OBJECTIVE

The team was approached by a prominent financial company to re-design their internal sales tool.  This company prides themselves on an aggressive sales team who needs to be able to get through calls fast, understand their customers needs and close deals.  They emphasized that usability and design were the two most important aspects of this project. If we could create something that boosted sales and had a refreshed UI, the client would be very happy.

RESEARCH​

 We dove right in to understand exactly what their needs were and what frustrations they had with the current system.

We began with some research, including:
  • Interviews.  The team scheduled and conducted a series of (10) formal interviews with staff from the Executive, Sales, Documentation, and Finance departments. Each interview lasted about an hour, concluding with an insights debrief to validate our observations and notes during the interview.
  • ​Artifact Analysis. As permitted, we collected materials during our interviews including emails, screenshots, forms/checklists and other documents to provide us context and better understanding of day-to-day operations.
  • Observations. Post interviews, we conducted additional observations focusing on the Sales floor to understand the hierarchy of tasks.
  • Surveys. We sent a SurveyMonkey to all current users to collect additional quantifiable and subject feedback.

The Organization

To better understand the user, we needed to know who was ACTUALLY using the current software. We broke it down to these stakeholders.

Personas
From our extensive interview process, we created personas for all of the stakeholders - including what they liked, disliked and overall values.

Pain Point Breakdown

DESIGN

Now that we had a better understanding of the users needs, we began the design phase. We jumped in with some initial sketches, grey comps and wireframes and then moved onto 'look-and-feel'.  When the stakeholders were asked to describe themselves they chose words like 'Top-End', 'Successful', 'Innovative' and 'Powerhouse'.  

Three designers presented possible design directions to the CEO.  After review, the company decided to go with my design - ultimately winning the deal to complete the web app.

Dashboards
The client was looking for a complete facelift and re-haul of their current system.  They emphasized that the design elements were extremely important, as they really value how their brand is represented and were looking for something 'flashy'.  Here are a few examples of the old vs new designs.
Old Dashboard
In our research we found the need for two separate dashboards depending on the user. I decided to do a split-screen design to minimize scrolling and clicking (time is of the essence here).  

We designed a 'Sales User' specific dash with emphasis on:
  • Calls (length, notes, signing)
  • Deals
  • Current Progress
  • Tasks 
  • Navigation to other secondary activities
New Sales User Dashboard
We also designed an 'Executive User' Dashboard - for the managers and supervisors.  This included:
  • Overall Team health
  • Specific Company Analytics
  • The ability to drill down to a specific employee
New Executive User Dashboard

Submissions
The information displayed on the old Submissions page didn't reflect what the user wanted to see. It was also difficult to navigate. A few things we knew we needed to include were:
  • Outstanding Items. Add a column for Executives to add notes as they related to outstanding items. This should reduce the need to refer to Remington’s emails.
  • File Uploading. If in scope, rebuild the file uploading workflow. At a minimum, add the ability to access to the T drive from current system.
  • Status Updates. Add the ability for Documentation to update the statuses directly.
Old Submissions Page
New Submissions Page
The web app needed to be fully responsive, so I made sure that the design translated easily to phones and tablets.

Call Lists

Call lists were a huge aggravation to the client because it lacked ease of use and speed.  A few things we did to remedy this include:
  • Contacts. Add the ability to edit/archive contacts.             
  • Area Codes. Add the ability to look up area codes within current system.
  • Phone Number Formatting. Sanitize phone numbers before passing to the backend; this would allow for cutting and pasting.
  • Criteria. Add the ability for Users to select additional criteria.
  • Push Notifications. Add the ability for the system to display notifications based on call-specific performance.
  • Follow Up. Add the ability to easily schedule follow ups.
Old Call List Page
New Call List Page
Overall, the client was extremely happy with the updated design and functionality.  We kept on track with this progress using weekly standup meetings, keeping the ability to pivot where needed.