Transition resellers onboarding from static and facilitated to digital and self-serve

The problem

The sales team of a Tech company onboarded resellers using four different pdf and PowerPoint documents depending on the region and type of reseller. This process created confusion among employees as they were unsure which version to use to train resellers. It also slowed down significantly the company to provide updated information given it was static. Another problem was that the information was highly customized as per the most current products which meant constant updates and it also took several hours for the sales team to onboard resellers one at a time. The company wanted a simplified process with global scalability.

The research process

Once the main stakeholders were identified, interviews were conducted to get feedback about the current process and discover pain points and suggestions to improve it. I wanted to fully understand the problem before considering solutions. 
I chose interviews over other research methods given it was a small number of stakeholders and it allowed a more detailed evaluation to gather insights in an informal setting.
At this time, the client didn't want us to gather direct feedback from resellers but only from stakeholders that onboarded resellers. I interviewed all sales directors and inside channel managers involved in this process. I then reached out to the insights team to see if they had any related data in the latest survey but unfortunately, they didn't.
Based on the findings I mapped the reseller's and employees' journey and brainstormed with internal stakeholders about the specific onboarding content required in each part of the journey.


Prototype

I kept testing concepts with the sales team to ensure I could redesign the solution if needed before the final version.
Once I built a working demo, I validated it with more stakeholders for reassurance.

The solution

The onboarding content was carefully selected to ensure it would help alleviate each of the identified pain points in the journey. The result was an onboarding website with links to the company's most-updated content and training. The site allowed for both self-serve and one-on-one onboarding with the sales teams. This site included all company's products and a menu that allowed users to select the content that was relevant to them.
This solution not only saved time to the sales team by avoiding the need of custom presentations but also by allowing hundreds of low-tier resellers to self-onboard. Given the time savings, the sales team could focus on facilitating onboarding for high-tier resellers and distributors which resulted on increased sales.