Meta Financial Services Ideation Challenge

Welcome to the Meta Investor Tools Idea Generation Challenge. The goal of this challenge is to come up with innovative and interactive ways for Meta Investor clients to receive product support, get product updates, and get their support questions answered in a efficient way. 

Put yourselves in the shoes of a top notch global investor - you need insight and knowledge at your fingertips - and a product support system that doesn’t slow you down- and to do that we need your ideas. How can an Meta investor find answers to their questions in a quick and efficient manner?

As an expert Investor,  you look for tools and applications that help you in your day to day management of your investments. Lately you’ve been using Meta’s products investment decision tools to guide your critical investment decisions in the financial (trading) industry. You are an expert in your field...however these tools are complex and from time to time you might have questions as to how to use the tool and you need to get answers in a fast and timely manner. Your questions might range from  a quick clarification question about the results of a model to what enhancements is Meta planning for it’s investment tools going forward.

This is where you can help us - we're already part of the way along in the process, but honestly - the best ideas always come from the angle you haven't considered so we figured why not let you all help us decide what those ideas should be. Of course, just for thinking about these ideas you can get paid - it's a win-win!

One very important piece of information to bear in mind is that we're looking for solutions that can work with Service Cloud and Force.com, which will be an integral part of this solution. That said, please make sure to outline where a, or a combination of, Salesforce cloud(s) could fit in. 

Round 1

For Round 1, you are expected to submit your completed idea, including : Idea details, Assumptions and Use Case Scenario. The clients will review the submissions and select Milestone winners. They may also post feedback and / or ask questions.

Round 2

For Round 2, you are expected to submit your completed idea again. At this point, you may have made changes to your idea, based on any feedback from the client (if applicable).

Guidelines for your Submission:
The goal of this contest is to suggest new concepts for a the Meta Investor Support system. We are looking for you to think BIG and DISRUPTIVE, yet given Meta’s conservative financial customer base the solution must be “knowable, feasible and desirable”. (e.g.: a recommendation to flip call centers to a Twitter centric approach would be neither feasible or desirable given that Meta’s customer’s don’t use twitter).  Laying out a solution around standard best practices is just interesting on this one.

Please describe key pivot points between each platform, and how the customer will be lead as a Customer Issue is transitioned between support persona's. Also, extra credit will be offered to those who mock up a basic visualization of the solution - flow diagram, UI interface, story-board, or even just a napkin drawing count.

Ideally, we’re looking at a solution that offers the customer timely information about products/services with a focus on highlighting Value on Investment. Potential features could include smart alerts, timely product related documents (with dialogue), an active community where peer to peer interactions reduce support calls. When customer service engagement is necessary, the customer should be lead through a well informed journey to the answer, whether it is quick and simple, such as an explanation to a question about set up or a model, or an answer that may be longer term such as an idea for a product/service enhancement.

NOTE – we are looking for a wide variety of ideas for both Mobile and NON Mobile.  

BONUS — for anyone who thinks of a solution that can work with Service Cloud and Force.com, which will be an integral part of this solution. That said, please make sure to outline where a, or a combination of, Salesforce cloud(s) could fit in. 

Your idea document should contain three (3) sections: Idea, Assumptions and Use Case Scenario.

My Idea: this section will detail your idea on how to solve this problem. Be sure to write up as much detail as possible, including (if applicable) technologies and devices used.

My Assumptions: this section will list the assumptions that you have made, in order for this system to work. 

My Use Case Scenario: this section will detail at least one (1) use case scenario. A use case scenario is a a walk-though example of how the idea would work in real life. 

Organizing Your Submission:
Your submission should be primarily or entirely textual, containing a detailed description of your idea, assumptions and use case scenario(s). Preferably one document, with three (3) sections:
1. Idea Details
2. Assumptions
3. Use Case Scenario(s)

Although there are no limit to number of submissions you can upload, you should only upload multiple submissions if each one is comprehensive and substantially different from your others. Within these constraints, you are free to describe any number of alternative approaches and extra features. In fact, we encourage you to do so. You can't have too many ideas!

Note: we will buy any idea we like beyond the first three places for 250$.

Target Audience:
The target audience will be financial investors

Judging Criteria:
You will be judged on your creativity of the idea and the ease of use for the investors. You will also be judged on how clearly you describe your idea, assumptions and use case scenario(s)

Submission & Source Files:
Preview Image
Create your preview image as one (1) 1024x1024 JPG or PNG file in RGB color mode at 72dpi and place a screenshot of your submission within it.
- You can take screenshot of your idea document and submit it.
- You can provide a blank image file and use it as preview image.

Submission Files
All original source files of the submitted ideas, it can be PDF, HTML, DOC, TXT or RTF file.

Source Files
All original source files of the submitted ideas, it can be PDF, HTML, DOC, TXT or RTF file.

Final Fixes
As part of the final fixes phase you may be asked to complete one round of minor changes to ensure your submission meets the stated requirements of this challenge.

Additional Background information for the challenge:
Meta is a leading provider of investment decision support tools to over 6,000 clients worldwide, ranging from large pension plans to boutique hedge funds. They offer a range of products and services - including indexes, portfolio risk and performance analytics, and ESG data and research. And now they are looking to you to help them find a solution to give their customers fast and easy support for their financial investment products.

Meta has the answers to their customers questions... but it takes deep knowledge and/or time to find the right expertise within Meta to solve the customer problem. Customer support and Engineering teams operate as independent business units, and often the customer suffers as the question is posed to, and managed by Customer Support, but the answer lies within the minds, or documentation, within the engineering team. Speed and agility is not on their side.

The long and the short of it is we want your help, your ideas, and your input in order to make using Meta investment tools easier, interactive and more fun! Submissions are welcomed in any format you can imagine so long as we can understand them - got a flow chart of the user experience with support? Great!  Have a great idea for a storyboard or UI Design? Wonderful! Want to write an essay describing the experience and how it should work? That works! Want to link to half a dozen extremely technical and in-depth technical articles explaining how to execute your idea? Fantastic!

As a reminder you can submit anything you think highlights your idea clearly.

The sky's the limit! Good luck!