My role
Senior Product Designer
Industry
HR
Problem
Imagine you're a company looking to hire in an unfamiliar country. You need to figure out all the costs involved in payroll, benefits, and taxes. What if you could instantly calculate these yourself, without lengthy email exchanges with a sales team?
Outcome
As the Senior Product Designer leading this project, I worked with a cross-functional team to develop an in-platform solution, allowing Remote's customers to calculate costs independently, which reduced the sales team's workload by nearly 14,000 hours annually.
Background
Remote is a company that simplifies other businesses' processes to build teams globally by managing global payroll, benefits, compliance, and taxes on their behalf. Previously, whenever a customer or potential customer wanted a quote for hiring a new employee through Remote’s Employer of Record (EOR) service, they had to email the request and wait for a salesperson to estimate the costs, which was made with the use of a spreadsheet. If the customer needed to adjust the benefits package, salary, or hiring location, they had to engage in lengthy email exchanges, making the sales process highly time-consuming.
This project was kickstarted by the sales leadership team, due to their concerns about the amount of time the sales team was spending on email exchanges.
Understanding
This project lasted for about four months, and we started with a workshop following the research phase to determine the core problems and the MVP.
To fully understand the problem, I began by conducting user interviews with both Remote's salespeople and customers who had requested calculations at any point. I aimed to uncover the steps before the calculation, why they reached out to Remote, and what happened after they received the estimations.
“...sometimes I use our competitors' calculators to make sure the spreadsheet is giving me the right numbers.”
Remote's sales representative
The research helped me to visualize the flow between customers wanting to hire abroad and Remote's salespeople. It also highlighted the significant time sales reps wasted and their lack of trust in the company's own internal tools.
Problem definition
1
Time spent on calculations
Remote's sales team spent an average of 1400 hours monthly on manual calculations for customers, which made them highly prone to errors.
2
Inneficient budget planning
Without having their hiring budget estimates, customers were struggling to plan effectively, wasting time for both the company and the candidates.
3
Lack of autonomy
Customers relied on the sales team for calculations, causing delays and limiting their ability to move quickly and take informed decisions independently.
Automate the calculations
Help customers run calculations on their own for mandatory contributions when hiring internationally.
Shift the customers behaviour
If we could nudge customers into starting the calculations with a well-defined hiring budget, we could make their process more efficient.
Success criteria
FOR CUSTOMERS
Increase the monthly creation of calculations from 0 to 3.500
FOR SALES REPRESENTATIVES
Decrease the time spent on calculations from 1.366 to 200 hours
Bringing clarity to product decisions
Having definition on the problems we were solving, our goals and how we'd measure success, I started creating wireframes, which I quickly presented to users for feedback.
I've also used wireframes as a communication tool, bringing clarity and tangibility to the product decisions. Here's where assumptions were validated and product strategy was discussed in the early stages of the project.
The scope for the MVP was determined through sessions with the product manager, engineering lead, and stakeholders. Once completed, we tested it, and the feedback was very positive. Customers greatly appreciated the idea of having a calculator available anytime, anywhere, without any waiting time.
After testing wireframes with users, it was time for me to jump on high fidelity designs, which were built using Remote's design system with some components being created from scratch.
By giving Remote 3 pieces of information and one click, customers were presented with a detailed calculation of what are all the mandatory costs they’d have to hire an employee in a given country. What before took 3 days to be created, could now be generated by any customer, any time.
The calculation
One of our goals was to shift our customers’ behavior so that they begin the calculation with their hiring budget in mind, rather than just the desired salary. This approach helps them determine exactly how much they can afford to pay a candidate based on their available budget.
To do that, we added two options in the first step of the calculation, allowing them to start from the salary or from their available budget.
After the first month of implementing the calculator, which remains accessible to all Remote customers via their dashboard, we could already confirm the success of our solution.
The numbers speak for themselves.
18.700
Number of calculations created in 3 months by customers - an average of 6.200 per month
97% less
Time spent creating calculations by the sales team — from 1400 to 41 hours per month
17% more
Qualified leads generated from Remote’s website by using the public version of the calculator
1
Outcomes over outputs
Reflecting on this project, I feel a deep sense of pride, particularly because we excelled in our exploration and focused on changing user behavior. By doing so, we increased the number of customers conducting calculations independently, which in turn boosted conversions on the platform.
2
Learn how to speak another language
Without understanding the business, as a UX designer I wouldn't be able to identify impactful opportunities or create new ones. I had to learn how the organization makes and spends money and what it values; otherwise, UX goals and metrics would seem irrelevant to business priorities.
3
Communication & Collaboration
Working in an async environment isn't always easy. So I made efforts to connect with my team on a daily basis and be vocal about my work to ensure everyone was aware and onboard with the work I was proposing.
4
We did that!
I’m really proud of our ability to get to the finish line (although this project has evolved since!). It became an important tool for Remote and it saves literally thousands of hours for customers, Remoters and indirectly, also provides candidates a better experience.