Keller Williams

Design thinking and human-centered strategy uncover a disruptive innovation in home lending

Review Summary

Real Estate
Strategy, Design, Development
Financial Portal
51+ employees
USA

We partnered with Keller Williams, the world’s largest residential real estate company, to take over leadership for a mission-critical financial reporting portal. The technology enabled Keller Williams Worldwide to continue its rapid growth into international markets.

Summary

The Problem

Replace an outdated financial system that cost too much to run and failed to deliver all necessary features

Ensure the project was executed to completion on a realistic timeline

Equip the Keller Williams team to product-manage future digital innovations in house

Develop software requirements for a cohesive global user experience

Enable Keller Williams to expand across the globe with a versatile and user-tested web portal

Strengthening overall direction and vision for the product plan

How We Helped

STRATEGY

Roadmapping to coordinate designers and developers

Personalized coaching on product development

One-on-one user research with agents and offices worldwide

Go through complete brand redesign

UX DESIGN

Conducted a heuristic evaluation for design improvements

ClickModel® software prototype to test and refine design changes

Design and build marketing website from the ground up

Usability tests to validate design solutions

DEVELOP

Guidance on architectural devisions

QA testing to resolve risks

The Outcomes

Ability to scale into 15 new international regions

Custom product design that functions seamlessly with unique reporting and payment scenarios

Ownership of the skills, processes, and mindset for managing future product initiatives without going over time or over budget

The Problem

In a franchise, everyone has to get a commission. The FrontDoor portal was built to make that process as efficient as possible across languages, time zones, currencies and variations in local processes. With a digital infrastructure in place for seamless operation of the franchise financial model, Keller Williams could launch quickly and cost-effectively into new international markets.

When using FrontDoor, agents and administrative offices across the globe needed a cohesive user experience that was also customized to their unique languages and modes of production.

We stepped in as product managers, user researchers, UX designers, and architectural consultants to finalize and strengthen the design and development of a custom web portal for reporting earnings, calculating commissions, and tracking payments.

How we Helped

Digital Strategy & User Research

Provide overall product management to connect long-term digital strategy with FrontDoor product development plans.

Create roadmaps for coordinating designers and developers and executing the build on-time.

Provide personalized coaching that facilitates alignment around vision and tactics on structure, process, and teamwork for successful product development.

Conduct one-on-one user research with agents and offices worldwide.

Conduct usability tests to validate design solutions.

UX Design

Conduct a heuristic evaluation to discover flaws in the portal’s user experience design.

Identified a digital solution for financial reporting across multiple currencies.

Language-responsive design, adjusting on each device given various language settings

Create a ClickModel® software prototype to test and refine design changes.

Language-responsive design, adjusting on each device given various language settings

Development

Provide guidance on architectural decisions.

Created an automated process that tests language translations to ensure all content is accurately written.

Identified the best route for migrating data from the old financial system to the new.

Created a custom API strategy for making the system available externally.

Create a QA test for resolving all risks associated with the software.

Developed digital technology solutions to ensure the same quality of access, worldwide.

Results/ROI

The FrontDoor project was behind schedule when we stepped in. Our team provided the direction and leadership needed to complete the portal without additional delay. With technical problem-solving and personalized coaching, we resolved roadblocks and empowered the Keller Williams team to succeed.

We equipped the Keller Williams product team with the skills, structure, processes and mindset to successfully manage ongoing development and future digital innovations without going over time or over budget.