Background
The current Sales Representative app is a desktop based application used by the sales representatives to create a new order, generate quotes, re-order old quotes, customize new and saved quotes. These sales reps frequently connect with their clients in the restaurant and catering industry to know their new demands for equipments and supplies, replacing old machinery, tools, furniture and cutlery with new updated ones. They are very inquisitive about their clients new needs and requirements and help them placing new orders for products and equipments.
Existing Desktop Application
The Double-Diamond Design Process
The Challenge
In order to perform their tasks, the sales reps need to carry a large folder of product flyers and catalogues at the client site. They present the product catalogues and other documents to the clients to help them decide their new orders. Once the client confirms the new order, the sales reps generate a new quote which, after the clients acceptance becomes a new order placed and then the items of that new order moves out from the warehouse to the client site.
Previously these sales reps would carry these folders and laptops at their client site which was a big hassle. Also the database was never really updated on a regular basis so any gap in the clients needs and the availability in the warehouse had to be negotiated by the sales reps. Such instances do cost of lot of time and money to the business along with losing the client altogether.
The Solution
Sales Central App: An iPad based sales application.
To improvise the sales agents ways of performing their regular tasks, I was clear that the desktop based app needs to be transformed into a mobile platform. Making an improvised iPad version will allow sales reps to carry just an iPad with them to the client site instead of the multiple folders of brochures, quotes and and bunch of miscellaneous documents. An updated database of the inventory helps the sales reps propose and quote accurate quotations to their clients at their own facility itself saving a lot of time and money.
After conducting an initial discovery phase with all the stakeholders and with the relevant target audiences, multiple key observations led to the definition and realization phase from a functional and technological perspective. The goal of this initial research was to get a good feel of the sales context, the expectations of the sales reps and the technological constraints. This included meeting with experts and technical workshops, numerous interviews and online surveys with the sales reps.
Several observations resulted from this research phase, The three main ones are summarized below:
The sales reps lifestyle is greatly impacted by how the current application works.
Sales reps live a stressful environment, and managing their data can be source of anxiety when their focus should be on giving competitive prices and quotes for their clients.
The sales reps main expectation from the new app is to be more functional and easy to use reducing many redundancies of the current app.
Vision
An ambitious but realistic project: designing a new up from the ground up that changes the decade’s old way of doing business in the restaurant and catering industry that performs more efficiently than ever before.
Change the core functionality of the sales application
Improve the processes of creating a new order and a new quote based on old and new products.
Provide a constant updated database of the warehouses from where the sales reps source their products for their clients.
After identifying opportunities to solve these different issues, the app’s mission within the existing digital ecosystem become clear. Th app had to make life easier for the sales reps on a daily basis while providing them with a constantly updated back end database. In other words the app must remove the stress of having old data in order to allow the sales reps focus on orders and quotes. This had to take the form of an app that was obviously easy to use and accessible at multiple levels while going beyond the constraints of code. The application also had to be smart. That means it’s got to have notifications on current open orders and quotes must be provided within a short period of time. Thus the primary mission for the app would also include anticipating and eliminating stressful situations.
From an experience point of view this translates to:
* Optimized user journeys to improve the usability aspect.
* Reducing the users stress by leveraging the previous data and updated database.
* A clean and simple looking interface that makes the users tasks much easier and change the perception of the industry.
Design Choices
The design decisions were formulated around two main questions:
How can we make the app more easy to use in order to make the regular tasks more efficient along with generating more orders for the business.
How can we put the sales rep at the center of the experience while focusing on the primary goal of the design: simple, easy to use and functional.
By embracing a number of design choices, it was possible to conceptualize a new design that was easy to use and efficient in its tasks flows for the sales reps
Clean, white background and the addition of contrasting blue to make the interface more focused and contextual.
The creation of the new color palette to represent the whereabouts that must be provided, thus facilitating the user’s understanding and providing navigational landmarks. Each color was created for different statuses.