Yokogawa - Persona and Journey Maps
Business Development, Leadership, Creative Direction, UX Designer
The Challenge
Yokogawa’s strategic objective to build long-term, service-oriented relationships with its global customers was severely hampered by digital fragmentation and data silos within its commercial organization.
The existing array of regional CRMs, decentralized reporting tools (Excel, Tableau), and disconnected operational systems (like YGS/SAP and OneSMS) forced critical employees to spend up to 30-40% of their time on manual administrative tasks rather than engaging customers.
Key Pain Points for the frontline Sales and Marketing teams included:
No Single View of Customer: Account Managers (like Li Wei) lacked global visibility into strategic accounts, customer hierarchy, service history, and related opportunities across different affiliates, leading to missed cross-sell/up-sell opportunities and internal competition.
Inefficient Handoffs: The critical Marketing-to-Sales lead qualification process was inefficient and often untraceable, resulting in poor lead quality and wasted time for Account Managers.
Administrative Overload: Core tasks, such as generating proposals, calculating sales forecasts, and securing pricing approvals, were manual and time-consuming, delaying deal closures and preventing Sales Managers (like Bob Burton) from coaching their teams.
The fundamental challenge was not merely replacing software, but designing a cohesive System of Engagement that aligned global sales processes and encouraged user adoption by providing measurable value directly to the user’s daily workflow.
The VIsion
The vision was to architect and design a unified iCRM Global System of Engagement (SoE) that transforms the commercial process from a manual, regional effort into a seamless, collaborative, and data-driven global function.
By focusing on the user experience of key personas, we aimed to instill data hygiene, automate administrative burdens, and integrate siloed information to empower every user—from the Marketing Analyst planning a campaign to the Sales Manager forecasting revenue.
Key Objectives:
Achieve Customer 360 View: Establish a common data model and governance to provide complete visibility into all customer interactions (lead, opportunity, order, service) globally.
Enable Collaborative Selling: Create a frictionless digital workspace for virtual sales teams (including Account Managers, Technical Sales Consultants, and Channel Partners) to collaborate on complex deals.
Maximize Frontline Productivity: Eliminate manual data entry and reporting, leveraging mobile technology and automation to maximize customer-facing time.
Solution
My leadership in the discovery phase, specifically through conducting nationwide interviews and leading the persona deep dive, was instrumental in translating complex organizational needs into a focused design strategy. This approach ensured that the final system delivered measurable organizational value (MOV) by solving core user pain points.
Strategic Pillar 1: Persona-Driven Data & Information Architecture
We moved beyond system-centric requirements by developing high-fidelity User Personas (including the Marketing Analyst, Sales Manager, and Channel Manager) to map the system architecture directly to their goals.
Master Data Management (MDM): To solve the pervasive issue of duplicate accounts and poor data quality (a major pain point for the Account Manager), we prioritized the integration of key systems (YGS/SAP) and designed rules for deduplication and hierarchical customer creation. This was essential for building trust in the new system’s data.
Knowledge-to-Action: For Product Marketers (PMKs) and Solutions Marketers, a pain point was the inability to easily find collateral or answer repeated technical questions. The solution focused on integrating a centralized, searchable knowledge base for technical documents and FAQs, allowing them to author content that instantly deflects routine inquiries from the Sales team.
Strategic Pillar 2: User Journey & Workflow Automation
We used the User Journey Mapping exercise (for personas like the Marketing Specialist, Demori Sisk) to visualize and target high-friction moments.
Automated Handoffs (Lead-to-Opportunity): To solve the Marketing-to-Sales handoff inefficiency, we designed automated lead scoring, grading, and routing rules based on customer behavior and ‘fit’ to the Yokogawa product catalog. This ensured that Account Managers only received qualified leads ready for quote, eliminating the “small potato” accounts Li Wei complained about.
Mobile-First Productivity: Recognizing that Sales Managers (Bob Burton) and Account Managers (Li Wei) travel extensively, the solution required a mobile-ready system. We prioritized mobile access for call logging and capturing meeting notes, enabling sales reps to instantly update CRM fields in the field rather than spending hours on administrative reports back at the office.
Impact and Demonstrated Strategic Thinking
This strategic design approach yielded an integrated blueprint for the iCRM SoE, demonstrating how targeted UX interventions unlock organizational value:
Improved Sales Velocity: By automating quotes (CPQ integration) and pricing approvals, and providing a guided sales process that reflects the actual business methodology, the system eliminates administrative bottlenecks that slowed deal closure.
Enhanced Strategic Planning: The new system enables collaborative forecasting and provides Leaders (like the Regional Business Owner) with consolidated executive dashboards, drastically reducing the 30-40% of time previously spent manually building reports in Excel.
Cultural Alignment: By providing a Shared Collaboration Workspace (via Chatter/Teams integration) and visibility into team-selling activities across BUs and Channel Partners, the design addresses the cultural silo effect, shifting the organization toward a unified, customer-first approach.
As the UX leader, I leveraged persona creation and journey mapping to provide Yokogawa with a clear, strategic roadmap for digital transformation—ensuring the resulting technology directly solved the daily challenges of its most critical users.