SaaS Business Intelligence
3rd party Navigation integration - UX Design & Prototype
Duration: February 2022 - February 2023
Platform: SaaS PRM
Team/Role: UX Designer on an interdisciplinary team of 14
Impartner's new business intelligence product will change the face of Channel Partner Ecosystems
Impartner Software provides a channel management platform for companies to accelerate indirect sales. Impartner's platform helps companies recruit, onboard, enable and pay partners to sell their products and services.
Channel Intel + is Impartner's market intelligence tool that provides channel partners with data-driven insights to improve channel sales and marketing strategies. It helps companies comprehensively view their partner ecosystem by aggregating data from multiple systems to provide analytics on partner engagement, pipeline activity, revenue contribution, and more.
Impartner.com homepage
2020 product launch low adoption rates created the need for a complete rebuild from scratch
Impartner launched a new Channel Intel + in 2020 with low adoption and high customer service calls. The inconsistent data on dashboards and difficulty pulling reports created a lack of confidence in the data.
Desired High-level Outcomes
The goal of a relaunch: 95% adoption rate
1. Easy to decipher standard dashboards OTB
2. Enable self-service custom dashboards OTB
3. Allow sharing & exporting all dashboards OTB
My Role
I worked as the UX designer for the Channel Intel team, conducting research and creating personas, user flows, wireframes, and high-fidelity hand-offs.
I worked with an interdisciplinary team of 14, collaborating with the Product Manager, Data Modeler, & Lead Developer on designs. Conducted testing and iterating on findings, working with our front-end development team in Columbia to maintain consistency.
Our Journey
Expanding the audience from 1 to 4 Key Users clarified the need for sharing and exporting custom dashboards
Starting out, our Lead Dev pulled double duty as our PM. The UX team has a single user persona, the Partner Relationship Management (PRM) Admin. I recognized a gap in the knowledge of our users. I determined we needed to interview customers who needed business Intelligence.
Working with Impartner's Head of research, I conducted extensive customer research. The results expanded our user personas.
1. Channel Account Managers (CAMs)
2. Channel Success Managers (CSMs)
3. Partner Relationship Management (PRM) Admins
4. Executives
Identifying challenges in the PRM development environment constrains navigation options
Like most projects, we needed more time and resources. Our dev team members work remotely and are in Columbia and Europe, adding the element of working across time zones and cultural holidays.
Additionally, the PRM Ecosystem is built on Metronic code. Our development team would need to create a micro-frontend to add new functionality. This constraint eliminated the ability to add functionality into the current navigation.
Mapping the users' journey allowed grouping and prioritization of their needs
During contextual interviews with CSMs, we observed significant skepticism toward the data.
"See these two graphs they appear to be showing the same info, but the numbers are different. So which one is right?"
- Oliver CSM
"Finding the data to help me do it (assess my partners) is usually near impossible unless somebody's passing it down to you" - Leland CAM
Recognizing the need to identify any potential problems I might have overlooked based on the research results, I worked with my new PM and Dev Lead in a workshoping session. We conducted a mapping activity to determine our CSMs' journey in acquiring reports from our system, looking for patterns. The patterns showed a priority in creating & sharing dashboards.
Designing required integration of 3rd party software navigation into our PRM platform navigation
Considering the development constraints and user needs, I converted my sketches into a clickthrough wireframe prototype, which allowed my PM and me to receive feedback quickly and move through iterations faster. We conducted internal testing and eliminated ideas that were not feasible due to coding constraints. After finalizing the optimal flow, I created a high-fidelity design for our development team to implement.
The Hand-off: Delivering annotated designs to the development team in Columbia
Our team's front-end developers are excellent. While the different time zones could have been a challenge, collaborating over Microsoft Teams video meetings kept our schedules straight. Unfortunately, my Spanish is nowhere near as good as their English, and I am grateful for their willingness to help me understand what they needed from me regarding the design documentation.
I provided them with my Figma files and annotated design images on our shared Confluence pages.
Insights
Collaborating as a team encouraged a shared knowledge base and common lexicon
I am grateful for the opportunity of working with the Channel Intel team. I had the privilege of collaborating with incredible people, including developers, quality assurance, data analysts, data modelers, and an excellent product manager. In addition, this partnership develops a shared understanding of product needs and constraints inherent in integrating new code into an existing system.
Working from the ground up, we learned from each other through open communication and information sharing. As a result, we gained a shared understanding of the concepts, processes, and terminology required to build a groundbreaking channel intelligence product. I learned so much from everyone involved and feel lucky to have been part of this team!
Thanks for reading! I’d love to hear your thoughts. Feedback and critiques are always welcome. Connect here or if you are interested in collaborating or just a brainstorming session reach out to me at TressaHopkinson@gmail.com!
All my Best,
- Tressa