Web-Based CRM for Mortgage Professionals
Pulse by FocusIT is premium customer relationship management (CRM) software for loan officers and other mortgage industry professionals. The software works in conjunction with loan origination systems and provides robust marketing and lead management tools.
The Challenge
The Pulse Team asked Iteration Group to help make the product easier and more efficient to use. This meant that existing screens would need to be streamlined to reduce redundancies and to emphasize the most important features. They also hoped we could find opportunities to expand the feature set to help better solve problems facing loan officers, in addition to the existing user base (primarily loan processors).
Goals
After years of continuous "add-ons" to the system - the interface became cluttered and hard to use. Our focus was to:
- Eliminate redundant features and highlight the most important ones
- Reduce the number of clicks required to perform the most common tasks and enable loan officers to do their jobs faster
- Have key information needed by loan officers available at a glance
- Allow users to quickly access information without navigating to many different screens
- Make setting up workflows efficient and intuitive
- Allow for customization so the product suits the needs of a range of different working styles and job roles
The Process & Success
To get a better sense of what was working and not working in the existing Pulse product, we interviewed existing and potential users as well as some of the key stakeholders at FocusIT. We asked the internal team to give us an idea of what they believed to be both the key strengths and weaknesses of the product, and what features they predicted their users might like to see. Next, we interviewed a range of users to determine to what extent these expectations lined up with demand. The users we interviewed ranged in job description from branch managers to brokers and loan consultants.
We then broke down the feedback from both users and stakeholders into an actionable list of key findings. Next, we began work on our first drafts of key screens, beginning with the sales pipeline functionality. We determined the most important features, eliminated features that weren’t being used and added several new or improved features to the product.
After we completed the key screens, we then received feedback both from the FocusIT team and from our original group of test users. We walked through the screens with users and asked them if they could figure out how to perform tasks and access information, as well as asking for qualitative feedback on what worked and what didn’t. We then made changes to screens based on the feedback we received.
After receiving ongoing feedback from the FocusIT team and our test users, we completed our final annotated wireframes, and then finalized the new user interface designs, which were ready to be built-out by the FocusIT development team. We were proud to have exceeded the expectations of FocusIT and our test users.
