CRM App
Back Office Next Generation
The back office is where the Social Marketers get all of their information and tools to run their businesses.
To keep up with current trends and the needs of Modere's SMs, something new needed to be made and the technology reimagined to be more useful to the SMs.
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This is an ongoing project and not all details can currently be shared, but this is where we started!
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December 2022 - Present
Major Stakeholders
Modere
Social Marketers
Tools Used
Adobe XD, Microsoft Whiteboard, SwiftUI, Zoom, Survey Monkey
My Role
UX, UI, Usability, Remote UX Research, Competitive Analysis, Collaboration, Information Visualization
*This project was conducted with a team that included one other UX Designer, two app developers, and two sales representatives. Other specialists in the company were consulted during the course of the project. Credit for the following work is shared among all contributors involved.
Scope and Constraints
The first challenge was to figure out if this project was going to be an app, updating the existing website, or both. After considering time and budget restrictions with another big initiative going on, as well as the results of some user interviews, it was decided that it would be an app.
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Challenges included: the initial timeline, which was a year from discovery to launch, and that user interviews had never been done with a UX expert. Several stakeholders needed to be convinced of the value of having a UX expert conduct the interviews, as there was hesitation from past attempts that had failed.
Research
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User interviews / contextual inquiries with 8 SMs of varying ranks and years of experience.
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A survey sent out to 6 Elite SMs asking what tools they wish they had from their years of experience.
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A survey that reached 30 various SMs specifically inquiring about how they utilize reports.
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Competitive analysis of 7 other companies.
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A reports case study.
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Data gathered from Google Analytics.
Pain Points
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The SMs are all using third-party Customer Relationship Management (CRM) apps to communicate with their customers.
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Assets are scattered in multiple locations, so it's hard to find what they need.
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Reports don't have proper filtering, so they download them into Excel to manipulate the data.
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Visual design and features of the current website have usability issues.
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Onboarding process for new SMs is overly complicated.
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New SMs get quickly overwhelmed.
Affinity Diagram
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In order to make sense of all of the extensive data gathered from the interviews, competitive analysis, and surveys, an affinity diagram was made to map out our findings.
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This was done on a shared Microsoft Whiteboard with the team. The virtual sticky notes with individual observations were moved around into 8 different categories.
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CRM
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Asset Consolidation
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Bulletin Board
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Report Builder
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Visual and Existing Feature Updates
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Onboarding Process
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Gamification
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Social Influencers Innovation App
Finding The Core
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The scale of the project at this point was out of scope. This meant that the scope of the initial launch would need to be scaled down.
To do this the team met with consulting developers to carry out a Finding The Core exercise to determine what the minimum viable product (MVP) was for the project.
Utilizing the Affinity Diagram, the virtual sticky notes were sorted into essential features and stretch goals based on technical feedback.
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The stretch goals would be built in later iterations.
Reports
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As discovered during the user interviews and the reports survey, there is a lot to improve with the reports feature in the back office. It's still useful for many cases which is why it cannot be phased out with something like a Task Manager.
Providing the ability to customize the report data with a column selector and improved filter system should solve many of the issues that came up.
Google Analytics: Most commonly used reports
Prototypes
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To develop a prototype, the UX Designers worked directly with the App Developers. The UX Team worked in Adobe XD to sketch out the designs while the App Team developed a working prototype within Apple's SwiftUI software.
Every week the two teams would meet and discuss the progress made by both teams and consult each other on design functionality and technical feasibility.
Though the diverge and converge method of design development was a new technique to both teams, it was highly successful due to the rapid development afforded by the SwiftUI technology.
Outcomes
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We achieved our goals of:
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Conducting user research to gain a better understanding of the SMs
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Discovering insights on what can be improved in the back office technology
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Establishing a project scope with stakeholders
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Developing a feasible prototype to demo the possible app
Results
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This project has the potential to improve Modere's company revenue by increasing Social Marketer efficiency significantly.
This project is still ongoing and there are a lot more iterations, research, and building to do which will be updated at another time. I have learned a lot since the start of this project though and I wanted to list some of my take-aways so far.
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Looking back we would’ve:
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Begun explaining the need for user interviews in mid 2022
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Conducted user interviews in November 2022
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Had a better understanding of what the project would entail by doing the user interviews before the initial kickoff meeting in December
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Prompted leadership about the need to initiate the project sooner amidst their competing priorities which resulted in lengthy delays
