An all-in-one app supporting sales process & team management
Problem to solve
Background from an insurance company is facing the following problems:
1/ Sales teams have too many digital tools to use, and these are so “fragmented”, resulting in an incomplete user journey across all apps
2/ There is a big gap between users and support team by many manual and paper-based processes
3/ Operating costs are gradually increased due to a lot of offline activities but are still inefficient
4/ And finally, the sales team doesn’t have “the right tools” to track performance promptly and accurately.
Solution
The solution is built on mobile and website platforms, considered as a:
- “One-stop shop” with closely connected mini-apps, helping to smooth the entire user journey from new hire to exit.
- Virtual assistants help solve user requests and provide the knowledge base for users to self-troubleshoot their problems.
- The platform connects users online through digitized activities, helping to reduce monthly offline operating costs.
- A convenient dashboard platform that automatically reminds users to ensure monthly targets are met.
My role
As Product Owner cum Business Analyst Lead, I worked with stakeholders to design the high-level product concept, including working with sponsors to raise the budget for the product.
In the discovery phase, I conducted User Research to clear the context & understand the problem we’re trying to solve. Moreover, this stage helps the entire product team know who our end-users are and in what context they’ll use our product. This is one of the crucial steps we mainly focus on from the beginning.
For privacy purposes, I have to hide the portrait & name of our end users!!!
Also, we conducted many User Interview Sessions in the research phase to understand the user’s pain points more deeply. We ran some demographic reports to have data for decision-making later on.
As BA Lead, I guided 4 senior Sr. Business Analysts in clearing the impediments and facilitating them to analyze & design the most functional & feasible features satisfying the requirements.
We used not only text (yes, of course) but also combined all formats, including images, diagrams, videos, and even illustrations, to build the Product Requirement Document in the easiest way to understand for all stakeholders and the product team.
A minor note: I’m pretty good at organizing JIRA & Confluence structure for the most efficient task & docs management 🙂
We kept the document as simple as possible so that we could welcome all changes & encourage face-to-face discussions cross functional team.
As the person who ensures the product is built to satisfy particular needs, I facilitated any vague matters & remove roadblocks across verticals in other teams to make sure everyone collaborates well & focuses on tasks.
In terms of User Experience, I collab with my BA team to design the UX Flow for the mobile app, as well as reviewed & assessed the User Interface with the UI Design Team. Our ultimate goal is to ensure the designs address the real needs of the end user (based on previously collected data, in addition to personal experiences in UI design).
We also ran many prototype testing workshops to finalize the most suitable UI package.
I work with relevant teams at the product launch stage to develop an effective roll-out plan in order to achieve the KPIs (including covering the sponsors’ expectations).
After launching the product, I’m responsible for monitoring the product operation, reporting to the sponsors weekly, and preparing for new business cases to realize the next puzzle piece in the product’s vision.
Product
Within 4 months of development, we released the first MVP and ran a pilot for +1k users. We continuously get feedback and improve the product through monthly updates.
We increased active users from 1K to 12K in 2 months since the first launch.
We built the concept with the Product Feature Set having 8 modules, including relevant features.
Sales Review
Users can get an overview of their sales performance. Especially for the user playing the role of Leader, they can track the progress of every team member.
This feature supports users in answering the question: how much is missing compared to the monthly goal? So they can pay more attention & get more motivation to achieve their goal.
Besides, Leaders can easily catch up on sales performance & timely support members to improve. And screens from this function will also be beneficial for Leaders to conduct daily/ weekly meetings because they always have the data in their hands.
One Calendar
The bunch of events from all mini-apps will synchronize on the master calendar here. Users no longer need to open many apps to keep track of the plan.
And Leaders can track the daily working plan of every member, every time & everywhere.
In addition, we also integrated Zoom for the online meeting solution.
Your customers
We built a Customer 360 view for end-users to help them know better about their customers. Users can easily access information & policy of the customer to serve them better.
Furthermore, we also developed a propensity model to measure the up-selling potential score. It helps users know where to start if they want to up-sell & bring more value to customers.
And more
We designed a concept of a Virtual Assistant – that plays the role of a partner throughout the end user’s journey. We were building the essential functions from the beginning to help users reach out to the support team timely and provide the knowledge base for self-troubleshooting problems by users.
Utilizing the conversational concept & focusing on “easy to navigate”, we could close the gap between users and the back office team in resolving support tickets. For example, we decreased the number of tickets by 45% in 4 months since launching the Virtual Assistant feature.
Next milestones
We continue to merge the next mini-apps, including the Training & Recruitment tool (end of Q4’22) and the Online Sales tool (end of Q3’23). Accordingly, we are completing the digitization journey by the end of Q4’23.
In addition, I collab with the Data team to develop and train new sales models (lead scoring & lapse) with more realistic scenarios for users. For the operation, my team set the target to achieve the average monthly Adoption Rate of 60% by the end of 2022 and 80% by the end of 2023.
Key takeaways
1/ I can take on the duo role well while wearing both hats: End-Users (Product Owner) and Development Team (Business Analyst) to ensure the product is optimized in terms of technical feasibility, business viability, usability, user experience & even the factors that make up user desirability (thanks to the beautiful concept from anh ngochieu.com)
2/ Agility working on launching MVP within 4 months (including product discovery & development).
3/ I can work with upcoming technologies trend: Super App, including Mini Apps as HTML package (auto updated) & hybrid app development using Flutter.
4/ How to increase quick update & communication among all team members by optimizing the tools like SCRUM board, Jira, Confluence, and Slack.
5/ How to approach a multi-sided platform and ensure you’re solving for the right side, aka “When the user feels X, the business feels Y”
6/ How important it is to “get out of the office” and regularly interact with all possible user types. This means I have to be onsite many days at the end-users location to observe & interact with them to understand their pain points deeply.
“Thinh, as the Product Owner cum Business Analyst Lead of the Mega App, has demonstrated leadership qualities and brought outstanding results beyond expectations.
Buu Le, Project Manager
With forward thinking and daring to change, Thinh has led the BA team and UI/UX team to develop effective working methods and modern user-centric design. With critical thinking and collaborative working spirit, Thinh acts as an effective bridge between technical, design, and other stakeholder teams to bring the Mega App product which is highly appreciated in terms of design and user experience.
In addition, as a BA Lead, Thinh has constantly mentored BA members to improve team competencies such as user interview skills, user feedback, and product design thinking.”
“His philosophy to work is ‘never afraid of challenge’, which helps the product team explore and achieve many outstanding deliverables. For example, instead of creating normal training material, he stepped up and drove the team to convert our old-school stuff into digital training. Result in getting a lot of great feedback from the salesforces and AD training.”
Freddy Dinh, Head of Agency Transformation
