Major Investment Bank · 2022

Concepts for Improving Client Relationships

Overview

Investment bankers don't have the time in their day, or the right insights, to identify and reach out to high-potential clients. This engagement broke that problem into seven concrete challenges and answered them with four connected concepts, tailoring client insights through AI so a banker can put the best possible proposal in front of a client, faster.

Outcome

Concepts landed well enough with the bank's own SMEs to move straight from validation into real go-to-market conversations.

A banker's home view — client activity, live deals, and ranked prospects in one place.

Investment bank client-insights dashboard showing live deals and ranked prospects — A banker's home view — client activity, live deals, and ranked prospects in one place.

The Ask

Solve the issue where investment bankers don't have the time in their day, or the right insights, to identify and reach out to high-potential clients.

Client activity spreads across CRM, inbox, and market feeds with no shared ranking — prioritization lives in the banker's head, and by the time a signal is noticed, the moment to act has often passed.
Stage, documents, comments, and signatures each live somewhere else, so triaging one deal costs a context switch — and the step from "worth pursuing" to "live deal" is administrative friction where qualified interest goes cold.
Companies worth watching sit in personal spreadsheets and notes that fit no shared shape and never update themselves.
A proposal-ready read on one client takes hours to assemble, and the result stays with whoever assembled it.

Core flows: 4
Wireframes: 26
Core challenges addressed: 4

Deliverables

Challenge 1 · Where to start is a guess

Client-Insights Dashboard

Solves 1

A single home surface that pulls the banker's day into one place: where client activity is spiking, live deals by stage, and prospects ranked by potential, so the first screen of the morning already answers who to reach out to. Deals read either as a ranked list or an at-a-glance activity cluster, and any client opens its recent-activity signals inline — the spike is visible the day it happens, not the week after.

The banker's home view — daily client-activity insights, live deals by stage, and prospects ranked by potential.

Banker's home dashboard with client-activity insights, deals by stage, and ranked prospects — The banker's home view — daily client-activity insights, live deals by stage, and prospects ranked by potential.

The same dashboard with deals shown as an activity cluster; bubble size maps to momentum.

Dashboard deals shown as a bubble cluster sized by momentum — The same dashboard with deals shown as an activity cluster; bubble size maps to momentum.

A client-activity signal opens its next action inline — create a prospect or view the full insight.

Client-activity signal expanded inline with next-action options — A client-activity signal opens its next action inline — create a prospect or view the full insight.

Selecting a client in the cluster surfaces its recent activity and engagement rings without a page change.

Client activity and engagement rings surfaced inline from the cluster view — Selecting a client in the cluster surfaces its recent activity and engagement rings without a page change.

An alternate dashboard layout — watchlist, market news, live deals, schedule, and messages at one glance.

Alternate dashboard layout with watchlist, market news, deals, schedule, and messages — An alternate dashboard layout — watchlist, market news, live deals, schedule, and messages at one glance.

The dashboard's loading state; skeleton placeholders hold the layout so nothing shifts as data arrives.

Dashboard loading state with skeleton placeholders — The dashboard's loading state; skeleton placeholders hold the layout so nothing shifts as data arrives.

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Challenge 2 · Deals lose momentum in the gaps

Prioritized Deal Lists

Solves 2

Every live deal, prospect, and past deal in one workspace, each row carrying the state that actually drives a decision: milestone stage (NDA → LOI → Diligence → Offers → Close), documents, comments, signatures, and status. Expanding a deal reveals its value breakdown and ROI so triage happens without leaving the list, and a qualified prospect converts to a deal in a click — no administrative gap for interest to go cold in.

A deal preview on the dashboard cluster — client, industry, potential ROI, and progress at a glance.

Deal preview card showing client, industry, ROI, and progress — A deal preview on the dashboard cluster — client, industry, potential ROI, and progress at a glance.

Deal previews stay one hover from the home screen, keeping triage on the dashboard.

Deal preview shown on hover from the dashboard — Deal previews stay one hover from the home screen, keeping triage on the dashboard.

The full deal workspace — Live Deals, Prospects, and Past Deals, each row showing stage, documents, comments, and signatures.

Deal workspace listing Live Deals, Prospects, and Past Deals with stage and status columns — The full deal workspace — Live Deals, Prospects, and Past Deals, each row showing stage, documents, comments, and signatures.

Expanding a deal reveals its milestone timeline, value breakdown, and ROI — triage without leaving the list.

Expanded deal row showing milestone timeline, value breakdown, and ROI — Expanding a deal reveals its milestone timeline, value breakdown, and ROI — triage without leaving the list.

The Prospects tab ranks early-stage opportunities by status, with review-and-convert actions on each.

Prospects tab ranking early-stage opportunities with convert actions — The Prospects tab ranks early-stage opportunities by status, with review-and-convert actions on each.

The client-contact roster reachable from the deal workspace, with direct call, message, and email actions.

Client contact roster with call, message, and email actions — The client-contact roster reachable from the deal workspace, with direct call, message, and email actions.

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Challenge 3 · Pre-deal tracking is improvised

Flexible Watchlists

Solves 3

A working space for tracking companies before they become deals, replacing the personal spreadsheet nobody else can read. Bankers curate a personal watchlist, assemble acquisition-target sets by theme, and pull from AI-recommended targets, with filtered search, type-ahead, and drag-to-organize so each list stays shaped the way its owner thinks.

The client roster with an expandable insights panel — engagement, activity, and companies in view, ready to generate a report.

Client roster with expandable insights panel for engagement and activity — The client roster with an expandable insights panel — engagement, activity, and companies in view, ready to generate a report.

Clients as an activity cluster, sortable by recent activity.

Clients shown as a sortable activity cluster — Clients as an activity cluster, sortable by recent activity.

Selecting a client in the cluster opens its recent-activity insight inline.

Client recent-activity insight opened inline from the cluster — Selecting a client in the cluster opens its recent-activity insight inline.

The Acquisitions workspace — a personal watchlist, themed target sets, and AI-recommended targets side by side.

Acquisitions workspace with watchlist, themed target sets, and AI-recommended targets — The Acquisitions workspace — a personal watchlist, themed target sets, and AI-recommended targets side by side.

Filtered search narrows targets by industry, geography, and intent; each result adds to the watchlist in place.

Filtered target search by industry, geography, and intent — Filtered search narrows targets by industry, geography, and intent; each result adds to the watchlist in place.

Type-ahead suggests companies, articles, and recent lookups as the banker types.

Type-ahead search suggesting companies, articles, and recent lookups — Type-ahead suggests companies, articles, and recent lookups as the banker types.

Drag-to-organize reshapes the watchlist and moves companies into target sets directly.

Drag-to-organize interaction moving a company into a target set — Drag-to-organize reshapes the watchlist and moves companies into target sets directly.

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Challenge 4 · Client insight is expensive and doesn't travel

AI-Personalized Client Insights

Solves 4

The layer that turns activity into a proposal-ready read on one client: portal engagement, what they've been researching, which companies and what purpose are in play, and when. From there the banker generates a shareable insight report and loops in colleagues, so the insight travels with the deal instead of staying with whoever built it.