Discovery, Research & Strategy for a Top Academic Medical Center

OBJECTIVE

The primary objective of this research study was to gain a deeper understanding of our partners' business and sales operations. We aimed to identify any potential areas of improvement within Salesforce, a tool that is integral to our operations but has room for enhancement. Instead of simply adding more features to Salesforce, we decided to focus on understanding the actual needs of our partners. The goal was to streamline the opportunity management lifecycle, enhance the user interface for seamless data entry, ensure relevance with curated content and analytics, and optimize the overall user experience for improved reporting efficiency. This approach was designed to ensure that any future enhancements to Salesforce would be based on actual user needs and experiences, rather than assumptions.

MY ROLE

As the lead researcher on the project, I:

• Conducted one-on-one sessions with 30 participants worldwide.

  - Designed the sessions as loosely-structured conversations to understand the sales and business reality.

  - Listened more than speaking to allow participant-driven conversations.

  - Used the patterns and knowledge that emerged from these sessions to identify better ways to support users.

DELIVERABLES

Insights into the participants' day-to-day business operations, how they staff projects, how they acquire clients, and how they communicate.

- Findings on the impact of change management and adoption challenges on Salesforce usage.

- Recommendations for more attention to training and change management to ensure effective use of Salesforce.

OUTCOMES

• The study was extremely well received by senior stakeholders.

• Led to the creation of a new scaled agile Epic to address the end to end opportunity experience.

• Shared widely across the business with participants indicating that we 'nailed it'.

• Identified the need for more professional training and change management to ensure effective use of Salesforce.