REDUCING SALES CYCLE TIME BY 20%

I led the design for TrustShare, a dynamic content management and deal tracking application that transformed a manual and burdensome security assessment process into a streamlined workflow for compliance and sales teams, reducing sales cycle time by 20%.  

MY ROLE
Lead UX Designer

COMPANY
TrustCloud

PROBLEM OVERVIEW

When a service provider is selling its software to another interested vendor, a third-party risk assessment is done. It typically occurs after initial discussions and negotiations with potential vendors or service providers. Once there is a mutual interest in forming a business relationship, the interested buyer initiates the third-party risk assessment to evaluate the vendor's capabilities, security practices, regulatory compliance, financial stability, and overall risk profile.

This assessment helps the interested buyer make informed decisions about whether to proceed with the vendor relationship and what risk mitigation measures may be necessary to address any identified vulnerabilities. As part of these assessments compliance teams are asked to gather various documents and asnwer security questionnaires prolonging the sales cycle and impacting company revenue.

How might we improve the security assessment process so that we reduce the burden on compliance admins and the revenue impacts on the company?

SOLUTION

I designed a safe and secure customer facing 'trust' portal where prospects could learn about our user's compliance posture and download necessary documents reducing the sales cyle time by 20%.

This new self-serve experience helped our compliance team users reduce the number of security questionnaires required to pass a review and reduce the overall burden on their teams.

Key Features:

• Deal tracking admin experience
• CRM Integration
• Customizable customer facing website
• Business integlligence dashboards 

DELIVERABLES

• User interviews
• Competitive Analysis
• Alignment Workshops
• Project Management
• Product Management
  

• Mockups
  
• Prototypes
• User Testing and Validation
• Final specs
• Asset production

HOW IT STARTED

When I started leading design for TrustShare, there was a version of the trust portal in production. There were very few users and the product wasn’t gaining much traction. We only had a small set of companies really leveraging it as part of their security review process.

HOW IT'S GOING

Now we have 90+ users ranging from startups to enterprises that have made it a critical piece in the security review process and the way they manage vendor relationships.

I’m going to share how we got there and provide a look into my process.

USER INTERVIEWS REVEALED A REACTIVE AND BURDENSOME PROCESS

I had little knowledge about the security review process and why a questionnaire was required so I conducted user interviews to get a better understanding.

Getting all of the necessary items needed to complete the review is very time consuming. If a security questionnaire is required to be answered then it often jumps from a couple days to 7-10 days.

When a request for documents or security questionnaires come in, they get assigned to an analyst without much notice. Depending on priority an analyst is expected to complete them in addition to her day-to-day dutiess

“I often need to work nights and weekends to complete my questionnaires and meet deadlines“

- James, Compliance Admin

These tasks are in addition to normal duties so often getting them done means working outside the normal working day. I was very empathetic during these interviews because I heard things like, "I missed my kid’s game" or "I cancelled date night because I was stuck answering a questionnaire."

Some of the users we interviewed said they complete 300 - 500 security questionnaires a year within their team of 2-3. The documents requested and questions asked are often very similar for each sales deal.

I captured notes, quotes and insights from the sessions in Figjam board which allowed for efficient sharing and collaboration when sharing the results of the user interviews.

I took those key findings from my interviews and presented those to the team during an alignment session. Providing this background and context help paint a clearer picture about what our user was dealing with on a daily basis. 

ACTIVITIES AND OUTPUTS

• 6 User Interviews
• Figjam discovery doc
• Key Findings Working Session

HOW MIGHT WE STREAMLINE THE PROCESS?

Once the team had a better understanding of the problem and user process, I led a workshop with my eng lead and product manager to define our problem statement and goal or outcome we wanted to drive with this next iteration of the product.

This was new for them so I came to the workshop with a how might we statement in mind and a goal. We then made some edits and landed with this statement.

PROBLEM STATEMENT

How might we improve the security review process so that we reduce the burden on compliance admins and the revenue impacts on the company?

OUTCOME

Reduce the sales cycle time by 15% by providing a secure means for prospects to self-serve the information needed to complete a security review reducing the burden on the internal compliance team

I collaborated with my PM to create this persona so we could get a shared understanding and then shared with our lead dev. We’ve since utilized this persona as starting point to introduce our user as our team grew.

I often thought of the quote from James about working nights and weekends to get these out.

I know I don’t like working nights and weekends and there had to be a better way.

ACTIVITIES AND OUTPUTS

• Problem/Goal or Outcome Working Session
• Persona

ANALYZING THE COMPETITION

There were some competitors that were having some success with their version of a trust portal. I completed some competitive analysis on what they were doing.

I went back to some of the admins I interviewed and also got their perspective as to what's important and what isn’t so we could incorporate that into our improvements.

Each competitor site revealed important docs were placed above the fold so they could be accessed efficiently by prospects during the security review process. I would mimic this behavior when looking to redesign the homepage. 

ACTIVITIES AND OUTPUTS

• Competitive Analysis
• Share Insights with Team

MAKING THE TRUST PORTAL MORE APPROACHABLE

I performed an audit of the current site and collected feedback on the experience.

The biggest take away for me was prospects didn’t know where to start.

We had some useful information on the site but they want to get the documents and things they need to evaluate this vendor and move on.

Prospects also mentioned the need to search for specific policies or documents. 

With this information in hand, I went to work on how we might make the portal more approachable.

I updated the sitemap to reduce the number of choices presented on the previous version of the portal to give more prominence to the more utilized items like documents, policies and controls.

I began working on some sketches to get some ideas flowing and then moved into lo-fid. Since the homepage was an important part of the workflow, I validated some of these lo-fidelity ideas with users to ensure we were on the right track.

With some ideas flushed out I moved into lo-fidelity concepts for a trust portal highlighting the key areas of your compliance program.

Since the homepage was an important part of the workflow, I validated some of these lo-fidelity ideas with users to ensure we were on the right track.

I translated those validated ideas into high-fidelity designs that addressed some of the major gaps found during the discovery phase.

I moved the important documents our users would need to share with prospects to the top of the page so they are easily accessible for download.

I made policies and controls more prominent as this was often the second set of items prospects needed to review.

Last Search was made available so prospects were able to find an artifact not directly shared.

ACTIVITIES AND OUTPUTS

• UX audit and heuristic analysis of current site
• Lo-fidelity sketching
• High-fidelity design
• User validation on critical information presented

IMPROVEMENTS TO THE ADMIN EXPERIENCE

During my UX audit I discovered some gaps in the admin experience in the areas of branding and tracking each prospect deal through the review process.

The branding experience lacked the necessary elements to make our user's portal look and feel more like their own.

I redesinged the branding screen to allow for more customization around logo and colors fostering that connection with their brand.

Once customized, the compliance and sales team are ready to invite prospects to their portal.

One of the other gaps discovered during our audit was confusion on where to manage user invitations, deal or company information and documents. There were separate views for documents, invitations, company overview and shared content. 

To reduce this confusion, I combined users screen and the company screen into a single experience where compliance admins can manage opportunities, invitations, view shared documents, questionnaires and activity for that prospect in one place.

This change also simplified the prospect invitation flow seen below. 

ACTIVITIES AND OUTPUTS

• High-fidelity designs
• User testing

MOVING IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION

The team was able to get the redesign into production and I worked with my triad (Product, Design, Engineering) to closely monitor our progress.

We saw an increase usage from our current customer based mostly made up of startups. Our sales team began getting traction with medium sized and enterprise customers and soon we had some onboard.

This was exciting to see but we had to make some iterations based on some of those needs over the last quarter of the year.

Key Results

• User base grew by 80%
• Invitations for prospects increased by 25%
• Sales closed enterprise deals

CONTINUOUS IMPROVMENT

As we began adding more Enterprise customers, we learned that the number of documents typically shared could  be 6 or more so that the top right area could get crowded in a hurry.

We also learned the desire to show certifications that may be in progress as this helps prospects know they are going through an audit and will have it soon

We moved documents down to scale for our enterprise users.

We added the ability to display in progress certifications and provide a description about each one so our users could add additional context pertinent to their prospects.

We added additional branding and custom URL features so users can make their portal more of an addition to, rather than a separate site.

Management options were added enabling users to customize their content and provide additional context for the different policies, controls and documents on their portal. This enabled users to produce content targeted towards their audience and resulted in fewer follow up questions from prospects.

TrustShare Admin Policy Details Content Management Settings

Policy Details - Trust Portal

Intelligent reporting was also added so users could see what pages and files were being viewed and downloaded the most. This helped with internal prioritization when it came time to update or review certain documents. The more highly viewed or downloaded were prioritized higher than others.

Deal values from the different prospects currently in the security assessment stage were rolled up and displayed along with some other key information. Compliance teams were able to report how much revenue they were directly contributing to the company. 

Finally we provided a CRM integration for realtime deal information that could be pulled and updated as prospects went through the sales cycle.

ACTIVITIES AND OUTPUTS

• High-fidelity designs
• User testing

DRIVING OUTCOMES

Users reported a drop in the number of security questionnaires which reduced the overall sales cycle time by 20% over the previous 6 months.

• compliance admins reported spending less time on reviews
• reported fewer errors due to centralized location for documents and questionnaires
• increase in portal invitations earlier in the sales cycle

DECREASE IN QUESTIONNAIRES

Users reported a decrease in the number of questionnaires required for a review -
One user refuses to answer them and just sends prospects to portal

DECREASE IN FOLLOW UPS

Sales reps reported fewer follow up questions from prospects decreasing the back and forth time with the compliance team

INCREASE IN USERS

TrustShare product increased its user base from 30+ to 90+ within a one-year timeframe resulting in a revenue impact of 400K for the business

“When we refer a customer or prospect to TrustShare, it mitigates the need for a questionnaire entirely”

- Mick, Compliance Admin

NEXT STEPS

• Design workflow to enable users to author and publish frequently asked questions to their trustshare website
• Add more customization options such as fonts and content so companies further replicate their brand and tone

ABOUT THE COMPANY

TrustCloud helps companies grow and earn trust in every business relationship by democratizing GRC from an expensive, confusing requirement into an affordable and approachable skill for everyone. 

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