This article will discuss the core value of the workbench, the target user group, and whether the B-side homepage should adopt the cockpit design, and analyze the differences between other SaaS workbenches.
As a financial product manager for 4 years, I have promoted the product design, production and launch of 3 cockpit workbenches. Let's follow three questions to discuss the core value of the workbench, the target user group, and whether the B-end homepage should adopt a cockpit design, and analyze its differences from other SaaS workbenches.
Q1: What problems does the workbench want to solve?
Almost all B-end products are committed to achieving the goal of "reducing costs and increasing efficiency", but the specific problems faced by each enterprise and each business line are very different. The workbench mainly solves the following problems:
- One-stop operation: Integrate decentralized operation portals to improve efficiency.
- Online management: reduce paper ledgers and realize information management.
- Data unification: Solve the problem of inconsistent data caliber.
The basic premise that a workbench can be driven is that there are strong problems to be solved, and in financial institutions, for example, business goals, team building, user pain points, etc.
First of all, the business goal is the basis for the project to be established, which can be the necessity of the core business or the stage goal of competition with peers. For example, one of the projects is the "core replacement tide", the core system of the old batch is the old system developed more than 10 years ago, and it is unanimously developed in the seam and patch chimney style; on the other hand, the information innovation itself is a lot of overhead, from the cost consideration, it is better to reconstruct the whole and adopt the latest information innovation and microservice architecture.
Secondly, the construction of the service team. When a business is built from 0 to 1, for example, after the establishment of occupational pension, private banking and other businesses, it will be accompanied by the establishment of a whole system. The principle behind it is that the internal mechanism of financial institutions needs to be allocated to the cost of informatization, and if such emerging business lines do not have their own systems or projects, they need to be carried in the budgets of other departments, and there will inevitably be a contradiction of resource run between departments, and eventually new projects will be established.
In addition, user pain points are also a common cause but not a core factor. User pain point 1: less people live more. In the past, many domestic enterprises did not pay enough attention to informatization, and there was no need to spend a high price to buy a set of software, and now the labor cost has become more and more expensive, in addition, brokers, insurance and other financial institutions are more strict in the management of the overall business and administrative costs.
User pain point 2: data silos. Connecting data silos, realizing the safe flow of data across islands, developing data application scenarios, and giving full play to the value of data, in the vernacular, means that the previous data calibers are different and scattered, and they need to be unified and integrated. Finally, there are some optimization requirements, such as CRM, synchronous tracking of peer data, churned customer management, customer management, product promotion, real-time data display of regular update mechanism, etc.
Q2: What elements can be placed in the workbench?
Based on the reason analysis in Q1, we know what elements we need for our workbench. Elements of the Workbench:
- Core functions: to-do management, quick entry, etc.
- General functions: information display, personal center, permission management, etc.
- Business functions: Design modules according to the user's work content, such as HR work overview, marketing calendar, business leaderboard, report exposure, etc.
To-dos: This is designed to provide users with a clear picture of the current work tasks that users must work on, which are usually the core tasks that users must prioritize, and are also the embodiment of the "operational cockpit" focusing on core metrics and to-dos. Previously, the core system was built to be done, which was equipped with the overall workflow and dispatch mechanism, and was clear to the dimension of roles or role groups.
Quick entrance: The quick entrance display of other existing functions, integrating the punch-in system, training system, activity system, private banking space reservation system, etc., should pay attention to the control of the number of displays in the design, and only expose the key modules. There is also a type of pure back-office workbench that has full system integration, and directly presses the icon to display the entrance of each system.
(Source: ink knife, typical workbench presentation)
Information display: You can pay attention to the configuration function of the background to provide users with an entry point for uploading. Document management and announcement management support designated users, roles, and organizations to download files. Provides a flexible, customizable form factor for more efficient file management. I've also added read and unread query management to the design process. In general, you also need to pay attention to personal center, date prompts, permission management, logo design, etc. In addition, there can also be Banner display, station message, file download module, message prompt, etc., I put down a similar CMS system background for reference.
(Source: ink knife, CMS background rendering)
Business module: It is recommended to design this module according to the user's work content, and the user is the core variable related to how we present the homepage elements. But it is also necessary to avoid going to extremes, there have been users who proposed to display the homepage of the workbench in thousands of faces, because the design logic of the front-end design was lacking at that time, and the development immediately exploded, which is difficult in terms of implementation difficulty.
My design workbench is differentiated according to the business line, from the perspective of data permissions, covering the head office, provincial and key city branches (level 2), level 3 middle branch, level 4 and 5 business service areas, etc. From the perspective of user roles, it involves operations, business promotion (marketing), training, rights and interests, customer service, etc. The suggestion is to communicate with the user for multiple rounds of requirements, and in many cases, forcing the requirements will only backfire and waste development resources.
For example, if there are many part-time problems in the business line, and the system maintains a set of internal personnel structure within the business line, it is necessary to present data permissions according to this part of the architecture. For example, if there is a problem of cross-provincial and cross-agency collaboration to deal with a fund plan, it is necessary to design primary and secondary authority, and it is not possible to isolate the authority simply based on the institution to which the plan belongs, so that the data display is inaccurate.
Q3: Do all workbenches need data kanban?
The key to dashboards (e.g., cockpits, dashboards) is to present key data. The cockpit at different levels should be customized according to the user's needs:
- Management Cockpit: Emphasis on information presentation and peer data.
- Universal Cockpit: Displays modules in all its entirety and provides data visibility through access control.
- Operational Cockpit: Focus on core metrics and backlogs.
Through the above analysis, we can see the importance and practicality of the cockpit workbench in financial product management. It not only solves the core problems of the enterprise, but also improves the user experience and work efficiency. In the future, as technology continues to advance, workbenches will continue to evolve to meet more diverse business needs.
This article was originally published by @AI Marketing Avant-Garde on Everyone is a Product Manager. Reproduction without the permission of the author is prohibited.
The title image is from Unsplash and is licensed under CC0.
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