Standardizing workflow for a construction compliance company.
McCormick Compliance Consulting needed a document management system to eliminate the clutter and uncertainty in their construction permitting process.
McCormick was using multiple systems in order to complete the permitting process for their clients.
There was no standard workflow established and that led to occasional costly mistakes. The entire process centered around documents as tasks, however tasks were not always grouped by documents.
How might we enable our client to automate and standardize their document management?
What was holding the managers back?
The team was using a CRM called Asana, which is pretty great, but didn’t accomplish all the organization and automation that was needed for fast and accurate document management.
I conducted several interviews with the staff at McCormick over a few weeks.
What I found out was...
Oh really?
- Each project manager used Asana differently to keep track of ther work.
- Constant copying, pasting, and rereading notes and documents was taking too much time.
- Documents were the basis of all tasks but their workflow wasn’t really organized that way.
What if we?
- With a single document management system combined with the email client we built already, we could standardize and streamline their workflow.
- A simple way to keep track of each document’s status would eliminate the need for copious notes.
- Automating reminders, document requests, and form submission would dramatically reduce the workload.
Zoom call for user research.
How do we craft their perfect workflow?
Put it all together!
With the features and all-in-one system that we were aiming for in the long term, a light CRM is what came to mind.
This system would need to be able to house the weekly report email client that we had already delivered, the business’s many contacts, and the document management system at the least.
Sweet validation!
To figure out the best solution, I conducted some tests and interviews with workers who would use a system such as this and here is what I found.
As we learned more about their requirements, I designed this dashboard for ease and automation.
This should work...
- Condensing a left-side navigation would allow for future integration in a familiar design paradigm.
- Separating all the items into specific documents made sense to standardize the entire workflow.
- Dates would now automatically update in order to save time.
Uh oh, roadblocks!
- There were still some missing pieces like past projects and templates that didn't have a home yet.
- I realized that the documents would need subtasks or statuses to be able to integrate into the underlying CRM.
- Dates would still need to be editable to ensure correct intervals for clients.
And I oop!
Just when we thought we had the prefect structure figured out, a major change in the backend and integrated CRM made us have to rethink how to display the documents.
I moved the document groups into cards and separated the projects into permits which ended up being the main end result.
Initially the card idea took away some needed horizontal space and looked strange.
After more revisions, I reached a graceful final design that accomodated both the backed system (with the integrated larger CRM functionality), and the standardized workflow that the McCormick project managers needed.
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Teachable moments.
- I learned a lot working with McCormick and the Lambda Studios team, namely how much ownership the lone designer should take.
- I would approach user interviews a bit differently and really get a good foundation for the whole team regarding what the client needs, if I could do it all over again.
- Tables are hard to design and I’m so glad that I had some practice going into this project with them, and now I can’t wait to do more!
