Designing an enterprise quoting service
Early moderated usability testing surfaced a problem that only shows up at scale: for large quotes, configuring every location one by one was repetitive and took too long.
A quoting journey that supports multiple locations
The customer prepares the request digitally. A specialist completes the review before the quote is returned.
- Customer
- Digital interaction
Customer enters locations
Separate location entry from repeated service setup.
- Digital interaction
Customer configures services
Allow settings to be reused across locations.
- Internal team
- Human review
Human review
A specialist review remained part of the service before the quote was returned.
| Role | Product Design Lead. I owned the user journeys and interface, aligned the product owner, development lead, and architect, and ran the research. |
|---|---|
| Context | An anonymous telecom enterprise, told in two chapters: digitising an offline quoting process for enterprise connectivity across many locations, then returning roughly eighteen months later to support internal sales and bulk workflows. |
| Users | Enterprise customers, and the internal sales teams who quote on their behalf. |
| Timeframe | Two engagements, roughly eighteen months apart. |
| What I owned | Journeys and interface design, alignment across product, engineering, and architecture, moderated usability testing, and the current AI-assisted prototyping phase. |
| Status | First chapter launched and in service. Current phase: moderated usability completed, revised guidance still a design decision that has not shipped. |
Chapter one: digitising offline quoting
The first engagement digitised an offline, manual quoting process for enterprise connectivity sold across many customer locations. What had been handled by hand became a self-service flow, with a human review step at the end because a fully self-service process was not yet possible.
Early moderated usability testing surfaced a problem that only shows up at scale: for large quotes, configuring every location one by one was repetitive and took too long.
My role in chapter one
I owned the journeys and the interface, and worked directly with the product owner, the development lead, and the architect so the design stayed honest against backend constraints and local requirements.
- Ran the moderated usability testing that surfaced the repetitive location-by-location configuration.
- Redesigned the flow to separate entering locations from configuring them, and to let users reuse settings across locations.
- Aligned the revised design with the product owner, after which it went straight to development without a retest.
Chapter one outcome
The service launched and the team reported a substantial reduction in turnaround time. That improvement was communicated to me as project feedback; I was not involved in measuring it.
The initial implementation simplified the modular design I had proposed. When new capabilities were needed, the team returned to the original structure, which had allowed for that expansion.
Chapter two: internal sales and bulk workflows
Roughly eighteen months later I returned to support internal sales and bulk workflows. When the expansion roadmap arrived, it was written as a list of system functions rather than user jobs, so I reframed it around the jobs people were actually trying to do. I used task flows and priorities to work through the experience with the team.
The current phase uses AI-assisted functional prototyping against defined objectives. Moderated usability testing found that error feedback was confusing when things went wrong. I revised the guidance to be clearer, but that revision is still a design decision awaiting sign-off and has not shipped. I also recommended prioritising prevention of avoidable errors. That remains a proposal.
Reflection
Both engagements showed why the whole journey matters. Making each individual step understandable was not enough when customers needed to repeat it across many locations. Research helped us see where the structure needed to change.
Methodology grounding: Moderated usability testing; Jobs To Be Done; AI-assisted functional prototyping.