Outlook Plug-in Redesign for Tier 1
Tier 1 Financial Solutions is CRM solution that empowers clients to optimize customer engagement for Capital Markets, Investment Banking, Investment Management, and corporate professionals.
My Role
As the Senior Product Manager Lead, I led 3 team members plus 1 Designer from concept to execution of the re-design of the Outlook plug-in. Through user research via interviews and working hand in hand with the designer, I oversaw the new design closely and converted it into User Stories.
The Product
Tier1ACE™ for Outlook is an add-in for the Microsoft Outlook email client that provides professionals access to their Salesforce Customer Relationship Management (CRM) platform data and enables them to perform common tasks directly from within their email client.
It opens new, flexible, and efficient workflows in an email-centric environment.
Tier1ACE™ for Outlook integrates seamlessly with other products in the Tier1™ suite.
The Process
The product had a good acceptance with users, however it was developed on the Windows platform, which is an outdated technology that lacks the flexibility and integration capabilities of an HTML plug-in.
After gathering feedback from users in regards of the performance of the application and the ease of use, we determined that an improved version on anew tech platform would allow for faster operations, better integrations, and the ability to use the plugin in cloud version of Outlook instead of being confined to the Desktop version.
After 4 months, a new version was designed and validated. Through an iterative process, each step and view was iterated and refined.
At the time that I left the Company, the Development process hadn't started yet.
Metrics
There are about 20,000 end-users that would benefit from this product.
The Plug-in can communicate in real time with Salesforce and present and update Contact information, saving 10 minutes per Contact that is processed manually.
Users can send multi-recipient Emails up to the thousands, saving time by working directly in Outlook.
All interactions are saved in the Plug-in, providing all users access to these in real time.
Key Takeaways
Contact Info at the fingertips
Users find that having the Contact info, interactions, Company, and notes in the same application whee they are communicating was paramount for their Job.
Bulk Emailing Saves Time
Being able to send mass emails saves so much time for users when inforamtion needds to be sent out quickly to avoid misssing Investment opportunities.
Customer Feedback drives the Process
Following the data really helps designing products that clients will actually use.
Some of the clients that use Tier1 Financial Solutions
