At Edward Jones, we help clients achieve their serious, long-term financial goals by understanding their needs and implementing tailored solutions. To ensure a personal client experience, we have located our 14,000+ branch offices where our more than 7 million clients live and work.
A typical branch office has one financial advisor who meets with clients face-to-face and one branch office administrator who enhances the team's ability to build deep relationships with clients. Headquarters associates in St. Louis and Tempe provide support and expertise to help U.S. and Canada branch teams deliver an ideal client experience. Edward Jones currently has more branch offices than any other financial services firm, and we continue to grow to meet the needs of long-term individual investors.
The Sr Research Strategist will serve as a resource and subject matter expert on branch experience to every area of the firm. This role seeks strategic opportunities for integration of existing branch insights as well as identification of areas where new branch insights are needed. The role will be focused on Branch Experience Strategy.
Key Responsibilities:
Shape the vision – Define the future-state vision of the Edward Jones branch experience(s), understanding the needs of branches (Financial Advisors and Branch Office Administrators) and the competitive landscape.
Lead experience innovation and differentiation - Evaluate the branch journey to determine unmet needs and identify opportunities to improve the branch experience across touchpoints.
Using experience maps:
Work with the Client Experience Team to understand the branch journey (existing and desired) to identify the products, services, experiences, as well as the people, process, and technology required to deliver upon the needs of our branches and clients.
Work with the Associate Experience Team to understand the branch journey (existing and desired) to identify the touchpoints to deliver on the needs of our branches from Recruitment to Retirement.
Through a test and learn approach, provide strategic opportunities for design and deliver tangible experiences to enhance the overall branch experience.
Create business cases – Lead strategic process to define business case (including objectives, goals and outcome metrics) to drive both business and branch outcomes.
Provide strategic direction – Guide firm leadership and business areas to ensure the voice of the branch is incorporated in decisions, positioning and execution of strategic plans. Serve as expert across the experience.
Drive the consistent interpretation and delivery of ideal branch experiences –
Continue to instill/reinforce our branch focus (current and potential) and align the organization around delivering exceptional experiences, for branches and clients.
Identify and scale the capabilities that enable a hyper-personalized and consistent experience.
Champion the voice of the branch – Drive a deep understanding of branches and champion the "voice of the branch" to senior leaders to inform overarching business strategy decisions, driving insights through feature, pricing, messaging and marketing decisions. Communicate insights to business partners and enable them to drive action by providing thought leadership on how such insights impact their overall business objectives.
Influence change – Create excitement around transforming Edward Jones's branch experiences. Drive change management with teams to activate new ideas and possibilities for our branches/ prospective financial advisors and Branch Office Administrators.
Interpret data and metrics – Synthesize highly complex data and insights from different sources to develop strategic conclusions, determine success metrics and optimizations for future initiatives. Accountable to established KPIs and business outcomes.
Position Requirements:
Bachelor's degree in Marketing, Business or related study required. MBA or Masters' strongly preferred.
10+ years' experience demonstrating increasing levels of responsibility, leadership and strategic marketing or planning; or experience marketing in the financial services industry, demonstrating increasing levels of responsibility.
Understanding of how to build, leverage and operationalize experience frameworks (i.e., journey maps, trend application)
Familiarity with design thinking and application to experience strategy and design.
Firmly maintains the branch point of view in situations with multiple stakeholders and opinions
Broad knowledge of marketing disciplines and ability to maximize knowledge and experience to accomplish the required outcome
Thorough knowledge of Edward Jones' branding objectives and positioning strategy compared to our competitors
Knowledge of the features and benefits of the products and services available at Edward Jones and those available in the industry
