Executive summary

THE ASK
Provide Act! CRM customers with a mobile app to help them stay connected to customers and potential customers while out of the office and on the road. Additionally, this initative will help with new customer acquisition as we do the slow work of upgrading the older technology and interfce of our legacy SaSS.

I was the solo designer on this effort, working with product management to deterrmine the use cases/specific functionality we would want to incoroporate into a mobile application. We also planned for a phased development approach, with a pilot launching in December 2023, with a global MVP release to follow in Q1 2024.

Research

After defining use cases around contact managment, relationship management, personal assistant, and sales calls assistance, my first step was to do a competitive analysis of other CRM mobile application. I did a Strength, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats (SWOT) analysis of Salesforce, Hubspot, Keap and Zoho. I determined that our competitiors leaned toward having most/all/a LOT of SaSS functionality in their mobile apps, making them hard to navigate and quickly get to task I needed to accomplish. Definitely they were cumbersome to use one-handed or while distracted, as our phones often leave us. This led me down a path to make sure we were able to provide shortcuts and the bare necessities of what a user would need to accomplish on the road.

Next I held customer interviews with 4 current SaSS clients who also use the Act! Companion mobile app, which will be sunset as soon as the new mobile app is up and running. I interviewed these customers to understand the data they needed while on the road versus what they preferred to do in the office. Their day-to-day experiences while on the road (Are they trying to get work done while stuck in traffic? Do they want to be able to plot out a course of all customers/potential customers in the area to make the most of their time? Would it help to get proactive reminders about customers based on location? Important dates?)

The result of these interviews led us to start work on a proximity search and a small workflow engine to set reminders or automatically send emails. For example, if it's a contact's contract renewal date is a month away, automatically send an email with discount if they renew now. The work involved here, however, quickly led me down the path of making sure we broke this project into phases or we wouldn't get anything to market early in 2024. Our pilot would include the basics, view/add/edit contacts and view/add/edit calendar events, all while keeping my database in sync.

Design

WIREFRAMES & PROTOTYPING
From there, I started on wireframes and worked to put all the generative ideas I could think of to get discussions started internally, as well as created a prototype from the wires to validate ideas and navigation ease of use.

First iteration of wireframes

Second iteration of wireframes

I tested the prototype with 10 people which proved to be invaluable. I quickly discovered that bottom navigation was preferred over a side drawer navigation element, as well as quick actions and short cuts to quickly get to the information needed. Being able to customize the information I could get see/utilize would also go a long way to keeping the app easy to use and clutter free. Users only wanted those data fields and elements they use over and over again and any complicated or less frequently used items could wait until they were back on their laptops/desktops.

VISUAL & INTERACTION DESIGN
After initial testing, I designed the final visual look and feel for our defined pilot. As we build this out in testing, I'm using TestFlight to gather quick feedback for iteration with internal and partner users.

A selection of high-fidelity mockups