OVERVIEW
My product design work on CPQ++, VMware’s custom-designed Quoting tool, played a critical role in VMware’s transformation to a SaaS-first business model. CPQ++ redefined quoting and invoicing for VMware, helping the Subscription and SaaS revenue to go up by 39% Y/Y (Q1 FY21).
TIMELINE
Oct 2019 - Jan 2021
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ROLE
Lead Designer - user research, end-to-end design process, aligning with business strategy, & implementation support.
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TEAM
Product Managers, Architect, Engineering Manager, & Product Designer (me).
NOTE: If you only want to browse through the important sections in order to know what this project is about, follow the highlighted text in each section
What is CPQ++?
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CPQ stands for Configure, Price, & Quote. In an enterprise world, when a customer shows an intent to purchase a product or a service, the Field Sales Rep uses a tool called CPQ to initiate the potential sale.
They first Configure the exact list of products/services/support the customer is interested in, Price them with appropriate discounts (geo-specific, product type, customer interest, etc), and then the platform generates a Quote.
CPQ++ is VMware’s in-house custom-built platform designed on Salesforce using Salesforce Lightning Design System and developed by VMware to suit VMware’s complex product offerings.
Fig1: This demonstrates the selling process at a high level
THE CHALLENGE
So what’s the challenge? Why is CPQ such a big problem for VMware?
Fun fact: Tech companies spend millions of dollars to fix their Quote-to-Cash systems
1. VMware needed to transition from selling perpetual/licensed products to SaaS and subscription. The current quoting system is not designed for SaaS.
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2. Scalability. Making it work effectively for VMware’s current products but also accounting for future aquisitions (e.g. Carbon Black and Velo Cloud).
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3. Self-serviced e-commerce-like experience becomes crucial for sales teams and partners in a SaaS-first business model (think Tesla-like buying experience, but for enterprise products)
THE OUTCOME
I re-imagined and designed CPQ++ for VMware’s sales reps by designing a guided selling experience, where users can leverage CPQ++'s in-built intelligence and automation to improve their deal velocity.
Inside Sales Associate
User-friendly, well-designed and organized
Sales Ops
From what I am hearing, I think people are liking it so far
Sr. Account Executive
No one is hitting me up with questions is always a good indication
THE DISCOVERY PHASE
Who are we solving for?
Having understood the business objective, I now focussed on understanding our users and solving the problem from a user’s perspective with human-centered design.
My plan of action was -
• To understand who we are designing for?
• What are their motivations and challenges today?
• To understand the domain and the current sales process in detail by collaborating with Product
Managers, Field Sales experts (core reps, inside sales reps, sales specialists), Sales Support, and
Pricing & Monetization team.
USER RESEARCH
Humanizing our hands-on users was the key to really understanding what they do, how they accomplish their goals, what keeps them motivated, and the challenges they face in accomplishing those goals. Through my initial collaboration with the Sales and the Product Management team, we were able to translate VMware’s business objective into a problem space from the user’s perspective.
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I began my primary research by collaborating with the Field Sales reps and Sales Ops. They became our first points of contact and subject matter experts during the course of this project. I worked with a few Inside Sales reps to see how they currently create quotes with very little help or guidance readily available.
VMware Sales team spans across 3 geos – AMER, APAC, EMEA, with over 7,300 team members.
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Key User Groups –
• Field Sales
• Deal Management Team (DMT)
• Install Base Rep (IB)
Field Sales: Primary goals -
1. Grow my existing customer accounts
2. Get new customers into the VMware family
DMT: Primary goal -
Provide assistance and support to the sales reps through their deal closure
IB Rep: Primary goal -
Provide Sales and DMT customer-specific historic data a.k.a the purchase history info. - a key piece of data used for quoting.
NOTE: Detailed Persona Cards were created at this stage
Fig2: This demonstrates at a high level the user task flow
DOMAIN RESEARCH
To understand the end-to-end sales landscape, I created a service blueprint. The service blueprint builds on the existing journey map of the sales team and helped me understand the overlapping functions, platforms supporting those functions, and the processes that tie this end-to-end selling experience together. This helped me understand the sales landscape beyond just CPQ++ and led me to some potential opportunity areas to improve opon.
Fig3: This demonstrates the Service Blueprint of the Sales Landscape (Click to view)
USER NEED
Our users need to get the best quotes out to the customer as fast as possible with minimal manual intervention.
BUSINESS NEED
VMware needs to shift focus from selling perpetual/licensed products to selling Subscription and SaaS products. This requires faster turnaround time, efficient, intelligent selling systems that empower our Sales teams.
DESIGN STRATEGY
Learning first-hand from our users their current process and their challenges helped me shape and strategize my design decisions.
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Design a modern, highly scalable commerce platform by automating and integrating processes
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Support VMware’s SaaS-first business model by introducing an attribute-based product configuration approach (as opposed to the current flat SKU based approach)
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Empower the Field Sales reps with more autonomy and control through -
- a guided selling experience
- in-built config recommendations
- transparency in pricing, discount guidance, and overall quote status
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Enable customers to upgrade from their current perpetual licenses to a subscription model
DESIGN SYSTEM
CPQ++ was designed on Salesforce as a custom-tool, leveraging its existing infrastructure and customizing the user experience that cater to VMware’s business needs. For this reason, I had to familiarize and use Salesforce Lightning Design System for this project.
WIREFRAMES AND EARLY CONCEPT
Some of my early design concepts were used as a conversation starter to ensure we were headed in the right direction. I collated that information and created a high-level flow chart to get a consensus from all the stakeholders before we dived deep into the high-fidelity designs.
USER FEEDBACK
I conducted over 12 independent usability studies over a period of 2 years, with participants from Fields Sales, DMT, IB, across geos. I also led VMworld Design Studio (now VMware Explore) in 2020 where we spoke to the sales reps from 3 regions - Amer, APAC, APJ and gathered their feedback on CPQ++.
Key Test Results - Good and bad
I. Information Displayed on the quote line editor
Hypothesis: The users want a clean quote line editor with only the necessary fields displayed in the drawer row.
Our hypothesis was rejected as 62% of our participants preferred additonal information on the quote.
This initially confused us but on further analysis of this finding, we discovered that a majority of the participants who voted for ‘more info on the Quote’ were from DMT and Sales Ops.
A majority of the user who voted for ‘Less info on the quote’ were from Field Sales.
Resolution - we created a role-based view of the quote line editor.
II. Discount Guidance - visibility of the recommended discount % range
Hypothesis: The users want to see the discount range %
Our hypothesis was true; 77% of our users wanted the recommended discount range displayed.
Partcipants: DMT 44% | Sales Ops 30% | Field Sales 17%
Our usability tests showed that despite a majority of our participants being from DMT and Sales Ops (who should have opposed to the displaying of range), the result was in favor of displaying the discount range numbers.
III. Pricing Panel - sections and labels
Hypothesis: The labels and sections in the pricing panel are intuitive
Our hypothesis was almost rejected. We discovered that 43% of our participants were confused about the label ‘Past purchases in this SID’. It made them feel like that section is supposed to have all the quantities of all products purchased in the past in that subscription (SID). In reality, it was supposed to depict the past quantities of the Product (mentioned on top) in this subscription.
Original label:
Past purchases in this SID
Updated label:
Past purchases of this product in this SID
Resolution: We compromised on the length of the label and changed it to ‘Past purchases of this product in this SID’. This was not ideal, but we decided to update it to make it less confusing for the user.
FINAL DESIGN
Guided selling process
Guided selling process
Introduced a guided selling approach where the user follows through a step-by-step process through quote creation
Attribute-based configuration
I designed the attribute-based configuration model, moving away from the flat SKU concept used for perpetual/licensed products. This saved our Sales Reps a lot of time since finding the right SKU with the exact configuration was a huge challenge for the reps.
Describe your image
Describe your image
Discount Guidance
With this visibility, the sales reps could give appropriate discounts the very first time, instead of getting their quote rejected due to higher-than-recommended discounts
Describe your image
Describe your image
IMPACT
I was the lead designer for a product that was critical for VMware's ambitious transformation into a SaaS-first company. I was able to navigate through the ambiguous (and large) domain space with trusted design practices to achieve a consensus across our stakeholder, user groups.
USER/STAKEHOLDER FEEDBACK
Field Sales Rep
Current upgrade process is very difficult for velocloud. Most reps don’t even know how to do it. The new design is incredible compared to what they currently have
Director of Sales
This looks too easy
Field Sales Rep, New user
I’m fairly new to VMware so I’m not super familiar with CPQ++ just yet. But it looks very easy to use. I thought it was very intuitive and easy to navigate
Sales Ops
It was awesome. Of course, I was involved in the user acceptance training so I somewhat knew my way around. Even with that context, I cannot stress how much better the experience is. So quick and easy
Sales Ops
The speed at which we could create the quote was amazing. And to create the ‘correct quote with the automated check and processes is so valueable