Background
To execute in-store activities, companies and agencies have to accomplish a significant amount of work. One of the biggest and most time-consuming is communication.
Managers need to utilize all sorts of tools to teach the field staff, transfer assets, receive and prepare reports, etc. They try to keep it organised and minimise as much as possible and it can turn out to be overwhelming.
Problem
While working for both a company and later for an agency I’ve noticed several problems in company-agency-field staff communications. They are as follows:
1. Disintegrated Communications — Different people use different messenger applications, WhatsApp, Viber, Facebook, iMessage, etc., plus they would use different email accounts to communicate.
2. Double Work — Field staff often send requests about the same standard set of trade materials, POSM, promo videos, price tags, shelf talkers, or other details for the particular project.
3. Time-Consuming Status Check — It is both time consuming and often complicated to do a status check.
4. Lack of Information — Often managers would like to get a deeper understanding of current situations in a particular store or location, but it’s quite a challenge to find the contact information for the person responsible, to get pictures of the store or a shelf, or to set up a store-check.
5. Complicated Team Forming Process — It also takes a lot of time and effort to add/replace/remove members of a field staff team for the certain project.
So what would be a digital solution to these problems?
Solution
We can assume that these challenges could be eliminated by creating an all-in-one digital tool that would:
1. Consolidated communications in a chat-like messenger
2. Put projects basic information and assets in one place
3. Provide a task manager that will clarify tasks to field staff
4. Automatically collect and put together all the status’ of the current project, based on the tasks given in the tasks section
Research
In-depth Interview
In order to confirm that these issues are not just my opinion, but a real set of challenges, I’ve contacted Margaret — an agency expert with experience of working for three big BTL (Below The Line) agencies that were executing in-store activities for top FMCG companies.
I’ve prepared a set of more than 20 questions to conduct an in-depth interview.
As a result of this interview, Margaret confirmed that each communicational problem mentioned above not only exists, but also presents pain points for agency project managers. She said:
“Agency project communications are messy. When you are launching a project, everything looks great. But something always would go wrong and you have to be able to find quick solutions, immediately find and contact the right person, and then check the progress really often.”
So there is an obvious need in a communication management solution.
Competitive review
But is there an existing product that has all of the features listed above?
I went online and found plenty of apps dedicated to project management and integrated communications.
The majority of apps have the same or most of the functionality that we are looking for and are generally well designed. However, they are often not doing exactly what we need. They are overloaded with additional functionality, oriented for smaller teams, and not suited for sales and in-store projects. They are like a Swiss Army Knife when we are looking for a scalpel.
Analysis
User Personas
I’ve identified 3 main personas involved in the sales communication process:
Company Manager
- Julia is 34. Single. Lives in a big city. Higher than average income. Very career driven.
- Her main goal is to meet and exceed sales goals and to prove she is the top performer. She doesn’t want to spend time on unproductive, repetitive communication to set things up and see results.
Agency Manager
- Mary is 24. Just starting her career.
- She just became an agency account manager and yet was assigned to an important project. Her primary goal is to deliver impeccable in-store execution.
Field Professional
- Alexander is 37. Mid income. Living in a big city.
- He is a Merchandiser with more than 10 years of experience. He is an expert in negotiations, and other things needed for his job. Yet, he hates paperwork, long and complicated reports, etc. He is looking for a way to simplify and automate his work.
Ideally, we have to work through every persona, but taking into account that this is a personal project, we will focus on the agency manager as the main person to manage communications.
User Story (Agency Manager)
As a Project Manager I want to have a digital tool that will simplify, structure, and automate communications.
User Flow
Design
Device choice
Mobile Apps are the most convenient option for field staff, as smartphones are always with them and don’t require much space or weight. It’s convenient for short and simple tasks.
Desktop versions would be a preferable option for the company and agency managers, as they spend most of the time working on computers and prefer to have a visual dashboard for their projects.
However, for the simplicity of my personal project, we will focus on the mobile app as the most universal and more realistic tool.
User Interface
Sketches
Wireframes
Mockup
Design System
To ensure a consistent, non-destructive, and yet modern look we will use only one monochromatic palette and the Avenir Next font family.
Also I will be using Material Design Guidelines as a starting point to the design of the mobile app, as the majority of the users will most likely use Android devices.
User Testing
I’ve invited an agency professional with more than five years of experience to participate in a user testing. We went on Skype to do the 30 minute testing via
I started with a brief introduction of the functionality of the app, and then asked the user to perform the following main tasks while I was observing her, sharing her screen:
1. Check the Project Status
2. Add a file to the Project Assets section
3. Set Tasks for the field staff
4. Check new messages
5. Sort Messages
6. Form/manage the Project Team
The tester provided the overall feedback that the app is simple, clear, and extremely helpful. She was able to accomplish all the task relatively easily. She said that the app is doing exactly what it was designed for and if an app like this existed in real life, it would make her work much easier.
This is an exciting moment to receive such feedback. Nevertheless, while testing I understood that the final product/prototype has a complicated structure that helps to accomplish many tasks. So it makes sense to define smaller tasks and to setup separate testing for each.
Conclusion
The overall assessment of the app was very high, so we can consider it to be a successful project.
Yet, while testing I’ve noticed that the prototype should have even more details and interactive elements to be as realistic as possible. Not only this though. With complicated apps like that, it makes sense to break the testing phase into several smaller pieces, and do them one at a time, to ensure the tester’s focus and deep involvement.
