Summary


The problem

Silver Lining was a small business consulting firm needing to transition their business model to SaaS in order to get the price point down and increase the value for our customers. The founder and existing management team were non-technical and needed to shift the business model to a technology enabled business.

Key Activities

Research

  • Persona definition

  • Staff experience mapping

  • User experience mapping

Product Development

  • Interface design

  • Usability testing

  • Ticket management

  • Testing and Q/A

Business Strategy

  • Member of Leadership Team

  • Completed brand refresh

  • Managed launch marketing

  • Built partnerships

the solution

I was hired to lead a creative and technical transformation. Over the course of 2 years we successfully built a custom SaaS platform (in MEAN stack), brought our customer price point from $2,000 /mo to $300 /mo, and executed a process design and improvement project to increase customer engagement and success.

 

Persona Definition

Personas are a big part of SLAPcenter. Their product requires business owners to name and define their ideal client. They had a great sense of their ideal client already and as a leadership team we clearly defined this client and his name is James.

James live in a “B” city like Cleveland. He is a passionate small business owner. He knows his products or services will improve the lives of others but struggles with finding the time and money to grow his business. He has a wife and 2 children. His ultimate goal is freedom of time and money to enjoy a fulfilled life.

James became excited about Silver Lining’s SLAPcenter after seeing their CEO talk at a conference.

 

Staff experience Mapping

I led an experience mapping session with the client facing staff. We mapped the entire customer experience from their perspective. Including all known touch points in the customers life.

Outcomes

  • Create SLAPworld to pull business community interaction and support inside of SLAPcenter

  • Generate accountability beyond SLAPcenter by enrolling spouses and partners in growth process with automatic, optional, updates

 
 
 

User Experience Mapping

This map gave our team the opportunity to see where and why the user experience required re-iteration.

 
 
 

Member of leadership team

I sat on a Leadership Team of 5. We focused on managing the significant transition from a consulting and training business to a SaaS business.

  • I participated in all strategic summits and planning sessions to understand customer need and then translate that into a SaaS offering that would scale

  • Led the team through a complete brand update

  • Led the product strategy and development of the new SaaS offering

 

Completed Brand Refresh

 

  • I conducted customer and team feedback sessions to understand what the new logo and brand needed to represent

  • I built logo concepts and got CEO approval to change the brand of the business

  • Worked with designer to bring final logo concepts to life.

  • Built and finalized a brand book and design guidelines for brand implementation and consistency

  • Updated all assets and materials with new look and design

 

Managed Launch Marketing

I created a go to market strategy for the new SaaS offering. 

  • Wrote copy for launch and ongoing email marketing and drip campaigns

  • Built social media strategy and managed team to implement digital marketing

  • Created email campaigns in Agile CRM

  • Oversaw event production and initial thought leadership campaign

 

built Partnerships

I worked with business development team to put together partnerships to sell SLAPcenter.

  • I was tapped as a subject matter expert by the business development team to demo the product and help Partners understand how the product could help their small business owners

  • Used sales experience to close deals 

  • Silver lining’s partners have included American Express, Citrix, Nespresso, PayPal, Staples and Google

 

Interface Design

I created mockups for SLAPcenter’s new dashboard and task management.

 

Usability testing

  • Remote usability tests

  • Recruit users from existing client base

  • Release form for participants

  • Zoom link for video calling and recording

  • Silver Lining employee accompanied me for note taking

  • I sent tasks to users through zoom chat

  • I observed and recorded user response and behaviour via screen sharing

 

Ticket management

  • Created wireframes and technical specifications for developers

  • Attended developer daily huddles to support developers and our Tech Lead in implementing the work outlined in the tickets

  • Active in JIRA to support development of all features, answer questions and support the developers 

 

testing and Q/A

I managed testing of all new features on development server to ensure functionality and vision was built properly.

  • Management of customer testing groups to watch how they used each new feature and created enhancements of features based on customer experience

  • Bug testing and ongoing assessment of both user experience breakdowns as well as technical bugs

 

Thank you!