demand: 3 KPIs readable in 30 seconds.

5. 05

   The multi-network franchisee

   "My franchisor sends me HIS figures. Not mine."

   Three shops under two brands. Wants to compare his points of sale to each other and to the sector benchmark.

6. 06

   The corporate SME

   "We have an internal BI. But for finance. Not for the floor."

   BFE smaller corporate, 40 employees. Tools exist but unfit for the operational floor manager.

Three live benchmarks.

Three players studied, three distinct signatures · each isolated on its angle of strength.

Three data sources. Raw material to transform.

Three families of data on merchants · Bancontact transactions, consumer card profiles, bank accounts. Raw, they're worthless. Cross-referenced, they produce six actionable readings, each tied to a persona type.

Mapping the merchant's Jobs · Pains · Gains.

The Value Proposition Canvas pits the merchant's jobs (knowing customers better, calibrating actions) against the BNP offer. Every MVP feature must tick at least one Pain Reliever or Gain Creator. Otherwise, out of scope.

The Marketing POC rejected. The VP refocused it.

Marketing carried an initial data-exploration POC. Rejected by pilot clients and the SteerCo. The VP refocused · one read, one decision.

After the VP · Goals workshop with Marketing.

Eighteen candidate features on the wall. Ten retained for MVP (green), eight out of MVP (grey). Consolidated into three reports + one in phase 2.

↗ Voir en taille réelle

Three reports, one decision loop. Day's question · action · measurement.

Before the reports, the panorama.

Not a report · a panorama. Three performance KPIs on top, three improvement indicators below. In five seconds the merchant sees what works, what slips. Each detailed report opens from here.

• Performance + Improvement side by side: what works, what slips, on a single screen.
• No floating KPI: every number comes with its pre-computed delta versus N-1.
• Every card is clickable: it opens the matching detailed report.

• 3 KPIs read in 5 seconds, no manipulation.
• Shop comparison that reveals at a glance which store is slipping.
• "What's important" annotation that suggests where to act, in plain language, no data jargon.

View original wireframe

40 41 42 43 44 45

Concept Report · March 2018 · page 43

• Five complementary reads cover the local marketing call.
• Visual coherence : each feature opens on a fixed screen, not free exploration.
• The suggested action is explicit : extend hours, target a commune, re-engage a cohort.

View original wireframe

46 47 48 49

Concept Report · March 2018 · pages 46-49

• Three canonical time windows cover useful comparisons : last year, previous period, multi-shops.
• The numeric delta is calculated for the merchant, not self-service.
• The shop-by-shop comparison reveals gaps at a glance and guides the call.

View original wireframes

53 54 55 56 57 58

Concept Report · March 2018 · pages 53-58 (Time Selection · Shop Comparison · Léonidas)

Six shopkeepers. One firm purchase commitment.

Six SMEs test the Spotfire prototype unaided. One — the Léonidas group — signs a firm purchase commitment.

• 6 SMEs tested
• 1 Purchase commitment signed (Léonidas)
• 0 Categorical refusal

The sponsor signed. Six SMEs were tested · one committed, five declined. The go-production decision was made on the written commitment of the Léonidas group, dated before development.

Four departments. One project to defend.

Each function, its own friction. Each conversation, held at its moment.

Marketing and IT at the same workshop table. No defensible Value Proposition unless both carry it.

Bank · Retailer · Cardholder. The triangle that rejected false leads.

The service only held if all three vertices won. Two out of three · dropped.

Any idea that did not validate the three vertices was set aside. Three criteria, not an average.

Not an intention. A written commercial signal.

A firm purchase commitment, signed before the first line of code. Written, dated, on the sponsor's desk.

1. 01

   Concept Report signed

   Four internal functions (Banking · IT · Legal · Marketing) aligned on a locked MVP scope. March 2018.

2. 02

   Léonidas pre-signs

   Léonidas Ixelles and Léonidas Woluwe-SP were already named in the Concept Report wireframes, as the example used for shop-to-shop comparison. The pre-signature turned a name in a mockup into a firm purchase commitment, conditional on go-live.

3. 03

   Backlog ready to ship

   User stories prioritised P1/P2, MVP scope locked, ready to enter agile sprints on the IT side.

Integrity note. I left BNP after the Concept Report was delivered, to join Belfius. I had no further news of the project.