How I challenged Sales hypothesis to generate $500K+ MRR in 6 months
For our SMB customers, Sales identified a new business opportunity to give employees access to existing digital timesheets capability which was only accessible by HR. Only problem: "it was not so straightforward as they thought"
.png)
Company Overview
ADP is a Fortune 200 company and a provider of cloud-based Human Capital Management and payroll solutions to 800,000 businesses across 140 countries. ADP has featured in the Fortune® World’s Most Admired Companies™ list for 18 consecutive years and has 63,000 employees globally.
Opportunity
Company and Product
This project was delivered for ADP (Automatic Data Processing) in one of their SaaS products called "Payline"
Feature Request
Build timesheets feature for employees so that they can self-serve. Existing process was manual.
Team and My Role
3 Product Managers, 3 Development teams, Sales representatives and me (only UX/UI Designer)
Context
ADP is a global provider of cloud-based human capital management (HCM) solutions that unite HR, payroll, talent, time, tax and benefits. "Payline" is one of the 100+ product solution offerings which is available for small and medium sized companies in Australia and New Zealand.
As part of Payline feature offerings for SMB customers, Sales identified a new business opportunity. An existing HR-only timesheets could be extended to employees so that they can self-serve and enter their own hours in the system.
Current State
Desired State
Sales Proposed Benefits
01.
New Feature
New Feature offering to enhance our capabilities and bring in more recurring revenues with each timesheet submission
02.
Mid-Segment Offering
Closes gap between our Advanced Time and Attendance System (takes $7K and 12-52 weeks) and Basic HR Only Timesheets
03.
Electronic and Real-time
All transactions will be carried out electronically - reduces manual data entry and eliminates paper
04.
Ready prospects
6 ready now prospects with expected uptake of 15% of existing timesheets clients. Plan to call all existing clients to sell new offering.
Process
Empathize
I scheduled and conducted 6 one-on-one interviews with the customers HR practitioners and managers to understand their existing processes and needs
Insight
Aha moment!
Current state as mentioned by Sales
Actual current state found after Discovery
Discovery
After learning about new user types and additional use cases and low confidence on internal expertise, it was imperative to validate the new hypothesis with the wider customer base. Interviews couldn't have given the reach.
Hence, I recommended to conduct a "feature acceptance test" survey. This kind of survey was never conducted before.
3395 existing users were sent this survey in 2 batches. 413 users (12%) responded.
How many customers are ready prospects?
145 customers expressed strong interest. They either used paper timesheets, emails, phones, faxes or nothing
What they liked least about the concept?
Delays from employees
System abuse
Lack of certain other features
How many customers remained neutral?
40 customers liked the concept but expressed needs for additional use cases/features
What information HR need from employees?
4
What they liked most about the concept?
Less paperwork for admins
Less paper
Everything in one system
What are the issues with existing system?
4
Define
I collaborated with the 3 Product Managers, executive leadership and Sales to define the customer journeys and also conducted feature mapping and prioritisation exercise to add to the customer journey. Based on this exercise, the team was able to identify the "vision" state and define "delivery iterations" towards the vision state.
Customer Journey and Feature Map
Design & Prototype
Some design considerations I had to take -
-
Leverage ADP design system and global product design guidelines
-
Responsive and meet WCAG AA 2.1 standards.
-
Skeumorphic calendar view
-
Dense information view for quick review and actions
- Eliminated 5 out of 6 steps from the old HR view, leading to shorter TTT
Test and Release
-
Setup 5 client validation sessions to validate the solution
-
Rolled out pilot clients in May
-
Sent out survey post-release to pilot clients
Ratings from usability testing:
Pilot survey results:
Pilot release results:
Live pilot clients
High CSAT
Page views / day
Outcome
01.
New Feature
New Feature offering to enhance our capabilities and bring in more recurring revenues with each timesheet submission
02.
Mid-Segment Offering
Closes gap between our Advanced Time and Attendance System (takes $7K and 12-52 weeks) and Basic HR Only Timesheets
03.
Electronic and Real-time
All transactions will be carried out electronically - reduces manual data entry and eliminates paper
04.
Ready prospects
6 180 ready now prospects with expected uptake of 15% 40% of existing timesheets clients. Plan to call all existing clients to sell new offering.
05.
Compliant
Better compliant solution as per Australian Tax Organization's regulations to maintain daily hours and times for employees
At the end of 6-months of release, the company was able to reduce the churn by Based on Sales estimate, each new client onboarded on new timesheets was estimated to bring in additional $2K average in MRR + reduction in costs based on "off-cycle" payroll processing.
From user research and successful pilot, there was a strong confidence in acquisition and adoption of the feature. Survey already indicated 180 ready-new prospects, which had a potential to bring in a minimum of $4M ARR to the business.
