Skytree: Transforming Salesforce for 2000+ Sales Professionals

Project Timeline: 2024
Sr. UX Designer | Strategic Research & Design Lead
CRM and Web Application Design

Audience

Indeed’s Salesforce system serves thousands of employees across the globe. While my primary focus was to support our sales associates, we needed to account for dozens of distinct user groups and hundreds of workflows.

Business Challenge

Indeed's GTM strategies had outgrown its systems. Sales reps lost hours daily navigating fragmented processes and low-quality data, threatening Indeed's path to $15B revenue by 2028.

Impact

Enabled operational efficiency improvements supporting $15B revenue target
Led 85+ discovery sessions uncovering insights across business units
Established design frameworks that aligned competing stakeholder priorities
Delivered validated designs for unified account intelligence, streamlined provisioning, and analytics infrastructure

Strategic Challenge

Stakeholders request: "We need better Salesforce features and customization"

Current State: What Sales Reps Actually Do

Desired State: What Business Needs

The Strategic Bet

Success required aligning systems with how reps should spend time, not just automating current dysfunction. Without addressing this fundamental misalignment, new features would only perpetuate inefficiency.

The Reality

The real problem wasn't tool limitations—it was lack of alignment between business needs, user workflows, and system design across multiple business units. Reps spent 95% of their time on non-revenue activities while business goals required 90% client-facing work.

Process

Our team spent 13 weeks conducting comprehensive discovery with 80+ participants across Sales, Client Success, Sales Operations, and Sales Effectiveness teams. We mapped out a broad Jobs To Be Done framework for each segment and dove deeper into particularly problematic workflows.

Through 85+ discovery sessions and 20 executive interviews, we identified 5 systemic challenges preventing reps from spending meaningful time with clients. We synthesized findings into 54 Epics, 95 Capabilities, and 450+ User Stories that aligned stakeholder priorities with user needs.

Finally, we co-designed future state experiences with sales and CS reps, prototyped concepts for the highest-impact workflows, and validated 33 wireframes through iterative usability testing with end-users across multiple business units.

Activities

Interviews and User Journey Mapping
85+ sessions | 80+ participants
Jobs To Be Done Framework
core jobs and tasks defined for Sales, Client Success and Sales Operations
Research Synthesis & Insights
Analyzed qualitative and quantitative data to identify patterns, created collective sentiments, and documented 5 systemic challenges
Co-Design &Alignment Workshops
Facilitated collaborative sessions with business stakeholders and technical teams to align on future state vision and priorities
Wireframing and Prototyping
33 Wireframes validated
Iterative usability testing
Multiple validation rounds

UX Research - 5 Critical Challenges

1. Broken foundation = poor UX
Constrained processes, fragmented data, poor rep experience

2. Workarounds eclipse impact
Teams created manual workflows instead of fixing root systems

3. Disconnected systems overwhelm
Swivel chair, manual tasks prevent client-facing time

4. Playing detective wastes time
Reps dig through systems for basic client data instead of selling

5. Tools don't help with strategy
Systems store data but don't provide actionable insights

Example of comprehensive Jobs To Be Done artifact which serves as a foundational piece of our UX research.

Design Solutions

Four strategic transformations that turned dysfunction into efficiency

Role-Based Views Over One-Size-Fits-All

Before: Every user saw the same information regardless of their role, forcing Sales, Client Success, and Sales Ops to manually filter irrelevant data
After: Tailored information architecture and data to reflect the specific needs of each user type—Sales sees pipeline, CS sees health metrics, Ops sees forecasts
Impact: Each team sees exactly what they need to do their job, eliminating time spent filtering and increasing data relevance

Essential Information Over Visual Clutter

Before: Account screens overwhelmed users with every possible data point, making it impossible to quickly understand client status or identify next actions
After: Redesigned screens to surface only the most critical information reps need to understand their clients—removing visual clutter and cognitive load
Impact: Reps can now scan accounts in seconds instead of minutes, focusing on client relationships instead of hunting through data

Reps can now scan accounts in seconds instead of minutes, focusing on client relationships instead of hunting through data

Single System Over Tool Fragmentation

Before: Reps swiveled between 5+ disconnected systems, manually copying data between external spreadsheets, internal tools, and Salesforce
After: Consolidated multiple systems into a single unified Salesforce instance, eliminating tool fatigue and creating one source of truth
Impact: Reduced context switching and manual data synchronization, freeing reps to focus on client-facing activities

Actionable Insights Over Data Storage

Before: Systems functioned as passive data repositories—storing information but providing no strategic guidance on what to do next
After: Transformed systems to surface actionable insights—next best actions, forecasting recommendations, and proactive alerts that drive strategy
Impact: Tools now augment human intelligence instead of just recording history, enabling data-driven decisions at every touchpoint

Results: From Burden to Enabler

✓ Reduced administrative burden allowing reps to spend more time on revenue-generating activities

✓ Created role-specific experiences that respect user context and reduce cognitive load

✓ Unified fragmented systems into cohesive workflows supporting Indeed's $15B revenue goal