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REIMAGINING THE FUTURE PURCHASE EXPERIENCE.
ROLE
Sr. Manager, Product Design
(Led strategy, design, research and cross-functional teams).
OVERVIEW
As Cisco transitions from a hardware to a service-based revenue model, modernizing its commerce platforms is crucial. Cisco's technology, powering a significant portion of the world's internet traffic and supporting over 500 billion devices, is essential in sectors like smart cities, healthcare, and education. A streamlined commerce experience is vital to ensure easy access to these products and services.
KEY STAKEHOLDERS
Executive leadership, Product & Engineering teams, Product Design Leadership and End User.
SCOPE
18 months
Strategy
OBJECTIVE
Modernize Cisco’s commerce platforms to create a unified, efficient system that supports its shift to a service-based model and addresses modern business needs?”
This question drove the Complex Cisco B2B Commerce project I led; the scope of this effort was massive—we are talking about $40-50 billions in annual sales across all routes to market.
Strategy
LANDSCAPE
KPI
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50% Reduction in time to create quote.
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50% Increase Partner CSAT / NPS Score.
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45% Reduction in time-on-task.
Impact
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Earning #1 company priority status and boosting satisfaction by 25%.
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Achieved a 55% click reduction compared to legacy tools.
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Pioneered the implementation of a next-gen AI assistant, automating workflows and reducing task time by 45%.
15
897
30+
55+
2,000+
60+
Research studies
​​​Research participants​​
​​Multidisciplinary design teams​​
Product Designers, UX Architects, UX Researchers, Product Managers, and Content Designers.​​
Step reduction (from legacy tools)
​​​Design screens​
​​E2E User flows
Strategy
PROBLEM STATEMENT
What we learned? Cisco's commerce system, is fragmented across 12 platforms, which complicates operations and obscures critical data, frustrating nearly 90% of partners.
Fragmented Customer Journey
Pre & post-purchase experiences are scattered across disparate systems, lacking a single, cohesive journey.
Limited Visibility into Metrics/Data
Missed opportunities to maximize value through cross-sell, upsell, and renewing more products and services.
Complex Purchasing
Outdated experience with an unclear interface that lacks straightforward functionalities (e.g. managing multiple deals).
Communication Barriers
Most partners have difficulty learning about order process changes and product updates.
Strategy
EMPHASIZE
“If you don’t understand the problem, it’s like navigating a new city without a map”.
To ensure our strategy was built on a solid foundation, we started the project by thoroughly understanding and analyzing the current end-to-end (E2E) commerce experience and it’s pain points. This process involved foundational research, including a meta-analysis from several Cisco teams, as well as the creation of journey maps, service design blueprints and competitive analysis.
Strategy
PERSONAS
Partners are crucial to Cisco’s commerce business, accounting for 90% of its transactions. This highlights the importance of a partner-driven approach in shaping our commerce strategies.
Initially, personas were undefined, so we developed detailed profiles to capture needs and goals of our partner users. This led to identifying seven key personas in the end-to-end journey, enabling us to design more targeted, user-centered solutions.
Strategy
OPPORTUNITY
Vision
Create a one-stop umbrella “shop” that will offer all Cisco products and buying programs (HW, SW, SaaS) that anticipates opportunities and recommends products based on insights, customer needs, and product life cycles.
Seamless Transition
Context-Aware (Data-Driven)
Simple
Fuse data across channels, touchpoints, and systems along the customer journey through APIs enablement and UX optimization.
Leverage CX and PX Cloud as integral parts of the commerce experience, providing personalized recommendations at early touchpoints. (Sales opportunities & insights)
Reduce the effort and create an efficient process across the end-to-end journey by rethinking the interactions within the Cisco commerce ecosystem. (E.g., Quote, Deal, and Order Creation).
Strategy
EXPLORE
HMW Create a unified, seamless commerce experience that is guided, personalized, and data-driven, that efficiently scales to meet Cisco, partner, and customer business needs?
I organized a Service Design Workshop with 35 members of our product and technical teams. During this collaborative session, we employed a blue-sky approach to design an ideal service journey without barriers. This exercise was pivotal in aligning our stakeholders and fostering a unified focus on our shared goals.
Design
DEFINE
Given the project's massive scope, our next step was to narrow our focus. I collaborated closely with product and technology teams to align on priority areas, refine the scope, and define the desired features.
On the left are artifacts that facilitated communication, informed decision-making, and helped develop ideas collaboratively with product, engineering, and design teams.
We quickly align on our next priorities as a team.
Design
IDEATE
Use case priritization
By 2025, Millennials will make up 75% of the global workforce. Our partners preferred transaction systems with the simplicity and modern design of B2C e-commerce so we created a new headless commerce experience framework, platform agnostic.
During the next weeks we crafted multiple use cases for T1 partners, to ensure our framework could scale effectively, and support varied offer. Additionally, I partnered with the Research Team to validate flow designs through direct partner feedback.
Design
REIMAGINE
I led the reimagined user experience by exploring cutting-edge concepts and, after several iterations, identified key areas to test for improvements.
Taking BOLD ideas
Unified- Unified end-to-end experience on a single platform (PX Cloud).
Guided- step-by-step guided experience.
Simple- Reduce the number of steps in the quote-to-order process compared to existing tools.
Informative- Instantly access the right information at your fingertips.
Design
VALIDATION
Bring complexity
While users anticipated a B2C-like experience, it became clear that complexity in certain scenarios was lacking.
Balance simplicity
Although they like the simplicity of the design they asked to balanced the needs of both non-technical users and professionals. (e.g. use of photos)
Streamline the journey
Users felt at some points they had to go through unnecessary screens or number of steps. Improvement on the navigations elements were suggested.
Exploring more features
Creating estimates in this tool outside of this flow is important.
Design
CONSOLIDATE
After couple of rounds of testing and alignment between our different stakeholders we had final concepts and flows. This is how we make some improvements:
Taking BOLD ideas
Bring Complexity- We pressure test complex scenario and offers.
Balance simplicity- We remove unnecessary images, and condensed some elements of the experience.
Streamline the journey- Combined more steps into single view and improve navigation.
Exploring more features- Enabled estimate creation, AI functionalities, and catalog taxonomy.
AI ASSISTANT
One key feature was the introduction of an AI assistant, which streamlined the process of finding detailed product information. Previously, partners had to rely on data sheets or external searches, like Google, to locate the information they needed. With the AI assistant, users could access all relevant details directly within the platform, significantly speeding up the research process and creating a more efficient and seamless user experience.
Materialize
EXECUTE
Final push
After creating designs and Figma prototypes, it was crucial to assess the technical feasibility and ensure the logic aligned with the back-end systems. I worked closely with technical architects and developers to understand the back-end data structures and map them to our designs, enabling seamless front-end and back-end integration.
The proof of concept was recognized by the SVP as a key success, demonstrating the project’s readiness for production.
Materialize
RESULTS
Achievements
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Achieved a 55% click reduction compared to legacy tools.
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Increased user satisfaction by 25%, demonstrating the effectiveness of the new design.
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The project was elevated to the top priority within the CX organization due to its significant impact.
REDUCTION IN CLICKS (APPROX.)
55%
Create a proposal
Compute SaaS offer in PX
Cloud (approx. 50 clicks)
Place an order
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