Redesign a Leading Automotive B2B Internal Tool
In compliance with the project's confidentiality under an NDA, specific details of the work undertaken cannot be disclosed. However, this case study will focus on the methodologies & approaches utilized during the project duration. To know more, please connect with me.
Overview
Client Insights Portal is a centralized web-based administrative portal that Audi and Volkswagen corporate use to manage operations, while their dealers across the USA and Canada utilize it to streamline sales, after-sales, reports, inventory, and customer service relationships. In essence, it's a one-stop shop for dealers to stay aligned with the corporate manufacturer's updates.
The Ask
With 633+ independent dealerships across USA and 145 in Canada. Audi of America saw the need to improve the collaboration between corporate manufacturer and independent dealerships by leveraging the dealer management tools, streamlining the customer experience and helping internal teams interact more effectively.
The Business Goal
Enhance the customer relationship management processes for dealers, including sales, marketing, and customer service.
Allow the internal CIP portal to adapt and grow without significant IT overhead.
Create a seamless collaboration and communication among sales teams, dealerships,
manufacturer, corporate admins, and customers.
Improve Analytics and Reporting and provide valuable insights into sales performance, customer behavior, and business trends.
Streamline workflows and processes within the portal to save time and reduce the effort required to perform routine tasks.
Establish and maintain consistent branding elements and guidelines across all content and user interfaces.
Discovery
Since the work conducted in this phase is protected by an NDA, I will only share some key points about the process and the work I undertook during my time on this project.
Quality User Testing of the Existing CIP, and User Interview.
My team and I started the project by conducting workshops and interviews with the corporate sales team, customer support, and dealership representatives to understand how they operate and to identify the problems they are facing. This process helped in formulating a feature set to address these needs..
This phase involved service mapping the entire ecosystem to gain a comprehensive understanding and identify unique use cases for the CIP portal. This process also provided insights into how various stakeholders would interact with each other on the platform.
The next step was to develop the product vision and strategy. This involved identifying features that aligned with the business goals and stakeholder's needs to ensure long-term alignment of design and development objectives.
Who are we designing for?
After gathering all the research and interview results, it became easier for us to define the various user personas who will interact with the portal. These personas represent the different roles within the Audi corporation and their dealerships employees, each with their own needs and expectations as shown below:
Responsibilities
Selling cars, managing customer relationships, tracking sales leads, and processing sales transactions.
Needs
Access to customer data, inventory information, sales performance metrics, and tools for managing appointments and follow-ups.
Responsibilities
Overseeing the sales team, setting sales targets, monitoring performance, and ensuring customer satisfaction.
Needs
Dashboards for sales performance, lead management tools, inventory insights, and sales process optimization features.
Responsibilities
Managing service appointments, customer communications, and repair orders.
Needs
Scheduling tools, access to vehicle service history, parts inventory, and customer communication features.
Responsibilities
Overall dealership performance, strategic decision-making, and financial oversight.
Needs
Comprehensive dashboards with (KPIs), financial reports, inventory summaries, and sales performance metrics.
Responsibilities
Handling financing options, insurance sales, and regulatory compliance.
Needs
Tools for managing finance applications, credit checks, insurance options, and compliance tracking.
Responsibilities
Creating and managing marketing campaigns, tracking leads, and analyzing marketing performance.
Needs
Marketing automation tools, lead generation and tracking, campaign performance analytics, and customer segmentation data.
Responsibilities
Managing vehicle inventory, tracking vehicle locations, and overseeing vehicle logistics.
Needs
Inventory tracking tools, supplier and logistics management systems, and reporting dashboards.
Responsibilities
Managing the parts inventory, ordering new parts, and ensuring the availability of parts for service and repairs.
Needs
Inventory management tools, supplier ordering systems, and parts usage tracking.
Responsibilities
Maintaining the portal, Monitoring dealership activities, ensuring data security, and supporting dealership technology needs.
Needs
System administration tools, security monitoring, user management features, and technical support resources.
Interview Key Insights
- Every department has a separate Portal login page.
- It takes many steps for users to connect to a specific department portal.
- Users take time to achieve a single task as they use external tools.
- Users (employees) use sticky notes to write down their notes.
- Users cannot edit a single data, they have to go back to the whole data source and make the edit.
- it is hard for user to understand the data dashboard as they is no labeling over the displayed charts.
- Users cannot save their last activity.
Current State Assessment
We reviewed the current portal flow from different user perspective, and applied Nielson's 10 Heuristics to identify specific issues that could affect usability. We documented our observations and proposed solutions that would be useful when we begin redesigning the function of each user.
Product Assement Key Insights
- Broken logic in navigation, as there is a lack of hierarchical structure.
- Hidden important elements, in order to make an action the user need to dive in many pages to find the desired section.
- Inconsistent layout over all pages.
- The main navigation is missing most important links.
- The data visualization is hard to read.
- A 360 client view is missing.
- No capability to Save, return and search
- Branding inconsistency.
- Some departments are using external tools beside the CIP tool.
Finding Solutions
With a better understanding of the business goals, user needs, pain points, and current processes, I planned and facilitated user journey workshops with my team, our product manager, and engineer. These sessions helped us define task flow, MVPs, and the new information architecture.
User Journey Mapping
After conducting our discovery phase and collecting pain points and insights, it was time to compile all the information into a single timeline journey that illustrates how each user will interact with the product. (Under NDA)
The user journey map was an important deliverable as it gave us a sense of how the employee's daily duties would be made much more convenient, increasing the productivity and avoiding stress, mess and mistakes.
Reworking the Information Architecture
As the CIP portal contains a vast amount of data, structuring and presenting it in an intuitive and insightful manner for the user was a challenging task. (Under NDA)
To solve this, we created a comprehensive architecture for the entire Portal, followed by detailed ones for each user persona. This approach allowed us to understand the features and sections needed for each department and all cross tasks and functionalities.
Wireframing
Working with an amazing design team, we organized a "crazy 8" workshop to sketch various layout options for the key screens of the CIP. We had to consider all the solution scenarios that impact the portal hierarchy and usability. After choosing the winning layout, I created an interactive mid-fi wireframe for testing before presenting it to our stakeholders.
Early Testing
Before presenting the mid-fi design to our client, we tested the flow of the new architecture, addressed all testing findings, and documented our reasoning behind the presented layout and architecture.
From Stakeholders to Supporters
Involving our stakeholders in early design stages helped us align the redesign goals of stakeholders from various departments into one cohesive vision. They provided us with some minor feedback and inquired about making iterations to align with the updated brand guidelines.
Design & Prototyping
Before transitioning to the High Fidelity design, I had a meeting with our Senior UI Designer and one of our developers to discuss the interface inventory needed to create the new components library.
Prototyping and Feedback
After creating the high-fidelity design prototype, we conducted additional usability testing and gathered feedback from stakeholders. Subsequently, we incorporated the feedback to make final adjustments and developed the ultimate design to be passed on to the engineering team.
Prototyping and Feedback
After creating the high-fidelity design prototype, we conducted additional usability testing and gathered feedback from stakeholders. Subsequently, we incorporated the feedback to make final adjustments and developed the ultimate design to be passed on to the engineering team.
The Outcome
The beta portal was built and launched for a trial with dealerships, receiving positive feedback on the improved sales and after sales management and speed of finding and tracking marketing performance.
Future Optimisations
The portal will continually be improved over time to reflect dealer feedback, with product features being extended to cover more departements.
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