Hero Summary
Digitising Estate Planning for Emerging Households translated a legal-heavy process into a guided WhatsApp workflow with structured data capture and document output.
The work combined business analysis, product definition, and system design to reduce friction and make the process easier to complete.
Impact Highlights
- Reframed estate planning from a legal task into a guided workflow.
- Connected user process design to realistic commercial options.
- Delivered a working prototype flow from intake to PDF output via email.
Business Context
Estate planning remains under-served for many emerging households in South Africa. The process is often seen as expensive, legal-heavy, and difficult to complete, which creates risk for families and leaves a clear gap in access.
Problem Statement
Potential users needed a simpler and more accessible way to create a will, while the business needed a delivery model that reduced friction, supported trust, and could connect to viable commercial pathways.
Analyst Objective
Understand where users were dropping off in the traditional process, define a simpler digital workflow, and shape a solution that balanced accessibility, operations, and commercial potential.
Stakeholders
- End users needed a guided process they could complete on mobile.
- Families and beneficiaries depended on completion accuracy and document validity.
- Legal or service operators needed structured information capture and clearer process control.
- Commercial partners or insurers would need a model that could support distribution and revenue.
My Role & Scope
- Owned discovery, problem framing, and stakeholder mapping.
- Defined operational workflow states and user journey logic.
- Mapped market assumptions and monetisation options.
- Specified solution architecture and delivery flow.
- Drove the prototype from business need into workflow and system behaviour.
Key Questions / Requirements
- Where did complexity or uncertainty stop users from completing the process?
- What minimum data needed to be captured for a valid and useful output?
- Which parts of the journey could be guided through a familiar channel like WhatsApp?
- How should the process handle validation, document generation, and final delivery?
- What commercial models could support access without making the service unaffordable?
Workflow / Process View
- User enters the WhatsApp flow and is guided through eligibility and information prompts.
- Structured responses are captured and validated before moving to the next step.
- Backend services transform captured information into a formatted will document.
- The final output is delivered through email for review, storage, and printing.
This turned an opaque legal task into a guided service flow with clearer stages, inputs, and outputs.
What We Designed
The team designed a WhatsApp-based will generation flow that captures user information through structured conversational prompts, validates inputs in backend services, and produces a printable PDF delivered via email. My focus was workflow definition, requirements structure, and end-to-end process logic.
KPI / Measurement Framework
- Business metrics: completion rate, cost to serve, partner or channel viability, conversion into paid or partnered pathways.
- Product metrics: start-to-completion rate, drop-off points, validation errors, document delivery success.
- Operational metrics: turnaround time, exception handling, data capture completeness.
These measures matter because the solution only works if users can complete it, operators can support it, and the model can work commercially.
Commercial & Market Thinking
- Market framing suggested a viable estate-cover segment within life insurance.
- Bottom-up estimates suggested meaningful monthly will demand in formal housing.
- Monetisation pathways considered: policy commission, executor subscriptions, white-label insurer partnerships, and B2B2C voucher models.
- Main tradeoff: consumer-only pricing improved access but limited standalone unit economics without ecosystem partners.
Insights
- The main barrier was not only awareness; it was process friction, cost sensitivity, and low confidence in completing a legal task correctly.
- WhatsApp was a strong fit because it reduced channel friction and matched familiar user behaviour.
- A guided workflow improved the chances of completion, but the commercial model likely depended on partnerships rather than direct consumer pricing alone.
Deliverables
- Business problem framing for digital estate planning access
- Stakeholder and user-journey mapping
- Requirements and workflow notes for guided intake and document generation
- Commercial model exploration
- Prototype concept and system architecture definition
Architecture & System Thinking
The architecture used a familiar channel, structured data capture, and controlled document generation. It separated conversation handling, validation, and output services so the process stayed easier to manage and trace.
Next Steps
- Test the flow with real users to see where they hesitate, drop off, or need more guidance.
- Define a practical legal and operational review process before rolling it out more widely.
- Explore insurer or partner-led distribution so the model is easier to sustain.
Supporting Documents
Appendix: Reconstructed Analyst Artifacts
These are short reconstructed extracts based on the case study work. They are included to show the kind of analyst documentation that would sit behind the project.
Business Requirements Summary
- Business goal: make will creation more accessible for emerging households through a lower-friction digital process.
- Problem to solve: the current process is costly, confusing, and difficult to complete without legal guidance.
- In scope: guided user intake, structured data capture, document generation, and digital delivery.
- Out of scope: full legal advisory services, manual case management, and complex estate dispute handling.
- Success measures: higher completion rates, lower drop-off, usable document output, and a model that can support partner-led distribution.
Product Requirements Summary
- The user must be able to complete the flow on WhatsApp without switching to a complex web form.
- The flow must guide users step by step and reduce uncertainty about what information is needed.
- The product must validate key inputs before moving users forward.
- The final output must produce a clear document that can be emailed, stored, and printed.
- The journey must be simple enough for first-time users who are not familiar with estate planning language.
Technical Requirements Summary
- WhatsApp interaction layer for guided input capture.
- Backend validation rules for required fields, formatting, and stage progression.
- Document-generation service to create a structured PDF output.
- Email delivery step for final document distribution.
- Logging and traceability so failed or incomplete journeys can be reviewed.