OCBC
Scaling Up Talent for Digital Product Development: Red Airship's Partnership with OCBC Bank
OCBC Bank, a multinational banking and financial services corporation based in Singapore, recognized the need to digitize their services to retain relevance with their current and future customers. They engaged Red Airship in 2016 for an experimental project to build a digital onboarding process for business accounts, which was successful. This project kickstarted a long-standing partnership between OCBC Bank and Red Airship. Since then, Red Airship has completed over 25 projects of varying complexity to support OCBC Bank's digital initiatives. One of the key focuses has been to support the scaling of their product development teams.
To meet the bank's immediate challenge of hiring the right talents and scaling up and down teams promptly, Red Airship recruited and onboarded designers and developers based locally and offshore. They also managed and trained the designers and developers so that they could focus on doing their best work for OCBC Bank while developing themselves simultaneously with the support of dedicated engineering managers.
Summary
OCBC Bank partnered with Red Airship in 2016 to begin their digitalization journey and build a digital onboarding process for business accounts, which kickstarted a long-standing partnership between the two companies.
Red Airship helped OCBC Bank overcome the challenge of finding and hiring the right talent by recruiting and onboarding designers and developers based locally and offshore to support OCBC Bank's digital initiatives and product development needs.
Through a flexible and collaborative approach, Red Airship has completed over 25 projects for OCBC Bank, including supplying multiple squads of developers and engineering managers to support squad integration, stabilisation and growth throughout the project. Red Airship also supports individual talents through one-on-one coaching and upskilling to develop their skills and ultimately add value to OCBC Bank.
I have always enjoyed working with Red Airship, the team always gives their 101%, from the project managers, designers and programmers. They take pride in their work and always put in their best efforts to deliver great work.
Challenges Faced
OCBC Bank faces challenges in hiring the right talents and scaling up product teams promptly due to a highly competitive talent pool in Singapore, where organizations within and outside the financial industry are also actively hiring. Some of the challenges faced by the bank include:
Finding a passionate, human-centric partner that cares about people's growth and producing sustainable, high-quality work.
Having the flexibility to scale up and down team members when needed to meet project priorities.
Hiring designers and developers with the right skillsets and team fit.
Solution by Red Airship
It is rare to find good quality resources that understand the client's culture and working style. Red Airship's years of experience collaborating with OCBC Bank and our long-term approach to developing high-quality designers and developers have put us in a unique position to solve OCBC Bank's immediate challenge to scale their product development needs.
Red Airship established a process with high standards to bring out the potential of individual talents to support OCBC Bank and other clients. Using Pareto's 80/20 principle, they focused on the vital 20% in all process aspects, from identifying, hiring, training, onboarding, and developing each talent. In addition, they supported OCBC with smaller-sized but high-quality squads that generated more impact.
Red Airship was able to hire, train, onboard, and integrate designers and developers efficiently to fill the immediate gap. After onboarding the designers and developers, they continue to support these individuals through one-on-one coaching to develop their skills and contribute to their work with OCBC Bank. They have dedicated engineering managers who monitor and help developers upskill and progress, ultimately adding value to the client. This setup triggers a positive upward cycle for the client and the talent.
Today, we collaborate with OCBC Bank's teams either on a resource or project basis to deliver their digital initiatives in a most efficient and effective manner.
