OANDA Treasury
The Challenge
Introduction to FX Risk
The forex market is always moving!
If a company conducts transactions in foreign currencies their financials might be “exposed” meaning they are at risk of paying more or receiving less than they projected.
Example:
A is in USD
B is in CAD
A owes B $23,000 CAD in 100 days
Today 1 USD = 1.34 CAD so A owes B $17,039 USD
If the price of CAD goes up A will pay more USD
If the price of CAD goes down A will pay less USD
The goal is to pay as little as possible to save money, so when in the next 100 days should A pay B?
The best way to reduce the risk associated with fluctuating currencies is:
Forecasting market trends
Placing “hedge” trades
A hedge trade is when a treasury department conducts a transaction with a bank to buy or sell an amount of currency at a specific price and date. They do this so that they know exactly what price they are going to pay and therefore their financials are not exposed to potential market fluctuations.
OANDA Treasury
We have a basic platform called OANDA Treasury that addresses some of the basic functions for understanding what transactions are exposed but doesn’t address many of the other pain points treasury departments face.
THE CHALLENGE
AFP Conference
The annual Accounting and Financial Professionals Conference was happening in 2 months. OANDA saw this as an opportunity to redesign our current platform and bring a demo version to the conference to get real user feedback.
The Approach
⚡️Design Dash⚡️
The Design Dash is OANDA’s very own Design Sprint
After studying the Google Venture methodology I created the Design Dash to combine key parts of a Design Sprint but tailor it to OANDA’s needs.
Roles
Experts from across OANDA Corporation came to our Toronto office to collaborate on OANDA Treasury.
Facilitator & Design Expert: ME!
SHOT CALLER: Chuck Brobst
Market Expert: Steven Walter
Product Expert: AJ Remlinger
Customer Expert: Kevin Ryan (CFO)
Customer Expert: Francis Cantero (Treasurer)
SCHEDULE
The Design Dash was 3 days, but our user tests were mostly conducted at the AFP Conference.
Day 1: Understanding
Day 2: Sketching
Day 3: Prototyping
AFP: User Test
Day 1: Understanding
Day 1 is all about understanding the problem
Set a Goal
Affinity Mapping
On a sticky note, write what you think the goal of the Design Dash is. When you are finished post your sticky notes on the wall. We will review and sort them into groups to see where our expectations align and diverge.
OUTCOME
Design a demo for the AFP
Discover the current pain points
Understand who our user is
Uses graphic visualization
ASK QUESTIONS
Affinity Mapping
We then began to list all the questions and assumptions we had about the tool
OUTCOME
The Demo
what parts of the platform do we focus on
USer
Who will we demo to?
What are their roles and responsibilities?
What are their pain points and how do they differ by role?
Education
How can we educate users based on experience?
Automation
How important is automation
ASK THE EXPERTS
User Interviews
We asked internal experts these questions to try and find opportunities
Affinity Mapping
OUTCOME
Here are the opportunities we identified
Dashboard
custom ui
different for each user
daily summary
trust
reduce risk
alerts
see potential errors
Education
