James supported me with the development of an interactive app designed to simplify product selection for our team of account managers.
The communication and collaboration marketplace is a fast paced and complex environment where technology is released at an almost a daily rate. In addition to the rapid change in technology, the client’s own environment is highly complex. Choosing the correct technology within this space can be a very detailed and time-consuming process and if it goes wrong, can be commercially damaging.
I wanted to provide a tool that gave our account managers an easy to access reference point which they could use when in client consultations. This presented many challenges:
• It needed to be quick and easy to use
• It needed to be visually attractive and provide appropriate information which could be shared live with clients
• It needed to be accessible across a number of devices – laptop, Macbook, iPhone, iPad
• It needed to be accessible online and off line as often limited or no signal can be received when on clients premises
• It needed to be updated instantly by a specialist team from any location with changes being reflected immediately on account managers devices
• It needed to be scalable to add new products and new product categories
• It needed to be designed to lead account managers and clients through a series of questions to understand their needs
• It needed to be designed to filter the huge range of products to a narrower range which met a set criteria dependent on the questions answered
• It needed to show detailed specifications, images, video content, and externally located content from manufacturers websites
• It needed to pull information from a centrally managed database containing all the information
The project was detailed and complex, and involved integration with a live Excel spreadsheet which contained the core data. James spent the time to understand what the challenges were from a technical, product line, usability and user experience perspective and developed an initial smaller scale proof of concept to prove the functionality. After reviewing and adapting the POC the full product line was incorporated into the app and it was ready for launch.
James spent the time to understand what the challenges were from a technical, product line, usability and user experience perspective
David Willie, Visavvi
When launching something of this nature to very busy account managers its crucial that they have a good experience from using it from day one, failure to do this will quickly discourage them from using it. James spent a lot of time on the user interface to ensure it was intuitive, easy to navigate and attractive. He also suggested reducing some of the qualifying questions which further aided ease of use and user adoption. James researched and found ways to overcome the local device storage of the data to overcome situations when no network signal could be received which ensured our account managers could still access the database, equally the app ‘pulled’ updates and the latest product set when the account manages accessed it within an area of signal. This ensured the team had access to the very latest information when consulting with clints.
Prior to launch James designed a very visual user guide which really helped adoption and use of the app.
The app was launched to our account management team with great success and received attention from global manufacturers including Cisco, Poly, Microsoft, Logitech, two of whom would later launch a version of their own. The app enabled our account managers to have instant access to the latest technology solutions and dramatically improved their workflow when quoting communication and collaboration solutions. Additionally, it reduced the pressure on a small team of communication and collaboration professionals who were previously supporting this product set and team verbally, via email and over video calls for each enquiry. During the whole design and production process I found James to be great to work with. He was not only able to take my ideas and build on them, he was able to suggest improvements to the app which contributed to its success within our business.
James was attentive and supportive during the whole process and was a pleasure to work with. His attention to detail, commitment and sense of humour made the whole project a pleasure to be involved in and undoubtedly contributed to its success.
David Willie
Head of Marketing and Product Management
Visavvi
J Everard Design 