Lessons from Pilot Testing Financial Services: The Experience of MicroSave
MicroSave's Briefing Note No. 24 presents key lessons from MicroSave's experience in pilot testing new financial services and products with its Action Research Partners (ARPs).
The pilot testing process, as defined by MicroSave, has ten distinct steps. They are:
- Composing the pilot test team;
- Developing testing protocol;
- Defining objectives;
- Preparing all systems and reducing delays;
- Modeling the financial projections;
- Documenting product definitions and procedures;
- Training relevant staff in the features of the new product, customer service and marketing;
- Perfecting product marketing;
- Reviewing adequacy of preparations before pilot tests;
- Building evaluation of the test on regular monitoring and adjustments.
The Note discusses the impact of pilot testing on the ARPs, and states that they developed core competencies and transitioned to customer-centric organizations. Pilot testing reduced costs of making mistakes. Challenges for single product MFIs ranged from lack of experience in product development to changing to a customer-focused, market-led approach. Finally, pilot testing can be truncated or omitted in cases when technical expertise is purchased to implement the product, when the product is low risk or when it is a refined version of an existing product.
