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Brandon O'Neil
NorthStar

Security system quote builder

My roles

I was both the designer and front-end developer. I talked with sales managers to identify how the reps used the previous product and discussed where we had opportunities to improve on it. I also worked with the developement team and product owner.

Why this project existed

This was a very quick project with a hard deadline. NorthStar's sales team had been using a separate third-party app to build security system quotes for potential customers. This product was very costly and the deadline to renew the license was not far away. My team was asked to build something to replace it which would eliminate the need to pay for a separate product and also have it integrated into our current system to improve the experience for the sales rep during the sales process.


Digging in

Identifying limitations & opportunities

  • Parts listed were static and not dynamic to the type of sales rep
  • NorthStar offers a range of products that change based on which type of panel is chosen
  • Not integrated into NorthStars iPad sales app. Reps had to switch between apps
  • There was no way to save a quote. Once they arrived at the system build-out part of the sales process, sales reps would have to remember and re-build what the quote was.

Decisions

We determined that we could build all the interface functionality in AngularJS and load it as a web page in the iPad app. Integrations would be pretty seamless and would allow the development team to have more control versus building it in iOS code.

Integrating into NorthStar's systems allowed us the ability to save quotes and link them to a customer's record. This would then push to the system build screen reducing the need for the rep to build it again manually.

We could add in the functionality of having images available for each product which would allow the rep to show the customer more information about the product and how it might look in their home.


Stumbling blocks / interations

Feedback

Since prototyping was done in code, we pushed a beta version out for testing. The feedback made me realize that I didn't fully understand the sales process and had to rebuild parts of the functionality.


Results

We made our deadline, saving the company $40,000/year, and delivered a robust, customized product that presented to the customer better and saved sales reps time and effort.