SaaS Cloud Product Design

The Sales Team for a Cloud Software Technology Product faced a critical gap in research and design expertise necessary for defining their product, understanding customer journeys, and creating robust engineering systems. This team, composed of cloud engineers and sales professionals, sought assistance to represent the customer voice and provide strategic guidance in user experience, service design, product design, and process engineering. My internal consultancy was contracted to bridge this gap. 

On this engagement, I was responsible for delivering comprehensive research and actionable recommendations that informed the product development strategy and reduced scope from 7 products to 1 pilot. These changes resulted in a successful funding bid which received $1.3 million to launch the pilot product and a 4 month reduction in the time to market.

Additionally, my work on this project was recognized with two Division Recognition Awards for the impact I had in helping the team bring this product to market.

My Role

On this project, I led a small consulting team tasked with defining the product strategy and customer journey while managing stakeholder relationships and research operations. I collaborated closely with senior principal engineers to define project goals, structure timelines, and design effective research protocols. Acting as both a researcher and strategist, I facilitated discussions and workshops with cross-functional stakeholders, capturing their insights and ensuring alignment on product direction. Additionally, I assumed the responsibility of communicating findings and recommendations to senior leadership, including Vice Presidents and other decision-makers, to secure buy-in for critical project initiatives.

Research & Insights

My UX Research approach began with extensive competitive research, analyzing cloud marketplace leaders such as AWS, GCM, and Red Hat to benchmark SW best practices and identify key product differentiators. To supplement this research, I conducted expert interviews with seasoned engineers who had firsthand experience in creating cloud products for marketplaces. These interviews helped reveal that customers want products that solve their specific problems, not just the most optimized option.

Workshops played a pivotal role in aligning the team around shared goals and user needs. I led collaboration sessions to develop detailed customer personas and identify primary user goals, pain points, and behavioral patterns. Through these sessions, we discovered that the initial product scope of seven different products was overly ambitious and lacked the clarity needed for efficient execution. Based on these findings, I recommended a more focused approach, starting with a foundational “base plate” product that would establish essential functionality and set the stage for future product offering growth. This allowed the team to get to market much quicker because the engineering workload was greatly reduced, and we estimated 4-6 months of time was saved.

The research also highlighted the importance of comprehensive documentation, user support processes, and multi-year customer service plans. These elements were identified as critical components for ensuring a successful pilot product launch and creating a scalable solution for a global market.

Deliverables

One of the key outputs from this project was the creation of a comprehensive Key Terms Dictionary. It was designed to establish a shared language across the various teams and provide a future standard for expansion projects. This living document eliminated frequent miscommunications and aligned all stakeholders around a common understanding of key concepts. 

I also created a User Purchase Journey documentation that became a cornerstone of the project, mapping out the customer’s experience from product discovery through purchase, setup, and ongoing support. This journey map identified key user touch points, highlighted friction points in the customer experience, and presented opportunities for future improvement.

Awarded for Extending the Project

Additionally, during the project we realized that there was no clear process for requesting Software Benchmarks when developing products. So, I designed the Benchmark Request Process Flow, which was the first unified process for handling benchmarking requests. This process incorporated my research from interviews across the company to streamline operations and improve efficiency by clarifying roles, responsibilities, and timelines across business units. My process was adopted and is now the only process the Benchmarking team recognizes for making requests.

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This additional process work was recognized as a key impact to increasing the enterprise’s efficiency and I was the lead recipient of the Division Recognition Award on this effort.

Challenges & Solutions

Access to research participants posed a significant challenge, making it difficult to gather direct customer insights. To overcome this limitation, I collaborated closely with sales teams to obtain customer feedback and leveraged marketplace purchase data to gain a deeper understanding of customer behavior and preferences. These alternative research methods ensured that customer insights remained a driving force behind our strategic recommendations.

Impact

The project outcomes delivered measurable benefits to the organization. By narrowing the scope of the pilot release from 7 to 1 product and focusing on essential materials and technical deliverables, we accelerated development timelines by 4 months and enabled parallel work streams across engineering, sales, marketing, and legal teams. This focused strategy saved significant time and effort while creating a strong foundation for future product expansion. The work also enabled the organization to launch a scalable, market-ready product supported by clear processes and comprehensive documentation.

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