Reflection - Visualization

Challenge

As part of an Account Management team, having visual tools to present to customers is critical to  clearly communicate your message and accomplish goals. When approached with an opportunity to  move from Marketing into Sales, I was excited to challenge my analytical, data-driven mind to focus  on how to drive sales for my organization. Once I joined the group, I quickly realized there was no  process or streamlined approach in customer interaction within the group. It was all autonomous.  Everyone was working in their own bubble to manually create materials for customer meetings. The  data would need to be manually run, scrubbed to ensure accuracy, then put into a format that was  somewhat presentable to represent the organization. It was all very homegrown and could take  several days to prepare. The team all had different levels of experience with data analytics and  thoughts on how to present data. The lack of resources was both time consuming and

Selection

Having experience in data analytics, I had envisioned a tool that could be helpful to the group to  streamline this process. I felt that the Visualization Design Tool would allow me to imagine how the  sales tools could look like in order to gather feedback and align ideas with the team. Having a visual  tool would help initiate the discussion with the team to create efficiencies.

Application

I set up a meeting to discuss how each team member was using the data and how they were  manipulating the data into a usable format. I asked them each to walk me through their process to  fully understand how each member was using the data and achieving the end result. Everyone had  different data sets, different ways at looking at the data and different end results. All of them being  very time consuming with a high risk for error. This provided useful insight. It made me realize how  important this resource would be for the team and allowed me to adapt how I originally envisioned it  to ensure it met everyone’s needs. I then created a mock-up of the report that I was envisioning,  including the user interfacing and presented it to the team.

Insight

By applying the Visualization Design Tool, our team was able to collaborate on a unified automated  tool that allows a streamlined process to increase efficiency. By sharing ideas across the team, we  were all able to gain insights from each other on how to improve our own process and interaction  with our customers. There were several iterations of the report until we were able to come to a final  result that would accomplish the goals of each member. In the end, the initial envisioned report was  separated into two reports to easily communicate the data to the customer. As we initially used the  reports, we asked customers for feedback, which was also incorporated in a later updated version.

Approach

I feel that the Visualization Design Tool was the correct tool for establishing reports that are used  useful and still being used in the organization today. Next time, I would expand the insights to  additional groups internally and externally to customers. Gaining feedback from customers would  confirm that the message is being communicated clearly and allow any necessary changes to occur  prior to implementing the reports.

