What is the current pre-sale quoting experience like?

Over a period of 3 months, our scrum teams convened more than 20 requirement meetings with stakeholders. This extensive process enabled us to thoroughly capture all functional capabilities, validate business requirements, and prioritize user needs for our initial release. With each quoter handling 25-30 quote cases daily, some with up to 50 claimants each, repetitive tasks within their workflow were notably burdensome. Therefore, our primary focus was on enhancing efficiency and minimizing errors in their work processes.

Who are the Users involved?

We identified three key stakeholders and their roles within the Structured Settlement business team who interact with this platform on a daily basis. We actively engaged with them through methods such as interviews, observations, and questionnaires, while setting clear expectations for the objectives of our initial release.

The tasks, SS Quoter’s Journey & the tool, STARS to PruForce

The STARS application is crucial for SS quoting analysts to manage quote details with external brokers, yet a thorough assessment unveiled significant usability issues within each workflow. Users faced excessive clicking, lacked error rectification options, and struggled with inconveniently placed information. In response to the business’s request to sunset the current application and migrate to the Salesforce system within a two-month design timeline, I strategically reorganized features and optimized the information architecture to improve the user journey.
To ensure alignment with the team, I crafted a journey map that visually highlighted the most pressing areas for our initial focus.

Redesign the Quoting Review Flow By Leveraging SLDS &
Modular Pages

The excessive number of pages for each data section, lack of structured priority features, and inconsistent UI elements present significant challenges for users in efficiently navigating and processing quote reviews.

Additionally, due to the inability to modify inputs for each section, users are required to navigate back and forth to access information, leading to potential errors. It was clear that there is a pressing need to reassess the task order and reduce visual clutter on the page to enhance scannability and overall efficiency.

Conduct interviews, surveys, and gather requirements to effectively prioritize user tasks and consolidate them efficiently.

The objective is not solely to fulfill essential functionalities and streamline the review process, but also to ensure that the product team adequately captures all capabilities supported by technical requirements to include them in our first release.

Revamped information architecture and streamlined modular pages leveraging SLDS.

After analyzing essential information from requirement meetings and exploring SLDS capabilities, I reduced the page count from 22 pages to 3 main tabs and 2 supporting tabs, enhancing transparency and accessibility to all quote details. Through the use of robust, templated modules, I optimized key areas and standardized the viewing experience across the entire journey.

Improve the Data Review Process to Streamline Efficiency

The suboptimal layout of the quote comparison table hinders scannability, while the separate quote selection section adds to inefficiencies and errors.

The SS quoters require a more efficient method to review rate comparisons at all request stages, including quality review, lock-in, and revised lock-in. Moreover, the inability to promptly modify data and resend it to the calculation engine complicates the team’s efforts to rectify mistakenly sent false information.

Collaborative problem solving with the Business Stakeholders and Development Teams.

During collaboration with our business stakeholders, we encountered numerous discrepancies in the information provided throughout the sprints, and time constraints limited further iterations to satisfy everyone. Taking the initiative, I organized a collaborative session with stakeholders and development partners to clarify user needs. Ultimately, we reached a solution that is both space-efficient and familiar to our users. Alongside the ability to edit data input and a new grouping system for quote selection, this approach successfully achieved our dual objectives of enhancing user efficiency and optimizing data organization for future use.

Enhance the capability to “white glove” broker’s requests to boost market competitiveness

Users are unable to initiate a quote from scratch, duplicate an existing quote, or add/remove a benefit stream without relying on brokers to submit new requests, resulting in inefficiencies in communication and workflow.

One of the fast-fallows post-MVP priority is to empower users with tools to customize broker requests, reducing unnecessary back-and-forth and workload. This presents challenges for our development team, as many of these features lack support from existing APIs, complicating data computation on the rate comparison page. Nevertheless, we are devising solutions to address these issues.

Hop back to refinements and interviews with stakeholders to understand the what and why.

My primary objective was to develop solutions that seamlessly integrate within the existing framework while effectively differentiating each instance. By refining the user flow, I gained a deep understanding of the subtleties involved in quote comparisons. This enabled me to deliver solutions that empower quoters to comprehensively understand and critically review broker requests.

Incorporate a color-coded system

By strategically leveraging select Salesforce out-of-the-box (OOTB) features, I collaborated with our lead developer to customize the components in accordance with a newly defined design system specifically for this UI. Following a presentation to the broader user group, all participants were able to readily visualize the unique treatment for each instance.

“Now I feel like I can handle 3x more quote cases in an hour than I normally would in STARS”

After 8 months of design and development, we were thrilled to gradually introduce the business team to test this new platform. Initially, quoters were skeptical due to its unfamiliar appearance, but after a few walkthroughs and basic training with PruForce, they were delighted with the significantly enhanced efficiency of the entire process.

Success Metrics & Result

Ultimately, the aim of this project was to enhance the efficiency of the Structured Settlement Quoting team’s workflow. By establishing success metrics and collecting relevant data through collaboration with the development team, we were able to validate the effectiveness of all project scope. The positive feedback from upper management and users who tested the prototype is highly encouraging.

I learned that while internal tools may appear modest in scale, they wield a significant impact on employee experience, ultimately influencing the company’s growth trajectory.