Assignment Task

Project Management Plan (PMP)

This PMP will outline the processes to approach and successfully complete this project. The processes included will be things such as the Project Plan, Project Governance, Budget, and Management controls. This PMP defines how this project will be executed, monitored, and controlled. The review process of the document will be via stakeholder review. In this process, the document will be presented twice to the stakeholders with a final version being presented. After each review stage, the document will be updated with feedback from the stakeholders.

Executive Summary

The DRF provides NAB customers with $1,000 relief payments in the advent of a natural disaster. NAB has commissioned this report to explore solutions to improve the accessibility and awareness of the fund.

Introduction

Project Background

NAB has expressed concern over the accessibility and awareness of its DRF, a fund created to aid NAB customers affected by natural disasters in LGA’s where the Australian Federal Government has announced hardship payments. To address these concerns, a project to improve customer awareness and accessibility for the DRF has been proposed.

The solution is comprised of two main areas:

1. Raising awareness of the DRF.
2. Integrating DRF announcements into the NAB mobile banking app and desktop application – using customer’s addresses to target individuals who are impacted.
   • Automatically fills out personal info into the application form.
   • Get notifications out early (e.g., prior to fire season) so that people can fill out the pre-application form.
   • Using SMS campaigns to target affected customers.
3. Improving and streamlining the DRF application process – creating an application solution that:
   • Houses a questionnaire that determines eligibility.
   • Back-end application processing, involving automated fraud detection and application approval and flagging. Fraud detection options include:
     • Google reverse image search.
     • Insurance claim form if unable to take images or nominate (NAB partners with Allianz, can integrate with them).
     • Accessibility for those not in the area: residents can nominate someone to upload the image for them (resident adds email nominee on form, nominee is sent email asking to upload images, nominee uploads images).

Project Objectives

The awareness component will involve completing the following:

1. Building an AI application that will predict which NAB customers may be affected by a natural disaster.
2. Building in-app and web-based banners in the NAB banking application and banking website, targeting NAB customers in LGA’s where the federal government has announced hardship payments.
3. Creating the infrastructure for SMS campaigns directed at individuals in LGA’s where the federal government has announced disaster relief.

Awareness and Accessibility Project Management Plan Assignment

In 5 years, mobile phone use has increased by almost 10% in Australia, from 81% in 2017 to 90% in 2022 (Deloitte, 2022; Hughes, 2023). This high penetration of smartphones provides a vast majority of NAB customers with campaign coverage.

The accessibility component will involve completing the following:

1. An application solution that houses a questionnaire to check eligibility criteria, reverse image search, and automated application processing and flagging. The application will be comprised of components that require personal information, proof of address, and images of damage.

Project Definition

Project Scope

The project will utilise SMS campaigns and banner ads for awareness, and an integrated application solution for accessibility.

Items In-Scope

• Building AI application to predict NAB customers who may be affected by natural disasters.
• Building an application solution.
• Automating the application eligibility process.
• Building in-app and web-based banner ads for DRF awareness.
• SMS campaign infrastructure.

Items Out of Scope

• Changes to NAB branch locations.
• Email campaigns.

Meyer (2023) found that, on average, SMS campaigns have a 98% open rate, whereas email campaigns have a 24.38% open rate. Additionally, SMS campaigns had a 9.7% higher click rate and a conversion rate that was more than double that of email campaigns. This higher open, click, and conversion rate is ideal for the urgent nature of the DRF initiative. While email campaigns are out of scope for this initiative, development on email campaigns may be beneficial in the future. Anything involved with maintaining or updating the project once delivered.

Overview

Awareness component: informing customers of the DRF application. Integrating DRF notifications into the NAB mobile banking app and desktop app. Target customers in affected areas with SMS marketing campaigns informing them of the pre-application and post-application.

Roles and Responsibilities

NAB Corporate Affairs

NAB Ready Together Team: Responsible for administering $1,000 grants for customers affected by natural disasters. They will play a key role in overseeing project implementation and ensuring alignment with NAB`s objectives and strategies.

Technical Team: Responsible for integrating DRF announcements into the NAB Mobile Banking application, ensuring the application is highly accessible. Responsible for building the application which will save the personal information filled in by customers in advance and automatically fill it in during subsequent applications, simplifying the application process. Also responsible for developing the new AI application to predict affected customers.

Questionnaire Team: Responsible for designing the questionnaire that determines eligibility. Ensure the questionnaire is clear and accurately assesses applicants` qualifications and work closely with the technical team to integrate the questionnaire into the application process.

Government departments: Responsible for coordinating work in the event of a disaster and providing the technical team with the necessary data and assistance for prediction.

Insurance company: Responsible for working with the Fraud Detection Team to ensure the authenticity of each applicant`s insurance form information.

Local Meteorological Bureau: Responsible for providing real-time weather conditions to the AI application to ensure that AI can accurately notify customers who may be affected in advance.

Customers: Customers are encouraged to complete the pre-application and provide real application evidence after the disaster.

Description

The NAB technical team’s work includes integrating DRF notifications into NAB applications, urging customers to complete pre-applications and retaining information so that subsequent applications can be filled automatically.

Internally, the technical team also needs to ensure that the AI can provide accurate and timely notifications to customers and ensure the security of customers` private information and location information.

Externally, NAB personnel represented by the data analysis team need to coordinate with government departments, local meteorological bureaus, and customers to ensure the accuracy and timeliness of data.

Project Governance

The DRF program directed by the NAB Ready Team will have a well-structured project team hierarchy and decision-making process. The project committee will involve the leading representatives of the NAB Ready Together Team, NAB Foundation, and NAB Corporate Affairs who will decide the strategic goals and scope of the project and will oversee its implementation. Members of the community, customers, NAB colleagues, and emergency services will be consulted for collaborative decisions. Regular meetings and discussions will help the participation of all stakeholders. As a result, integrated approaches combining analytics and AI would be developed for emergency management purposes (NAB, 2020).

Decision Management

The decision-building framework should be transparent, ensuring the involvement of all stakeholders and integrated with the goals of the organization which is to support disaster relief intervention by NAB`s objectives (Johnson et al., 2020).

Quality Management

The project team will manage quality through the following plan:

Quality Planning

The project team will set clear quality objectives, such as ensuring the accuracy and efficiency of the DRF application process, increasing customer awareness through effective communication channels, and improving fraud detection mechanisms to prevent funds from being misused (Liu et al., 2023).

Customer engagement, NAB app notifications, and SMS campaigns can help improve the accuracy and efficiency of the DRF application by contacting every customer who lives in the red zone and encouraging them to complete the application ahead of time. NAB will notify customers via these channels about the natural disaster alert and lead them to fill out the DRF application. NAB will conduct data analysis and coordination with government departments to ensure that customers are notified in a timely manner. On the other hand, the NAB technical team will put in place fraud detection measures as well as track and update the customer communication channels on a regular basis.

Quality Assurance

The project team will establish clear quality assurance goals. First, the communication channel between NAB and its customers should be convenient, as this can improve the DRF process by involving customers through feedback and comments. This feedback will help solve problems and make the application process easier. This feedback will be discussed with the NAB Technical team, which oversees automating the application process. To ensure the quality of every process, NAB bank should hold weekly meetings with its team and other stakeholders.

Quality Control

Quality control activities include functional testing of the DRF application to ensure its effectiveness and reliability. This test ensures that the NAB bank app does not glitch while NAB is receiving a large volume of applications. To make the application fraud-free and ensure that deserving customers receive the grant as soon as possible, NAB will use Google reverse image search.

The project team will document the project cycle to identify areas that require correction. Feedback from stakeholders, including NAB customers, government agencies, and emergency services, will be demanded and included in project improvements. NAB will invest in training and capacity-building initiatives to ensure that project team members have the skills and knowledge required to effectively carry out quality control activities. This includes training in testing methodologies, quality assurance standards, and fraud detection techniques. Mitigation strategies will be used to address identified risks and reduce their impact on project quality. This may include implementing responses to data security breaches, technological failures, resource constraints, regulatory compliance issues, and external events (Liu et al., 2023).