How Lendi Group streamlined quarterly planning by centralizing 40+ teams from six tools to one Atlassian cloud platform

Challenge: Lendi Group, a fast-growing Australian fintech, wanted to transform quarterly planning by consolidating tooling, involving more teams, and making better use of their data.

Solution: The company centralized on Atlassian Cloud Premium and expanded their platform with Atlassian goals, Jira Product Discovery, Atlassian Analytics, and Jira Service Management.

Impact: Quarterly planning is now faster, easier, more collaborative, and more strategic — positioning Lendi Group to continue scaling and transforming the home loan industry.

Lendi Group 🤝 Atlassian: Two fast-growing Australian tech companies come together for transformation

In many industries, delivery speed can make or break a sale. The teams at Lendi Group, one of Australia’s fastest-growing fintechs, feel this pressure every day. Thousands of customers and 1,300+ brokers depend on the Group’s two brands, Lendi and Aussie, to get the financing they need to achieve their home ownership dreams. The process of getting a home loan is known for being slow and stressful. Lendi Group is on a mission to change that by transforming the process from the inside out. And they’re doing it with help from Atlassian.

On a quest to make quarterly planning more collaborative, streamlined, and strategic

With a growth mindset and agile practices, Lendi Group is always on the hunt to create, celebrate, and iterate. (In fact, those are some of the company’s core principles.) Their quarterly planning process – vital for helping teams stay aligned and make progress toward their goals – presented a new opportunity for improvement.

Historically, quarterly planning was a three-day event at Lendi involving up to 250 people. “Having so many people away from the business represented a significant investment,” says Senior Manager of Product Delivery Matt Hargreaves.

The first part of the event was spent talking about progress over the past quarter. While it was important to look back before moving forward, the team hoped to streamline this retrospective portion of the process so they could focus their time together on collaboration and future strategy. 

Lendi also wanted to bring more stakeholders into the fold and consolidate tooling. “We wanted to bring the whole organization – 40+ teams spanning all divisions of Lendi Group – into the process and centralize with one system,” Matt recalls. “Before, tech teams would get together and plan, but there was a lack of integration between our teams and tools, not enough alignment to the strategy, and no reporting. We also used six different tools, so we had to update things in multiple places and couldn’t see a consolidated view across teams.” 

Matt and the Product Delivery Team were tasked with solving these challenges. Fortunately, he had previous experience with Atlassian, as well as a vision for how to transform the quarterly planning process to be as fast and easy as Lendi Group’s own products. 

Go for the goal: Improving planning and tracking with Jira Plans and Atlassian goals

Lendi Group began by upgrading to Jira Premium to gain access to Jira Plans, enabling teams of teams to plan and track cross-functional work. Then, Product Delivery integrated Confluence and Jira so users could use Smart Links to pull data from one tool to another, such as linking Confluence documentation in a related Jira ticket or vice versa. This would not only save time and reduce tool-switching, but also provide rich context to help with decision-making.

The next step was to better align daily work with strategic OKRs. Since one of the goals of this initiative was to involve all teams in this process, not just tech teams, Matt posed a thoughtful question: “How can we simplify planning and make it easy for everyone to see goals, even if they aren’t familiar with Atlassian?”

For Lendi Group, the answer was Atlassian goals (formerly known as Atlas): a single source of truth to understand how the work of many teams contributes to business goals, and how they’re tracking over time. Matt recognized this feature could replace PowerPoint and improve visibility.

Within one week of Lendi Group’s CEO, David Hyman, meeting with Atlassian’s former co-CEO Scott Farquar to talk about goals, the company had rolled it out. “Goals changed the way we look at our strategy work and the ability to get regular updates,” Matt says. “Now we can focus on what’s at risk so we can get back on track.”

Centralized tools and streamlined processes turn planning from a pain to a pleasure

Today, Lendi Group’s quarterly planning process is faster, more collaborative, and more effective than ever before.

After the executive team sets organizational OKRs at the beginning of the fiscal year, teams set their related OKRs, enter them as goals, and make updates every two weeks. These updates trigger notifications in Slack, which leaders watch to stay aware of progress.

Lendi Group teams use Jira Plans to track projects and dependencies across multiple cross-functional departments, Jira to move work forward, Confluence to document and share knowledge, and Jira Service Management for incident management. Specialized teams also rely on other tools in the Atlassian cloud suite to power their work, such as Engineering’s use of Jira Product Discovery for brainstorming and roadmapping ideas based on broker feedback, and Delivery’s use of Atlassian Analytics to surface meaningful data and trends.

Since all teams track their goals and work in Atlassian, everyone can stay aligned on progress, focus on long-term objectives, and adjust in real time as needed. Keeping this source of truth current also means leaders are always aware of status and spend their quarterly planning sessions on strategic conversations instead. “Having one source of truth and a consolidated view of all work is huge. Our motto is, ‘It needs to be in Jira,’” says Matt. “I’m really proud of the way our business teams have evolved in becoming disciplined with ceremonies and understanding what their work aligns to.”

Then at the beginning of each quarter, Product Delivery kicks off the planning process. “Quarterly planning is much more efficient, and our audience gets more out of it,” Matt says.

The process starts with a strategy sync to review and adjust goals, discuss what’s going well, and address risks – all of which is much easier to do now that this information is more visible in Atlassian. Atlassian Analytics also makes it easy for the team to create advanced reports for leaders using AI as a low-code or no-code solution.

“We used to start our monthly steering committee meetings with a blank sheet and talk about progress,” Matt says. “Now the Atlassian toolset brings information forward so we can focus our time on challenging conversations and prioritization.”

Advice and attention from Advisory Services set the stage for success

As Lendi Group refined quarterly planning, they turned to Atlassian’s Advisory Services for strategic guidance and support. “Advisory Services has been amazing. It’s like having my own personal coach. I would have gotten to a certain point on my own, but I needed them,” says Product Delivery Automation Manager Terry Meissner. “When you work with somebody who is living and breathing these tools every day, and can speak to the technical and business side, it makes us all better.”

Beyond expertise, Terry and Matt’s team has appreciated having a direct line to a dedicated team. “The tools are one thing, but it’s more about the relationship,” Terry says. “It’s more personal than any other vendor. I get the attention I need and have access to amazing people.”

Since their successful first engagement, Advisory Services is working with Lendi Group on a new set of solutions and optimizations, including expanding their use of Jira Product Discovery instead of Productboard, switching from BMC Helix to Jira Service Management, implementing Assets for asset management, and integrating Atlassian Automation for greater efficiency. “I’m blown away by what we can do with Assets and Automation,” Terry says. “We will unlock massive productivity gains.”

“You’re not going to find a better ecosystem than Atlassian”

By improving their processes with help from trusted Atlassian advisors and bringing their teams together with an integrated System of Work, Lendi’s teams are ready to scale up and make their mark on Australia’s home loan market. “The game-changer for me is that all the tools talk to each other. We’re not context-switching to figure out where to go or how something works. The tools feel familiar, not as daunting as others,” Terry says. “You’re not going to find a better ecosystem than Atlassian.”