Redefining
Enterprise
Onboarding
Intelex's document import process was broken by design. Client onboarding stretched to 6 months at its worst, burning consultant hours and eroding trust. I ran the discovery that surfaced why, and carried the redesign from service blueprints through to a working prototype.
Here's the solution.
After months of discovery, blueprinting, and iteration, a redesigned document import experience, built to collapse a six-month onboarding into a matter of days.
Replace a broken import process and restore client confidence
As UX Designer, my goal was to replace the outdated document import control process with a new, efficient system. The previous approach relied on a combination of two legacy projects, creating a fragile, error-prone experience that hurt clients and the business alike.
Working with the Product Manager, Lead Developer, and dev team, we developed a new system focused on ease of use, reliability, and effective support for document and metadata import, with the goal of reducing time-to-value for every new client.
Product Manager · UX Researcher · UX Designer (Me) · Engineering Lead · Dev team
Identifying the core problems through research & discovery
Through surveys and interviews, we discovered critical issues and trends. This deep understanding allowed us to develop targeted strategies to tackle the challenges head-on.
Up to 6 Months
to Go Live
Getting documents, files, and client data ready for import into the Intelex platform would take weeks, and in worst cases up to 6 months, long before clients saw any value from their purchase.
Unbillable Hours
Piling Up
Customer support team agents were consumed by clients unable to get documents into the system. Constant back-and-forth between CST and clients compounded delays and costs at every step.
What was actually true
The old import tool wasn't one system. It was two legacy tools stitched together: one moved metadata into the old document control platform, the other migrated documents from that platform to the new one. When the team mapped the actual workflow, the failure point wasn't inside either tool. It was the handoff between them.
A client sends data to a consultant, the consultant sends it to IT, IT finds one error and bounces the whole batch back, the client resends, IT finds the next error, and the loop repeats. Two to six months per client. Neither tool on its own was ever going to fix that, because neither tool owned the seam where things actually broke.
Early in the project, before any solution had taken shape, the team faced a real choice. Patch the two legacy tools so they worked together better, or scrap both and build one tool from scratch on Intelex's own API. Patching was cheaper and would have shipped sooner. Rebuilding meant a longer stretch with nothing to demo, which is part of why the project was later paused when development capacity was pulled elsewhere.
The product manager for the initiative and the VP of Product made the call to rebuild. Patching would never reach the actual break point. It would only delay arriving at the same rebuild later.
My role in that decision was the discovery work behind it. I ran the root cause analysis and the competitive analysis on the existing system during early discovery, and that work was part of what surfaced the seam as the real problem. I did not make the final call. It was made by the product manager and the VP of Product, working from what discovery had already shown.
From there I carried the work forward: service blueprinting the current and future states, then the task flows, wireframes, and a working prototype. The rebuild was paused before it shipped and picked up again by the team after I left Intelex in 2020.
Activities & Outputs
Conducted stakeholder and user interviews, ran a problem statement workshop to align on the core friction points in the document import experience.
Root cause analysis and VOC research revealed that fragmented tooling and unclear feedback left clients unable to self-serve. Target customer mapping aligned the team on who we were designing for.
Cross-functional blueprinting workshops with Product, Research, and Engineering mapped the current state end-to-end, exposing handoff failures and surface-level fixes that masked deeper systemic issues.
Impact and effort analysis with the Product Manager helped us vertically slice the work into shippable increments, prioritising the highest-value flows first to demonstrate progress early.
Task flow concepts and design principle definition gave the team a shared language before any pixels were placed, reducing rework and aligning engineering on intent, not just screens.
Mid-to-high fidelity flows in Adobe XD brought the solution to life, iterated through dev walkthroughs, stakeholder reviews, and usability sessions before handoff.
Our UX Research Lead led the research effort while I focused on root cause analysis. Together we ran blueprinting workshops with leads across Product, Research, and Engineering, building a shared understanding that let us move faster with confidence.
The DC Import / Customer Journey Map board, where the discovery, synthesis, and ideation work was assembled and worked through as one canvas.
The current [document import] process forces users to adapt to old and clunky V5, neglecting the need for a quick and accurate way to import documents. Our product will close this gap by building a user-focused importing process, with end-users receiving appropriate feedback within reasonable time.
"A visual journey of our discovery and ideation process, capturing the evolving understanding of user needs and workflows."
"Flow notes of old version V5 by our dev lead team, laying the groundwork for seamless integration and development."
Breathing
New Life In
To kick off the concept ideation phase, we defined design principles that required the experience to be autonomous, adaptive, and integrated.
We needed a more holistic experience that allowed users to discover related content to support their learning journey.
Autonomous
Empower users to self-serve through clear, guided workflows that reduce dependence on support agents at every step of the import process.
Adaptive
Cater to diverse client contexts and data structures, ensuring the system handles variation gracefully without forcing users to bend to legacy constraints.
Integrated
Seamlessly connect documents, metadata, and feedback loops so the experience feels cohesive, not like a bolt-on import tool grafted onto a legacy system.
Further, Higher, Faster, together
I am extremely proud of this project and its growth. The dev team's willingness to step outside their comfort zone was commendable, and it allowed us to ask different, critical questions that drove progress even further.
The team's thorough assessment of the current state was a vital step toward success. Though it took time, confidence grew as our shared understanding deepened, making it much easier to plan forward and break down the blueprint maps into future state scenarios.
The strong bond formed with the Product Manager through our team sessions was a crucial element in our success. Transparency around approaches, perspectives, and goals let us align, share, and plan the trajectory of the project together.
A Video I Produced for the Product Town Hall
I conceived, scripted, and produced a short film presented at the Product Town Hall, showcasing how we shifted from a sales-driven model to one deeply rooted in the voice of the customer and UX methodologies.
This video was a turning point, sparking broader discussions and encouraging process improvements across the company. It broke down silos, promoted transparency, and empowered teams to adopt more agile practices, fostering a culture of collaboration and continuous improvement.
Voices from the team
The project's success was built on trust, transparency, and a shared commitment to the user. Here's how the people who were there describe the experience.
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"Before UX involvement, user adoption was low. But using the UX playbook guided by Chris and the research lead, we captured user feedback early to level set and build our foundations out with greater confidence, and defensible evidence that justified our team direction."
Matt Conquer
Product Manager
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"He brings a passion to everything he does, which is infectious. Chris is driven by a desire to keep digging deep into the hows and whys of every initiative. He is fearless even when tackling something new. He is definitely a strong value add to any UX organization."
Kara-Anne Fraser
UX Manager
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"Chris is a passionate designer with excellent interpersonal skills who always strives to make the design process transparent and welcoming. I can always rely on Chris to deliver on-time and to a high standard, no matter the complexity or ambiguity."
Marc Aquino
Senior Product Designer