Business Intelligence for Industry

A leader in business intelligence with 30 years in their industry, this client needed to completely overhaul their extensive, PC-only, desktop application to bring it into the 21st century. Working closely with one other designer, I researched the wide variety of users who depend on the platform and developed the UX strategy, information architecture, and the complete interface experience from wireframes and prototypes to the final visual layer and first-time user on-boarding experience.

Users from all over the world depend on this tool to do their job. Some of them are highly technically proficient on lightning-fast connections, others have unreliable internet or limited exposure to modern devices. The application is used by everyone from plant workers, engineers and salespeople, to industry strategists and CEOs.

In addition to the challenge presented by such a diverse user group, the old application was so hard to use that many users depended on the client’s customer service representatives to use the tool for them. While some tasks like resource tracking and supply chain research are fairly simple, advanced analysis and forecasting activities have built-in complexities that can not be dumbed down. Our challenge was to make the paths through all these tasks as clear and intuitive as possible.

When all was said and done, we’d created a soup-to-nuts solution for industry-wide research, including one-stop access to financial analysis tools, benchmarking and what-if scenarios, CRM, mapping and graphing tools and a robust set of database query features.

The new tools dramatically improved the flexibility and usability of the application, promoting increased access to the intelligence users in this industry need to do their research.