In a competitive and rapidly evolving financial landscape, understanding member needs is vital to maintaining strong relationships and delivering meaningful value. Yet for many institutions, especially those with legacy processes, collecting structured member feedback can be surprisingly underdeveloped. This was the case at the Federal Home Loan Bank of Chicago (FHLBank Chicago), where — despite its extensive engagement with member institutions — the Bank had never before conducted a structured, enterprise-wide Annual Member Survey.
Recognizing the need for a formalized feedback mechanism, the Bank launched an initiative to design and implement its first-ever Annual Member Survey, leveraging Salesforce as the foundational platform. As the Lead Business Analyst, I was responsible for envisioning, architecting, and orchestrating this new capability from the ground up.
This initiative ultimately became a defining example of how strategic business analysis can create net-new organizational capability, not just improve existing processes.
The Challenge: Creating a Strategic Feedback Framework from Scratch
Unlike most process-automation projects, this effort did not begin with an existing workflow to analyze or improve. Instead, the Bank faced a unique challenge:
- No prior survey process existed
- No historical data or response structures were available to benchmark against
- No distribution, tracking, or reporting mechanisms had been established
- No governance model existed for how results should be consumed
- Stakeholders possessed varying assumptions about what the new survey should accomplish
This meant the project required not only systems expertise but also conceptual design, stakeholder alignment, and strategic framing.
My Role as Lead BA: Designing a New Enterprise Capability
The absence of an existing process meant that Business Analysis would shape the entire direction of the initiative. My responsibilities included defining the business problem, creating the process architecture, establishing data structures, and ensuring Salesforce could support a sustainable and scalable survey model.
1. Establishing the Vision and Framing the Purpose
Through interviews and collaborative workshops with Member Strategy, Sales, Analytics, and Leadership teams, I led discussions to answer foundational questions:
- What insights should the Bank gather annually?
- How should “member satisfaction” be defined in measurable terms?
- What KPIs would create genuine value for leadership?
- How should results be tied back to member institutions in Salesforce?
This work produced the Bank’s first Survey Vision and Strategy Framework, guiding all subsequent design decisions.
2. Building the End‑to‑End Survey Workflow in Salesforce
Because no prior workflow existed, I architected a brand‑new process designed around clarity, automation, and scalability:
- Designed the survey creation and distribution model
- Built logic for survey-to-member linking
- Defined the response-collection data structure
- Modeled the end‑to‑end visibility lifecycle, including assignment, participation, reminders, and results
- Ensured dashboards would give leadership real-time insights
The process not only captured survey responses but also embedded insights directly into the Bank’s member management ecosystem.
3. Translating Ambiguity Into Clear, Actionable Requirements
Given the lack of precedent, requirements had to be derived through deep analysis rather than comparison. I authored:
- Detailed user stories
- Acceptance criteria
- Process maps
- Data models
- Reporting definitions
This documentation became the foundational blueprint for developers, testers, and end-users — eliminating ambiguity and creating shared understanding.
4. Leading UAT and Validating a New Capability
Because the Bank had never conducted a survey like this, UAT required additional rigor:
- I designed test scripts covering every stage of the survey lifecycle
- Trained business stakeholders on how to test a process that was entirely new
- Triaged defects and clarified user expectations
- Ensured the system was intuitive and future-proofed
Through this, the Bank gained confidence not just in the technology, but in the process itself.
5. Supporting Rollout, Adoption, and Governance
Beyond system delivery, I worked closely with:
- Member Strategy teams to formalize interpretation of results
- Analytics teams to align on scoring and reporting methodologies
- Change management teams to ensure smooth onboarding
- Salesforce admins to embed long‑term maintainability
This ensured the survey became an annual, repeatable, institution-wide capability—not a one‑off project.
Conclusion: This project shows that Business Analysts are not just process improvers—they are capability creators.By clarifying needs, defining strategy, architecting processes, aligning teams, and ensuring quality, the BA function enabled FHLBank Chicago to establish a powerful new insight mechanism that will shape strategy for years to come.
The Annual Member Survey is now more than a project deliverable.
It is a permanent intelligence asset for the Bank — built on a foundation of Business Analysis leadership.