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JUNIPER PARTNER PORTAL DASHBOARD
An overview of the user experience and user interface responsibilities and deliverables for the Juniper Partner Portal I worked on at NTT Data.
Client: Juniper Networks
Project Type: Consulting / UX Re-Architecting
Roles: Senior UX Architect, User Research, UI Design,
Client Management, Project Planning, Workshop Planning,
High Fidelity Wireframing, Data Visualization,
Dashboard Design
SCOPE
Juniper Networks, Inc. is an American multinational corporation headquartered in Sunnyvale, California.
The company develops and markets networking products, including routers, switches, network management software, network security products, and software-defined networking technology. Juniper network has issued a Request for Proposal entitled “Unifying the Buying Experience with Customers and Partners through CPQ, Subscription Management, and SFDC Consolidation."
PROBLEM
Clients and deals are being lost because of bad employee ecosystem interactions in the customer experience lifecycle between Juniper employees and their partners. Juniper is losing credibility because of bad relationships with partners and clients and is requesting NTT Data's assistance in finding what is causing problems.
SOLUTION
Conduct research with Juniper Networks, focusing heavily on their CPQ tool, to understand the current partner experience and determine how we might better serve their needs and meet goals in the future.
RESEARCH + PROCESS
RESEARCH PLAN
THE WHAT: These are some of the questions that needed to be figured out.
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Do I understand the full ask of the client and the SOW?
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Do they currently have a design system they prefer to work in or do I have to create one for them?
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Who do I need to get into contact with on the client side to create an agenda?
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Does the client already have journeymaps, personas, ecosystem maps, etc. that are available to me and if they are available who do I contact to obtain them?
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How am I going to keep track of the tasks and deliverables that need to be completed?
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How am I going to host a workshop with the stakeholders and manage all the employee interviews?
THE WHO: To find these answers, I was introduced to a point of contact named John Doe at Juniper. We had a discussion about the SOW, how the agenda was going to play out over the coming weeks, what kind of workshops I'm going to need to attend to understand how the services are sold, as well as educate John Doe on the UX process that he was going to be taken through to unify the CPQ buying experience.
The first step in this project was setting up an agenda. An agenda needed to be created so that a timeline could be established when deliverables needed to be handed over as well as giving stakeholders and NTT Data customer experience team members visibility into the process.
After the agenda was made, a kanban board was created in Miro to keep track of the tasks and deliverables that are inline with the SOW. This was created so that the team could have visibility into the progression of task completions.
After the kanban board has been set up to organize tasks, the next step was creating an information request for the point of contact at Juniper, John Doe. The reason for the information request was to try and dig up any existing journeymaps, personas, etc. that could be used for knowledge transfer.
After the information request was sent to John Doe at Juniper, it was time to create and hold a workshop with the Juniper stakeholders. This was necessary to understand who they believe the most involved employees are in their customer lifecycle, as well understand their CPQ Journey and what their thoughts are. This workshop was 4 hour long white boarding session.
STAKEHOLDER WORKSHOP FINDINGS
RESEARCH CONDUCTED: 4 Hour long workshop with 20+ stakeholders
After the workshop was held, we had discovered the 11 different employee groups we needed to interview. These groups happened to be Account Managers, Partner Account Managers, Sales Engineers, Distribution Account Managers, Sales Support Reps, Partner Sales, Partner Sales Engineers, Partner Operations, Partner Self Service, Distribution Partner Sales, and Distribution Operations. All of the employee groups were documented in Excel.
We had also discovered the Juniper CPQ process customer lifecycle and which personas are involved at what points. These steps included 1. the deal is identified, 2. the partner needs the quote or quote requested, 3. the Juniper Partner Account Manager engages the partner, 4. Juniper PAM engages Juniper Account Manager or VSE, 5. SSR or Juniper Sales creates opportunity in SFDC, 6. BOM Created, 7. Quote Generated, 8. Quote sent to Distributor or DVAR.
RESEARCH CONTINUED
After holding the stakeholder workshop and documenting the findings, it was time to start creating 3 different recruitment emails for John Doe at Juniper. Creating recruitment emails for the client takes away work from Juniper, which makes them happy. The first email is the Employee Interview: Interview Sign-Up Request Email, the second email is Employee Interview: Calendar Invite Content, and the third email is Employee Interview: Reminder Email for Unresponsive Invitees. These emails were sent to the client in a word document format.
After giving John Doe at Juniper the recruitment emails and instructions for Calendly invites and getting back all of the invitees, my team decides to create a Juniper interview tracker. The interview tracker is an excel spreadsheet that defines the Juniper employees and partners we are interviewing as well as the quantity of interviewees. There is also a list of the interviewees that have signed up as well as the calendar timeline of when the interviews are going to happen.
Since the recruitment tracker has been set up, the next thing we needed to do is set up the Juniper Unified Buying Experience UBE Interview guide for the CPQ process. This guide provided an introductory script when talking to the interview subject as, well as questions that needed to be asked. There was also time allotted above question sections to make it easier to keep track of how much time can be spent on a section.
Now that the interview questions have been set up, myself along with My Director, John Doe and 2 junior ux architects will now follow the interviewing schedule for 69 interviews. My Director and I will take turns talking during the interviewing, while the 2 junior ux architects take notes. While we are conducting the interviews, we have also created a miro board where we record our findings on sticky notes, then sort those sticky notes into themes. These Themes will help us find patterns within interview answers.
EMPLOYEE INTERVIEW FINDINGS
RESEARCH CONDUCTED: 69 1 hour employee group interviews
Since all of the information from the 69 participants has been sorted into themes, the theme information can now be recorded in an excel spreadsheet to be categorized and organized into easily understandable feedback. Some of the major feedback points have been listed below.
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Want information management
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Want self service
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Want visibility and transparency
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Want process improvement
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Want guided Selling
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Want user generated specific requirements
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Want heuristics and trainings
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Want better strategy
UX DELIVERABLES
PERSONAS
After compiling and reviewing the data, these are the personas that were created that speak toward what each employee group is feeling.
JOURNEY MAPS
After reviewing the persona data, Journeymaps were created. Displayed below are 3/9 of the current state CPQ journey maps.
CUSTOMER ECOSYSTEM MAP
A customer ecosystem map was also created to show which Juniper Employees, Platforms and Systems, Distributor or Partner Reseller, Reseller Partners, and Distributors are visible, and invisible to the partners during the customer lifecycle.
FINAL OUTPUT
DASHBOARD CURRENT STATE
After creating the personas, journeymaps, and ecosystem map, it was time to take the data and look at the partner portal dashboard current state and annotate it for John Doe at Juniper. This is so that he can understand some of the points as to what the employee groups are missing from the dashboard. This annotation was created as an elevator pitch for the final presentation, not all of the findings are presented in this one slide, but fully documented in excel for the client.
FUTURE STATE POSSIBILITIES
Now that the old partner portal dashboard has been annotated, next what needs to happen is a high fidelity dashboard needs to be created with suggestions for improvement. At first the dashboard wireframes were too detailed for what my team was required to deliver, so they had to be simplified, then annotated, and put into a final deck.
Ultimately, the future state dashboard got reduced to the image below and put into the presentation deck.
IN THE END
At the end of this consulting cycle, I had learned what it was like to take a deep dive into the sales force dot com world and rearchitect how employees work together in a customer ecosystem, which I had not done before. I also learned a lot about what it is like being a Senior UX Architect in a fast moving consulting environment and the responsibilities that come with that.
Thank you for experiencing this journey with me, you can click the "Download Full Presentation" button to view the full presentation deck.
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