Overview
Gather introduced the Agile method into TD Ameritrade’s marketing organization. The head of marketing innovation and technology at TD Ameritrade wanted to decrease cycle times to support the dynamic needs of their digital marketing efforts across the company by bringing the marketers closer to the customer’s need.
The Approach
Gather was engaged to help diagnose the systemic issues that were causing inefficiencies and process delays and assisted in finding and implementing solutions through product management values focused on outcomes for the user and business. Gather embedded as part of the working team from day-1. We built a program by focusing on marketing effectiveness, marketing productivity and associate engagement to infuse user experience into marketing at TD Ameritrade. A different work environment was created by forming dedicated, small, empowered teams who have everything they need to do their work – including the authority to make decisions themselves.
The Impact
Gather piloted 2 teams to prove that these smaller dedicated teams can solve problems in the marketing organization in a speed and manner they were incapable of before. In order to develop the teams, Gather worked closely with TD Ameritrade internal leaders to figure out which groups of people would work well together. The teams were brought together for 1-2 weeks of onboarding designed and facilitated by Gather. Training sessions received a score of “excellent”. The pilot teams have been effective and employees on teams feel more empowered to do their jobs. These successes led the CMO to implement an Agile team roll-out within the entire marketing organization. Gather was further engaged to help build a plan for scaling this project to over 10 teams in 2020.