Optimizing a Data Management system to boost efficiency for marketing teams
Desktop
B2B
2022
4 min read
Context about the product
A lead management system that helps marketing teams track leads, run campaigns, and boost sales.
WHAT WAS GOING WRONG
Marketing discussions revealed the burden of manually managing and assigning leads is costing over a staggering...
5,000 hours
monthly in labor and countless fatigue
Recognizing this opportunity, we aimed to:
Streamline lead assignment to save time, reduce fatigue, and boost team productivity.
Initial problem
The marketing team was struggling to manage their lead system due to inefficient sharing between teammates and managers.
“Users spend too much time sharing lead data with eachother”
How I began
Used interviews, task analysis, contextual inquiries, and competitor research to uncover gaps in the current system. Here is what I learnt:
Defining the project
How might we design a centralised layout that ensures information can accommodate crucial data and be quickly scanned .
Ideation
I created one simple card-based dashboard that combined all their tools and made lead data workflows easier to use.
Key consideration during ideation
Users had to scan through lots of similar data in excel-style grids, making key info hard to spot.
Mapping the hierarchy of the data based on its relevance to the user.
Exploring multi - column card layouts
The Pivot
Due to the accelerated timeline, a brand-new card layout wasn’t feasible. I proposed a phased design update as a stopgap.
Phase 1 adresses
The primary job to be done by centralizing all leads into a single, accessible system.
Phase 2 improves
How that data is formatted and streamline workflows to support the marketing team’s day-to-day tasks
Phase 1
Making it easier to manage different lead data by putting everything in one place with shared workflows.
Before, all tasks were spread across separate pages and formats, despite having similar data and workflows.
All actions now merged into one page with unified formatting and workflows.
Lead Cleansing: A single lead might have inconsistent info—like 'Sahana Rao' in one place and 'Sahana R' in another—so partners have to manually fix it for accuracy. This used to be a seperate, manual workflow
Users now see a visual cue and can cleanse leads directly within the same grid
Phase 2
Used visual hierarchy to make lead data easier to scan and made the experience easy to adopt step by step.
Users were accustomed to the grid view, leading to resistance and a learning curve.
Allows users to choose their view to ease transition and customize workflow.
Defining interaction patterns
I built on commonly used interaction patterns to reduce the learning curve and keep things intuitive.
A similar interaction flow is used for all editable features on the card
Edit symbol appears on hover for easy discoverability
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Drop down menu to change the owner - using existing mental models for a seamless transition
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Lead owner updated
FINAL SOLUTION
Takeaways
I learnt that
Process-driven collaboration
I kept refining ideas through a clear, process-driven approach and made sure to regularly check in with stakeholders to stay aligned.
Working within constraints
I had a tight deadline, so I managed my time well and used the design system to work faster without losing quality.
