Top tasks - Prioritising features for App Launch

Verizon Connect (Christchurch)

Background:

Verizon Connect is a Global Enterprise SaaS business offering a total fleet management platform. The products and services enable small to enterprise customers to run safer, more efficient and compliant fleets. Verizon Connect is a part of Verizon Business Group within Verizon, the American mobile network. 

With limited time and resource we needed to understand what our most important users needs were, so we could release an MVP version of an app in 2019. We needed a way to prioritise which functionality to start with, that ensured internal stakeholders have enough context to make a call on what would provide a good ROI. This app would be targeted at serving our ‘managers in the field’ persona, so we wanted to understand the types of tasks our managers are doing while they are out and about, away from the office and the impact these tasks have on their ability to successfully do their job.

My role:

Conduct a Top Task survey of our current users who fit our target demographic that we could combine with qualitative interviews to get a strong indication of what these managers need most while mobile (away from their desk). We had a really robust response to this survey, that was a statistically significant number of responses, giving us a clear direction to take.

The major finding was there was a clear distinction in tasks that were focused around immediate, or reactive problem solving, compared to proactive/administrative type tasks. Managers who were using their mobile/tablet while away from the office prioritised reactive tasks (for example, quickly locating which driver is best suited to help with an issue), as compared to say running a report on number of stops a driver has made.

Another interesting result was when we asked respondents outside of the top tasks exercise in free-form fields, what functionality they would like to be able to see on the app, they wanted to be able to do basic administrative tasks, such as, updating driver information, assign a driver to a vehicle. These were themed around making problem solving easier in the future and preventing issues. So our interpretation was that once the prioritised top tasks needs were met, administrative tools were something we could look at post-MVP.

The result:

This research informed Leadership in what functionality would be prioritised first, giving the team confidence in the direction and how we could address needs in the future. The findings and general themes of this survey are still referred to and informs the strategic direction of this mobile app today.