Edge come to us using clunky, cumbersome and outdated software that wasn't built to be used in the way they were. As a business of 10 years, they had a refined system, but no software to support it.
\We sat down with key stakeholders in the company to understand what the day-to-day looked like at Edge, identifying opportunities for improvements in productivity. In addition to the software not being suited to their use case, they also had daily stand-ups where they used a whiteboard to track their prospects and daily tasks. Lastly, senior management had very little visibility around productivity and timeframes for their business.
Once we understood the root of the problems Edge were facing, the solutions became clear. We needed interfaces for the day-to-day prospect and task tracking with a focus on visualising the workflow as best as possible for the morning standup, much improved reporting, and lastly to tie all this into a small CRM that suited exactly how the business ran.
The success in this project came down to good planning around information hierarchy and only showing the absolute key details on the daily planner screen – or it would be too cluttered and overwhelming. Providing the ability to quickly zoom in and view more details was also identified as an important piece of this project, but secondary to an overall snapshot.
With tailored reporting we were able to utilise available data to build exactly the reporting senior staff needed...
- Who's overloaded with work?
- Who takes the longest to complete tasks?
- What turnaround time can we offer prospects?
- What's the cost of a prospect acquisition in terms of time?
Per-prospect productivity increased and in turn, bottom line revenue. With senior stakeholders able to see in-depth and tailored reports they unlocked visibility of weaknesses in their workflow. By identifying bottlenecks they were able to make changes and shuffle staff around to suit different strengths – decreasing the time to complete a full-cycle prospect.
The most used screen of this project was the Tasks interface where the team would track and manage their prospects. They can see exactly what stages prospects are at, outstanding tasks for that week and who's assigned to them.
Used for daily stand-up meetings, the meeting lead used their iPad connected to a large TV to dive in and out of prospects and stages as the discussion progressed. Clicking a prospect pulled up their relevant info including notes around expected delivery of the task and what was happening behind the scenes.
A highly usable interface for a busy team.
In the time we spent with Edge and understanding their workflow, we identified they ran a 100% repeatable and regular workflow for all their prospects. That meant we could build the web app to automate the movement of prospects through the life-cycle.
When an SOA Check was done, we automatically move the card to the next stage to submit the Application to the financial authorities. Cards are never moved to the wrong area, and it's a small bit of automation the contributes to the overall streamlined feel of the app.
Administrators ultimately retained control over the workflow however, and could always adjust the system to adapt to anomalies like absent staff members or client no-shows.
With the Tasks view focusing on the daily workflow, we designed the Prospects tab as a way to search and filter through clients quickly - whereas the Tasks view is more focused around, well, tasks.
Edge use this view to pull up client information, so we provided the hand details at a glance, with more details information embedded in a quick popover modal - easy!
