BACKGROUND:
Previous to this tool, the business was run via small group communications, meetings where large spreadsheets were exchanged and/or an informal process of intelligence gathering.  The lack of a fully utilized, global pipeline tool limited transparency and the ability for management to make informed decisions. Divisional and Global Managers had very little visibility to regional pipelines and depended heavily on phone calls and rudimentary Microsoft Excel spreadsheets to stay in the know.

This process hampered timely review of opportunities and visibility into deal progression. With no centralized location in which to store this information, there was no holistic global view from which trends could be seen, no repository for dead-deals (i.e., those deals pursued but not won) or comparable market transactions, all of which inhibited strategic decision-making and organizational effectiveness. In addition, reports were often error-prone and forecast abilities were severely hampered.

TIMELINE:
12 months for a functional ‘minimum viable product’ (MVP)
• 5 mo: design and validate
• 6 months: build

• GOALS:
  • Create a tool to gather the info from the agents in the field and surface it in an ‘always up to date’ digital platform (spreadsheet –> digital tool)
  • Make the Capital Deployment Pipeline (process & data) transparent to the business
    • Added business goal: Enable strategic decision-making and organizational effectiveness
    • Added user goal: Make a tool by and for the field (user-centered)
    • Added evaluation: UX process in this company

OUTCOME:
We succeeded in making a tool by and for the field in less than 6 months that afforded the transparency the executives needed along with the ease of use the field needed.

• Discover
  • Interviews, content audits, whiteboard/design sessions
  • Planning, communication
• Design
  • Visual + Interaction Design
  • Sketch –> Interactive Prototype –>MVP (through ethnographic user testing)
  • Pivot: custom design –> Salesforce (Lightning)
• Evaluate
  • Videos
  • Validation: user acceptance testing, surveys
• Extend + Iterate:
  • Enterprise assets (help system, quickstart), Pattern Library
  • Extend functionality, dashboards
• Lesson:
  • Global designs are complex and nuanced
  • User-centered design is win-win: everyone is happy to have contributed and delighted by the outcome
  • Digital transformation in one area changes a whole company

Other activities: Business Plan, Business Technology Investment Memo, stakeholder design exercises + meetings, vision + strategy presentations, user stories, Agile methodology, change management, executive check-in (3 wks), constantly changing priorities, education of the business, development: user stories, acceptance criteria, guerilla QA, plan for user testing, plan for rollout (change management)

NOTE: this process looks linear in this write-up – in fact, we were designing, prototyping, validating and iterating while the development team was coding a previously validated design. In reality, though the design was started first, the building of the CDP Pipeline tool was done overlapping dev with design activities.