BUILDERTREND

Strategic Service Design Transformation: From Feature Fragmentation to Cohesive Customer Experience

The Challenge

After 16 years of continuous feature expansion, Buildertrend's construction management platform had become a powerful but fragmented ecosystem. Business units supported builders with different tools and terminology, lacking a unified understanding of the complete customer journey. This fragmentation was limiting both internal alignment and customer success potential.

Timeline

2022-2023

Role

Lead Product Designer

My Approach

Comprehensive Research Foundation - I conducted an extensive discovery process across the entire organization: platform audit of all existing features, stakeholder interviews with leaders across business units, customer research with builders to map their actual processes, and competitive analysis.

Key Research Insights

  • Each business unit used different language to describe similar customer actions

  • Teams didn’t articulate well how their features connected to the broader customer journey

  • Customers were underutilizing powerful features due to discoverability and workflow integration issues

  • Opportunities existed in workflow gaps

Framework Development: A Universal Customer Journey Map

Creating organizational alignment through design strategy

A Universal Language - My research suggested that there were fragmented approaches to representing a customer’s journey, impacting product development effectiveness. I synthesized insights from all business units to create a shared approach that would enable cross-functional collaboration.

End-to-End Journey Framework - I created a comprehensive service design framework that mapped every touchpoint in a builder's workflow from sales to project completion. This framework created a unified design language across all business units to analyze current flows and plan future development.

Implementation Strategy - I facilitated collaborative sessions where each business unit could see how their work contributed to the complete customer experience. This approach ensured buy-in and practical adoption.

Outcomes - The framework enhanced internal conversations and became a strategic tool for business units.

  • Adoption: Across business units for goal setting and development planning

  • Strategic clarity: Leadership gained clear visibility into customer experience gaps

  • Gap identification: Revealed workflow interruptions

  • Opportunity mapping: Highlighted areas for new product and feature development

  • Cross-functional collaboration: Showed how teams could better collaborate

  • Goal setting: Provided structure for company-wide goal setting

Framework Expansion: Financial Services Journey Deep-Dive

Success of the universal framework led to a request for deeper analysis of Buildertrend's financial products—a critical revenue driver requiring specialized workflow understanding. I created detailed journey maps for each financial product, showing how they interconnected and where optimization opportunities existed. These became foundational tools for the financial services teams.

Outcomes

  • Product optimization: Identified specific features requiring enhancement (see additional case study)

  • New product opportunities: Revealed gaps that became development priorities (see additional case study)

  • Team alignment: Financial services teams gained shared understanding of customer workflows

  • Revenue impact: Insights directly informed strategies to increase financial product adoption

Strategic Impact & Organizational Results

Design Strategy Transformation - My work changed how Buildertrend approaches product development—from feature-driven additions to strategic, customer-journey-informed decisions. It developed design strategy within the organization and teams now use customer journey thinking to evaluate new features and prioritize improvements.

Long-term value - The journey mapping methodology I developed continues to be used for new product areas and market expansion planning.

Key Takeaways

By conducting comprehensive research and creating frameworks that align business units around customer value, I enabled Buildertrend to operate more strategically and identify new growth opportunities.

Skills Demonstrated

  • Design Strategy: Created organizational frameworks that aligned business units around customer value

  • User Research: Comprehensive customer and stakeholder research informed all strategic decisions

  • 0-1 Product Thinking: Framework insights directly led to new product development opportunities