Rodan + Fields Canada Launch

PULSE.png

Product:

A reporting tool for skincare consultants to check in on orders from their skincare consultants or sales performance from their business

Problem the product addresses:

Show sales activity for consultants and customers recruited in both the United States and Canada

Why this problem?

Rodan + Fields wants to expand globally and enable skincare consultants to grow their businesses globally as well, enabling them to recruit and train consultants around the world

Role in the project:

As Associate Product Manager, I oversaw the initiative to update the existing reporting tools to comply with government-mandated Canadian business regulations in order for Rodan + Fields to expand operations to Canada. This was part of a massive physical and digital product launch for Canadian consumers.

Context:

  • No feature updates since 2009, when the application was built
  • No functional documentation
  • High internal pressure to open the Canadian market due to customer promises made two years prior

Approach:

  • Conducted a content audit and inventory
  • Scheduled stakeholder interviews to understand pain points of the existing product
  • Documented customer scenarios, interpreting the product through the lens of job stories rather than features in order to better understand the goals of the product
  • Wrote job stories and validated with sales support and customers
  • Created personas to prioritize customer needs over certain personas
  • Identified biggest customer pain points
  • Created wireframes and product documentation so that engineers can properly implement changes to the application
  • Secured cross-functional alignment on roadmap prioritization, with the concept of a product roadmap for the application a first for the company since the product's inception years prior

Results:

  • Rodan + Fields successfully launched in Canada and this experience served as foundational research for a major initiative to overhaul the product, described further here.

What I learned:

  • Keeping everyone on the same page is a lot of work but critical to long-term success.
  • It's a privilege to be "the new person" at a company and ask a lot of basic questions in order to uncover what's really going on. 
  • You can go really far by asking these questions over and over again:
    • How does it work?
    • Why does it work that way?
    • What are your thoughts on this?
    • Is there anything else I missed?
    • Who should I talk to next?
  • People are busy. Have an agenda on your meetings, even if you're the only one in the company that does.