Zenput Analytics
This case study highlights how we identified an acute problem our customers had about Reporting and providing data visibility to their organization, and how we learned throughout rapid experimentation what was the best possible way to deliver insights.
Zenput Analytics
This case study highlights how we identified an acute problem our customers had about Reporting and providing data visibility to their organization, and how we learned throughout rapid experimentation what was the best possible way to deliver insights.
Zenput Analytics
This case study highlights how we identified an acute problem our customers had about Reporting and providing data visibility to their organization, and how we learned throughout rapid experimentation what was the best possible way to deliver insights.
Project
Net new Product
Role
Lead Designer
Year
2022 - 2023
Context: A call to adventure
When I joined Zenput (now part of Crunchtime), the Reporting offering was almost the same than 8 years ago. No big updates other than offering more canned reports (out of the box, static excels delivered via email).
I was part of the team tasked with revamping our solution for the job to be done of getting the right data delivered to the right people, in a timely manner.
In this case study, you will learn how I took a leadership position and not only designed the end-to-end experience of Zenput Analytics, but also became a key partner and contributor to design the business the model of the offering, advocating for having a north star, leading with outcomes, prototyping to learn, getting signal from customers about willingness to pay, and much more. So keep reading!
Context: A call to adventure
When I joined Zenput (now part of Crunchtime), the Reporting offering was almost the same than 8 years ago. No big updates other than offering more canned reports (out of the box, static excels delivered via email).
I was part of the team tasked with revamping our solution for the job to be done of getting the right data delivered to the right people, in a timely manner.
In this case study, you will learn how I took a leadership position and not only designed the end-to-end experience of Zenput Analytics, but also became a key partner and contributor to design the business the model of the offering, advocating for having a north star, leading with outcomes, prototyping to learn, getting signal from customers about willingness to pay, and much more. So keep reading!
Context: A call to adventure
When I joined Zenput (now part of Crunchtime), the Reporting offering was almost the same than 8 years ago. No big updates other than offering more canned reports (out of the box, static excels delivered via email).
I was part of the team tasked with revamping our solution for the job to be done of getting the right data delivered to the right people, in a timely manner.
In this case study, you will learn how I took a leadership position and not only designed the end-to-end experience of Zenput Analytics, but also became a key partner and contributor to design the business the model of the offering, advocating for having a north star, leading with outcomes, prototyping to learn, getting signal from customers about willingness to pay, and much more. So keep reading!
Crossing the threshold
At Crunchtime, we operate under the 3 amigos model (product, design, engineering). The first decision we had to make as a team was defining the goals, following GIST (Goals, Ideas, Steps, Tasks).
We knew that for the business, we had risk of churn. Customers wanted something better, because the way we handled reports was suboptimal. We then did a lot of discovery. Both quantitative and qualitative, to formulate a strong hypothesis of the problems. The struggling moments and the jobs to be done (Yes, I am a huge fan of JTBD and Bob Moesta's approach)
We reviewed Productboard insights (our customer feedback and requests tool), we talked to Customer Success Managers, we talked to customers themselves. We spoke with leadership to learn about their vision and expectations, and ultimately, we defined our focus on 3 key struggling moments: lack of preview when creating reports, lack of drilling down, and pain points when exporting.
Crossing the threshold
At Crunchtime, we operate under the 3 amigos model (product, design, engineering). The first decision we had to make as a team was defining the goals, following GIST (Goals, Ideas, Steps, Tasks).
We knew that for the business, we had risk of churn. Customers wanted something better, because the way we handled reports was suboptimal. We then did a lot of discovery. Both quantitative and qualitative, to formulate a strong hypothesis of the problems. The struggling moments and the jobs to be done (Yes, I am a huge fan of JTBD and Bob Moesta's approach)
We reviewed Productboard insights (our customer feedback and requests tool), we talked to Customer Success Managers, we talked to customers themselves. We spoke with leadership to learn about their vision and expectations, and ultimately, we defined our focus on 3 key struggling moments: lack of preview when creating reports, lack of drilling down, and pain points when exporting.
Crossing the threshold
At Crunchtime, we operate under the 3 amigos model (product, design, engineering). The first decision we had to make as a team was defining the goals, following GIST (Goals, Ideas, Steps, Tasks).
We knew that for the business, we had risk of churn. Customers wanted something better, because the way we handled reports was suboptimal. We then did a lot of discovery. Both quantitative and qualitative, to formulate a strong hypothesis of the problems. The struggling moments and the jobs to be done (Yes, I am a huge fan of JTBD and Bob Moesta's approach)
We reviewed Productboard insights (our customer feedback and requests tool), we talked to Customer Success Managers, we talked to customers themselves. We spoke with leadership to learn about their vision and expectations, and ultimately, we defined our focus on 3 key struggling moments: lack of preview when creating reports, lack of drilling down, and pain points when exporting.
The Ordeal
We took an experimentation approach to solve the challenges: proof of concepts, spikes, and searching for ways to expedite time to market, and validate our hypothesis of the problems. We also had direction from leadership that we wanted to get engineering out of the business of dealing with canned reports. So we took a look at some BI tools to analyze if we could embed some of their capabilities. That would mean we care about our core business, bringing the right data, and the tool would take care of the data consumption/visualization aspect.
I took ownership of the tool analysis, usability rubric, testing the tools, usability testing with customers. This helped us decide the tool, and also identify gaps in what we expected our customers to need and the out-of-the-box functionality.
So the next step was to build the missing capabilities, and go through alpha and beta to test them out, before launching the product GA. I designed a bunch of flows, learned to use the tool, designed dashboards, worked with the engineering team to develop the features, until we had a shippable product for Beta.
If I had to pick one moment where things when extremely unexpected (things always go unexpected on product development, but this was huge), that would be when we were wrapping up beta.
We interviewed customers to gauge willingness to pay (following Van Westendorp model) and we realized there was a lack of appetite for paying extra for the features, due to not a lot of willingness to self-serve. This feedback ultimately led us to pivot the business model offer a more templatized, constrained approach.
The Ordeal
We took an experimentation approach to solve the challenges: proof of concepts, spikes, and searching for ways to expedite time to market, and validate our hypothesis of the problems. We also had direction from leadership that we wanted to get engineering out of the business of dealing with canned reports. So we took a look at some BI tools to analyze if we could embed some of their capabilities. That would mean we care about our core business, bringing the right data, and the tool would take care of the data consumption/visualization aspect.
I took ownership of the tool analysis, usability rubric, testing the tools, usability testing with customers. This helped us decide the tool, and also identify gaps in what we expected our customers to need and the out-of-the-box functionality.
So the next step was to build the missing capabilities, and go through alpha and beta to test them out, before launching the product GA. I designed a bunch of flows, learned to use the tool, designed dashboards, worked with the engineering team to develop the features, until we had a shippable product for Beta.
If I had to pick one moment where things when extremely unexpected (things always go unexpected on product development, but this was huge), that would be when we were wrapping up beta.
We interviewed customers to gauge willingness to pay (following Van Westendorp model) and we realized there was a lack of appetite for paying extra for the features, due to not a lot of willingness to self-serve. This feedback ultimately led us to pivot the business model offer a more templatized, constrained approach.
The Ordeal
We took an experimentation approach to solve the challenges: proof of concepts, spikes, and searching for ways to expedite time to market, and validate our hypothesis of the problems. We also had direction from leadership that we wanted to get engineering out of the business of dealing with canned reports. So we took a look at some BI tools to analyze if we could embed some of their capabilities. That would mean we care about our core business, bringing the right data, and the tool would take care of the data consumption/visualization aspect.
I took ownership of the tool analysis, usability rubric, testing the tools, usability testing with customers. This helped us decide the tool, and also identify gaps in what we expected our customers to need and the out-of-the-box functionality.
So the next step was to build the missing capabilities, and go through alpha and beta to test them out, before launching the product GA. I designed a bunch of flows, learned to use the tool, designed dashboards, worked with the engineering team to develop the features, until we had a shippable product for Beta.
If I had to pick one moment where things when extremely unexpected (things always go unexpected on product development, but this was huge), that would be when we were wrapping up beta.
We interviewed customers to gauge willingness to pay (following Van Westendorp model) and we realized there was a lack of appetite for paying extra for the features, due to not a lot of willingness to self-serve. This feedback ultimately led us to pivot the business model offer a more templatized, constrained approach.
Final Outcome & Learnings
From a business standpoint, we contributed to one of the most important initiatives not only for Zenput, but for Crunchtime. Our iterative approach led to a robust solution that was well received by our customers, and it also laid the foundation for other teams to operate in an evidence-based, highly iterative approach, leveraging continuous discovery, assumption testing, and rapid prototyping.
From a personal standpoint, this was one of the key initiatives that demonstrated my competencies, and helped me get my promotion from Senior to Staff Product Designer.
Final Outcome & Learnings
From a business standpoint, we contributed to one of the most important initiatives not only for Zenput, but for Crunchtime. Our iterative approach led to a robust solution that was well received by our customers, and it also laid the foundation for other teams to operate in an evidence-based, highly iterative approach, leveraging continuous discovery, assumption testing, and rapid prototyping.
From a personal standpoint, this was one of the key initiatives that demonstrated my competencies, and helped me get my promotion from Senior to Staff Product Designer.
Final Outcome & Learnings
From a business standpoint, we contributed to one of the most important initiatives not only for Zenput, but for Crunchtime. Our iterative approach led to a robust solution that was well received by our customers, and it also laid the foundation for other teams to operate in an evidence-based, highly iterative approach, leveraging continuous discovery, assumption testing, and rapid prototyping.
From a personal standpoint, this was one of the key initiatives that demonstrated my competencies, and helped me get my promotion from Senior to Staff Product Designer.
