A major U.K. bank was going through a large-scale transformation. Having built an in-house research lab in their digital center, they wanted to explore developing an in-house research team to support their transformation efforts.

When I was brought in, I had one lab and one contract UX researcher at my disposal. Shortly after joining, recruitment was frozen. So what to do.

I used the time to conduct a cost-benefit analysis using external agencies. I looked at the average cost per study, what types of research were being conducted, and ran an analysis on the total cost of hiring a researcher and total number of studies they could reasonably conduct in a year. I factored in support costs and built a model to understand the true cost of external supplier use vs. in-house development of a research capability.

When the time came I delivered a business case that received funding. Over two years, I worked with this client to design an in-house research agency, and grew the team to 40 researchers, insight analysts and A/B testing specialists.

The team had extremely high employee engagement scores, was a desirable destination for others in the bank, helped reduce reliance on external suppliers, reduced overall cost per research activity, contributed to a reduction in developer rework, and improved customer engagement with the bank's digital products and services.