The Real Problem
Financial Services is one of IBM's most critical markets, serving our largest clients and contributing significantly to business performance. Despite the importance of account planning, opportunity discovery varied widely from account to account. The lack of a shared view across accounts limited visibility into common priorities, whitespace opportunities, and portfolio-wide trends.
Build a planning framework so good that teams would want to use it. One that aligned opportunities to client priorities, surfaced what was blocking progress, created clear ownership, and generated real pipeline. Consistently. At scale. Without adding a ton of overhead.
Who Was in the Room
This wasn't a small lift. Pulling this off meant coordinating across seven distinct stakeholder groups, all with different priorities, workflows, and definitions of "done."
The heart of it. They owned the accounts and drove the strategy in every session.
The builders. Brought technical depth and delivery credibility to every opportunity discussion.
The connectors. Kept product and customer realities grounded in every conversation.
The Constraints (They Were Real)
Year 1
- All Financial Services Accounts (52)
- A 2-month window to do it
Year 2
- Expanded to new IBM Financial Service accounts
- Completed in a single quarter
Across both years, the same underlying constraints applied:
- Account maturity levels all over the map
- Stakeholders scattered across geographies
- Strategic initiative data that was... let's say, a work in progress
- Teams already stretched thin, so adoption had to feel easy, not like another mandate
I Built It, Ran It, and Scaled It
What began as a single VP-level request evolved into a repeatable operating model adopted across IBM Financial Services, enabling 14 facilitators and generating interest from multiple markets looking to replicate the approach.
| What I Owned | How |
|---|---|
| Strategy Development & Methodology | Designed the entire approach, goals, and what success would actually look like |
| Program & Workshop Design | Built the Mural framework, facilitation guides, and every planning artifact teams used |
| Scale & Enablement | Personally onboarded 14 strategy designers and governed the whole rollout |
| Data Synthesis & Analytics | Turned raw session outputs into market-level intelligence leadership could act on |
| Stakeholder & Leadership Alignment | Shared with FSM leadership, but I drove the narrative |
The Shift That Changed Everything
Most account planning starts with products. What can we sell? What's in the pipeline? That was flipped entirely.
"Work Outside-In." Start every conversation with what the client is trying to accomplish: their strategy, their priorities, their definition of success. IBM's role comes second. Always.
That one reframe changed the whole dynamic. Instead of "Here's what IBM can offer," the conversation became "Here's what matters most to you, and here's exactly how we fit." Teams showed up differently. Clients engaged differently. Opportunities got better.
What I Was Building Toward
I wasn't just designing sessions. I was designing a system with four specific outcomes that I held myself accountable to from day one:
Every account leaving with accurate, complete Strategic Initiative records, with every opportunity tied directly to a client initiative. Get everyone on the same page as to what the client actually cares about.
A clear picture of what's stuck and why, so teams could act, not speculate.
Patterns across IBM Financial Services that no single team could see on their own, but that leadership absolutely needed.
Design the Workshop
I built a Mural-based workshop experience from scratch. Structured enough to produce consistent outputs, flexible enough that every account felt like it was built for them. It covered client initiatives, opportunity gaps, deployment ideas, blockers, and who owns what next. Simple on the surface. Powerful underneath.
Get Everyone Aligned Before the Room
Great sessions don't happen by accident. I worked with ATLs ahead of each session to define what they wanted to walk away with, who needed to be in the room, and what success looked like for their specific account. Prep made all the difference.
An incredibly efficient way for our team to develop relevant sales opportunities for Allstate
We not only ideated on new opportunities, we crafted a more refined approach to work with our client
The value/feasibility boards are really where it pulled us all together allowing us to focus on the low hanging fruit that is the most impactful to our clients.
Planning extremely helpful this year. It afforded me the opportunity to think critically about my client's stated priorities and peel back the layers to uncover more opportunities for IBM
A refreshing two-hour session that helped synthesize innovative and complex ideas into clear, actionable items to follow up on throughout the year
Besides identifying opportunities, helped seller and BTS to think beyond their products and portfolio and be creative with solution offerings
Scale Without Losing Quality
I couldn't personally run 50+ sessions, so I built a facilitation system that could. I onboarded 14 strategy designers, created guides they could actually use, and put governance in place to keep quality consistent across every account. The goal was to make facilitators great, not just capable.
Turn IBM Financial Services Into One Big Picture
After sessions wrapped, I built a tagging strategy across all opportunity data and mapped 60+ client initiatives into 8 macro themes. Suddenly, patterns that were invisible at the account level became clear signals at the market level, and leadership had intelligence they'd never had before.
Keep Getting Better
I ran retrospectives after key milestones: the first session, new program additions, and each quarter, with facilitators, account teams, and leadership. Not as a formality, but because I genuinely wanted to know what wasn't working. Every cycle, the model got sharper. That's the point.
The Numbers Speak for Themselves
What the leaders said:
"Katie, your Deployment Clinic Template was very effective with the CVS team in Public Market and we are now leveraging it for other accounts. Thank you for your guidance, leadership, and even attending where you can to provide your input. We appreciate you."
"I wanted to express my sincere thanks for the fantastic job you did on the technical account plan session for our FSM clients. Your infusion of design methodology to technical account planning was truly impressive. The positive feedback from our ATLs and extended account team members highlights your hard work and creativity."