eMASTERS

A Customized CRM application that allows sales teams to keep track of contacts and schedule tasks in order to achieve targets seamlessly

This custom-built internal CRM application is designed to help increase the effectiveness and success of network marketing. The Cloud-based Hybrid platform provides agents with a suite of tools to earn leads, manage contacts, and engage with prospects in real-time thus allowing them to exceed their targets.

MY ROLE

Lead and solo Designer – Discovery, user research, design and prototyping, Usability/Functionality Testing

YEAR

2020 - Current

TOOLS

Adobe XD, Invision, Sketch, Adobe Photoshop

PROBLEM

A need for an ideal solution to help and motivate the sales managers or owners of small to medium businesses target the ideal audience to help in Lead generation/Conversion and increase the engagement by a set of custom targeting options.

To generate a lead, the Sales Manager has to undergo a hassle of reaching out leads, organizing the contacts into possible prospects, setting up appointments with the prospects to increase the engagement, targeting a particular set of prospects to convert them to leads, Learn about effective strategies to increase the conversion rate, Manage and track campaigns and also be motivated to attain sales targets.

It was essential to develop a one-stop CRM solution that was an amalgamation of tools and management strategies for Sales Managers to find qualified leads and track sales, which in turn would help them make progress.

Features
of the
Application

Dashboard

Full visibility of Daily progress

We wanted the managers to get a glance at the daily tasks, goals, and contacts to resolve on a clean, visual dashboard with the ability to filter data to scale relevant data and also see correlations between different goal entities to drive the success rate.

Visualization of goal progress

Daily tasks and reminders

Resolution of a contact

Trends for targets achieved and performance metrics

Co-relation between different trends which keeps the user informed

Leads Resolution and organization of the growing Database

Contacts

With Contact Management capabilities, the target user can stay on the top of the sales pipeline by importing contacts, segmenting and resolving qualified leads, adding notes and managing interactions with the contact.

Import from phonebook or .csv

Classify the contacts based on criteria

Add notes to a contact

Schedule individual or group appointments

Send campaigns to contacts

Categorize contacts as sets

Simple and extended view of the contact list

Create/Edit/Delete a profile and mark it as a potential lead

Hit sales targets with measurable results

Goals

The provision of an actionable environment for Sales Managers, such as helping them set time-bound targets and track their progress, helps them with increased communication, team alignment and encourages engagement around tangible goals.

The actionable targets are set for 90-days

The achieved targets are tracked daily as short term goals over days

Visualization of trends on set goals and achieved targets

Notifications when a user over-exceeds the targets or falls below the line

Performance threshold visualization to bring a distracted user on track

Boost the engagement score of a contact

Campaigns

This module allows the target user to create, edit and send email or text marketing campaigns. There is also a provision to choose from a wide array of pre-designed templates making it flexible to engage contacts and grow sales in no time.

Assign a specific campaign to a contact

Pre-defined templates to save time and efforts

Create/Edit text and email campaigns

Schedule a campaign

Activate and deactivate the campaign at any time

All to-do’s at a single spot

Calendar

Task Manager helps view, track, manage, and assign tasks/events to a contact which in turn streamlines the conversion rate of a prospect. It is a personalized command centre with all the tasks, meetings and contact details in one place that lets a manager focus on activities to scale the outreach.

View all appointments and events for a specific date

Schedule future appointments for a particular contact

Add notes for reference

Access the list of contacts who are involved in meetings for a particular day

Set reminders for a meeting to get notified

A learning management feature that provides the team members to advance to new heights in marketing. With access to links and videos in the Knowledge Base, users can learn from remote about new trends and strategies to immediately see growth.

An intuitive learning mechanism to increase the user's knowledge

Deliver training and measure impact

Evaluation of the user to measure capability

Access to learning resources to help train users better

Connect with the coach to set learning goals and ace the tests

Empowering team with Expert coaching

Roadmap to CFT

OUR VISION

Create a powerful yet non-overpowering hub of functionalities to aid the target users to connect with their audience in a seamless manner.

All under one roof.

Campaign Management

Contact Management

Learning Management

Task Management

Workflow Automation

Goal Achievement

Content management

The
Design Process

RESEARCH

Initially, we brainstormed the basic requirements after direct interview with the client. The target audience were a small community of sales agents. Our first entry point before design was to explore the available Sales CRM applications in the market. We also explored apps connected with Marketing which had the similar approach. We noted that few apps offered in-depth insight into different metrics and some apps were suited for large enterprises. Our intent was to design an application which touched bases with other CRM apps with respect to Contact, Task, content, campaign, Goal management but with emphasis on making the user equipped with knowledge to achieve the goal. Hence, we had to look into ways to add expert coaching experience to the app in addition to all the other features. So we explored few LMS applications to get an idea of a learning path as an added feature for an agent to move to a higher level.

We interviewed few agents who were the target users of the application about their daily journey into the sales process, the impact of features which they use on a daily basis, the pain points to shape the initial design.

User
Stories

We classified the user stories based on the top features we needed to include in the app

We segmented the features based on the business impact and cost. This helped us to structure the MVP for the first release.

Small/medium sized business owners

Life Insurance Agents

Sales Representatives

Network Marketers

Real Estate Professionals

Target
Users

Competitive
Analysis

We wanted to include the common aspects of the sales CRM such as managing contacts, tasks, campaigns and workflow automation.

In addition, we wanted to incorporate a coaching module to help the users to perform better in reaching targets

We wanted to introduce more analytics in the goals section to make the user aware of the time-bound goals and their performance

CONSTRAINTS

The MVP of the application is limited to high-level management functionalities with limited automation capabilities. Each release is intended to drill down the features into depth, offering more insights into individual trends, integrating 3rd party applications to connect better with the contacts, and refine the app better based on usability tests.

User Journey

Feature
Set

There was an extensive list of features and since we had a fixed deadline and technical constraints, the main challenge was to restrict the MVP to Major features.

The Feature impact matrix helped us to categorize the features based on the impact and business value. We documented the features to be developed for the subsequent releases

DESIGN

After fixing our requirements, the next process was to sketch the initial workflows and sample screens to get started. We used inVision to collaborate as a team to come up with workflows for each of the features. Out of all the possible feature paths, we had to tone down the major success path aligned with the MVP.

Once the initial sketches were done, We did a simple paper prototyping to figure out the branches which needed further research and sketching. We did rough testing of the feature flow and structured the IA of the application.

Different sketches were made for mobile, tablet, and Web platforms and we made sure the designs were consistent across all the platforms. The paper sketches were then translated to Med, high-fidelity wireframes.

Information Architecture

The Navigation menu was designed with freemium and paid versions into consideration. The freemium users are granted 30-days trial period to experiment with the app. However, Calendar and Campaign functionalities were exclusive to the premium users. The navigation for the freemium users reflected the core functionality of subscription in the tab bar while all the functionalities were visible to the paid users to quickly achieve the goal, hiding the subscription to the sub-navigation.

We used label navigation for third degree actions in contact, campaign, goals module to allow for refined user experience. Drawer navigation for second degree functionalities on the landing screen and tab-bar based navigation to access the main functionalities.

Moodboard &
Branding

SETTING THE COLOR TONE

Our team collaborated with the client to finalize the color for the branding. We chose the orange and blue palette in alignment with the brand vision - Optimism, motivation, creativity, socialization, trust, and loyalty. We were inspired by the orange in the logo and since the application was also designed for the dark mode, we felt that orange/blue would be a standout palette and appealing to the users

Wireframes

Contact Management Workflow

IN DEPTH ANALYSIS

Contact Manager is the first module we designed for eMASTERS. The main goal was to resolve a contact as a potential prospect and to aid the user with the conversion and ease of accessing the contacts.

Prototype

DEVELOPMENT, RELEASE & TESTING

Including group of contacts in scheduling appointments as a single unit

The ability to Invite a contact to FOS is to be placed on the Dashboard

Setting 90-Day tracker instead of weekly and monthly goals

Activating and deactivating campaign set once assigned to a contact

Ability to take individual notes without assigning a contact

Version 1 of the app was released on June 2021 for android, iOS and web platforms. The free version is available to the users for 30 days and then they have the option to upgrade the subscription. The application was developed for both light/dark mode. After the release, we did a usability study and also gathered data from the support tickets. Based on the feedback, we made the following changes to the sub-release

OUTCOME

This was a really exciting and fun project to work on. As my first project into the CRM space and as the lone designer, I had to spend quality time researching various CRM applications and derive design decisions for the workflow. This application is an amalgamation of various management modules which are individually separate structures. To construct workflow utilizing only the components necessary for the MVP was a challenge. The important takeaways from this project related to product and business processes

Adapting to changing requirements

New perspectives of the client, reprioritization of features, inclusion of new features after the requirements are finalized meant that the scope of the project was constantly changing. I had to adapt the existing designs to the new requirement without compromising on the quality of the design in a set timeframe

Restricting feature set based on timelines and budget

Since this product is the first of the kind combining heavy-weight modules, there was a colossal list of features and workflows to add to the scope. To develop a lightweight CRM application restricting the requirement set to MVP, keeping in mind the strict timelines and budget required strategic business and product thinking.

Communication is the key

The product journey required constant communication and efficient collaboration between clients, product managers, and the development team. There were instances where a small miscommunication extended the timeline of release but I learned that the art of effective communication saves time, effort and keeps the project on track.

Never compromise Good user experience

Even if there were strict technical constraints in the course of the project, I had the ability to fit the requirements according to proper design guidelines and fight for fulfilling user experience

ENHANCEMENTS

Few of the upcoming enhancements which our team is currently working on the lines of this project are

Calendar Integration

Robust calendar feature enhancement allowing the sync of emasters calendar with iCalendar, and the most common contact & calendaring apps such as google calendar, HubSpot, and Microsoft Outlook. It is a two-way process; when appointments are booked, the data is automatically synced so that all applications stay current in real time on both web and mobile platforms.

Trends with individual Goal Items

In-depth analysis of each of the individual goal item will allow the user to notice patterns and track the performance. The idea of Gamification integration into the goals module will help the user to self-motivate and achieve the goals faster.

Social Login – Single Sign on

Using existing login information from a social network provider like Facebook, Twitter, Google, Hubspot, Outlook, the user can sign into a third party website instead of creating a new emasters account. This in turn simplifies registration and logins for the end users.

Campaign Analytics

Different metrics will help to measure the effectiveness of the campaigns sent to the contacts. Effective measures and reporting strategies can positively impact conversion rates. Data backed analytics will help to make smarter campaign flows benefitting the marketing decisions.