User Experience Design
Sales demos
Problem
Vanguard's record-keeping business is a vicious cycle of responding to Requests for Proposals (RFPs). Consultants, clients, and prospects submit RFPs if they are unhappy with their current record-keeping provider. Once a 401k provider is notified of an RPF request, they prepare for a final sales meeting. This final meeting includes top sales talent from the provider(Vanguard) and finance personnel from the client, such as the CFO. These record-keeping or 401k plans can be worth hundreds of millions of dollars in assets under management.
As competition between record-keeping providers heats up, clients want to see what technology platforms their participants will use. The experience that participants access has become a massive differentiator amongst providers. Vanguard is behind in the tech demo space, competing against competitors with in-depth technology demos showing how their platform functions and how they plan to enhance it in the future. To combat this issue, Vanguard created a new Sales Demo team. The team's mission is to build technology demos that show Vanguard's current user and future user experience in the hopes that the technology will allow clients to see Vanguard in a new light as a technology-forward company.
Outcome
Over the past year, we've increased our win rate by 10% for prospects, which is huge, considering how few companies decided to leave their current provider. The team put forth two new Future State Demo experiences. Vanguard's Plan Sponsor and Digital Advisor platforms now have Future State Demos, allowing the sales team to show off the end-to-end experiences. In the coming months, we will release the new online demo, allowing the sales demo team to send out an external demo of the experience. Consultants, clients, and prospects can go through a tech demo on their own, and Vanguard's marketing team will capture leads and track what users are interested in. Giving the sales demo team the ability to determine what they should focus on in their crucial sales demo meetings.
Solution
Create a new team that delivers the best possible demo experience for Vanguard's internal sales team. The team focuses on providing two main demos: the Future State Demo and the Current State/Online Demo. The Future State Demo allows sales team members to sell new capabilities and provides the most flexibility for demo customization. Allowing for sales team members to add custom functionality as needed. The Current State demo is an online experience that will enable sales folks to build custom demos that mimic the client's current experience. The main use of this demo is to show prospective clients what the experience would be like for their participants. Vanguard representatives can send the demo externally, allowing prospective clients to preview the site's experience before they choose Vanguard as a provider.
Role
My primary role is leading the strategy and development of the Future State Demo. My team consists of three junior UX designers. I've created a project management structure similar to a development team. We work in three-week sprints, and I determine what the team focuses on for each sprint. I run scrums, sprint planning, and backlog refinement meetings. While the UX designers are building out the demo experiences, I work with other UX Leads throughout the enterprise, gathering and understanding what new updates are coming to each large platform: My Plan Manager, Participant Experience, and Digital Advisor. Together, these applications have over one thousand screens. It has taken a massive effort to manage the UX designers I oversee and coordinate with all of the other UX teams across the enterprise.
My other role on the Sales Demo UX team has been to help deliver the strategy for the Current State/Online demo tool, including developing site maps, user flows, feature lists, and more. I built prototypes and a component library specifically for this tool. I work with the development team to ensure they build the application to my specifications and test their work after completion. I attended scrums, sprint planning, and retrospectives managed by this team's scrum master.