Nextus

Nextus is a unified management platform designed to empower users to effectively manage marketing campaigns. Through this platform, users can oversee key campaign information, facilitate management processes, improve reporting to upper management, and minimize time spent switching between multiple platforms for campaign management.

Project Overview

About the client

The client of this project is Carenet Health, an American provider of healthcare services. The company provides support services, healthcare navigation services, care management programs, and consumer engagement solutions to private and public institutions.

Problem Space

What’s the problem?

The marketing department of Carenet Health is facing challenges in efficiently planning, tracking, and managing its marketing campaigns. Currently, the department relies on multiple tools and trackers, leading to confusion, delays, and inefficiencies. The marketing team needs a unified technology-supported solution to streamline campaign management for both internal teams and external vendors.

The utilisation of multiple management tools, with their dispersed natures, leading to a lack of transparency and confusion among the internal teams and external vendors, results in inefficiency and delays in implementing marketing campaigns.

How might we efficiently manage marketing campaigns with the internal team and external vendors?

How to measure success and impact?

Impact

The success criteria of this project include:

User satisfaction: achieve a user satisfaction rate of 80% or higher among internal teams and external vendors, as measured through surveys and feedback sessions.
Streamlined process: reduce the number of management tools being used by at least 50%, resulting in a more unified and streamlined process for campaign management.

What are the issues with the current management tools?

Research & Ideation

We conducted user interviews with the Director of the Marketing Department of Carenet Health and the Marketing Operations Manager of Carenet Health to understand their current workflow and pain points in campaign management. Below are some key insights from the interview findings.

The marketing team of Carenet Health has been using multiple tools for managing campaigns, including Monday.com, excel sheets, and SharePoint.

Monday.com: the marketing manager oversees and assigns tasks of campaigns on Monday.com which internal team members can access.

Excel sheets: the marketing manager consolidates the flight schedule and calendar on Excel sheets which will be reported to the upper management for review.

SharePoint: the external vendors communicate and share files with the internal marketing team on SharePoint.

Fig.1 - campaign board on Monday.com

Fig.2- campaign timeline on Monday.com

Monday.com, as shown above, is the major management tool the client has been using. The main issue with Monday.com is that

1) the manager is not able to synchronize different boards of campaigns. Since the information is not synchronized across boards, the manager has to oversee and manage all campaigns on the same board which contains a lot of information.

2) the manager cannot assign different access rights to different users since all information is on the same board.

3) as shown in Fig.2 above, the timeline displays every individual campaign or task, which upper management prefers not to observe.

Therefore, in addition to using Monday.com, the marketing manager has to create Excel sheets below containing key information about periodic campaigns to report to upper management.

Fig.3 - Excel sheet of flight schdule

Fig.4 - Excel sheet of flight calendar

The Excel sheets that the marketing manager prepares for reporting to upper management include the periodic flight schedule and timeline of campaigns. Other information, such as task assignments, internal team chats, and any additional details on Monday.com, is not included in the report. The main issue with Excel sheets is that it is not synchronized with Monday.com, requiring the manager to update information separately on both platforms.

Fig.5 - SharePoint

Besides Monday.com and Excel sheets, the external vendors communicate and share files with the client’s internal marketing team on SharePoint. The main issue with SharePoint is that it does not synchronize with Monday.com, requiring the manager to switch to different platforms to manage the team and tasks.

Due to multiple management tools, the manager becomes the only person who knows where to locate all information, leading to inefficiency in campaign management among the internal team.

Who are the competitors and what is the unique value proposition?

The Nextus management platform sets itself apart from existing management tools such as Asana, Wrike, Zapier, and Hubspot by specifically targeting the marketing team and external vendors of Carenet Health. Through our competitive analysis, we found that these management platforms heavily rely on robust third-party integration. However, the large number of integrated features often results in a longer learning curve for users.

Therefore, the Nextus management platform stands out by offering a tailored design that aligns with the workflow and needs of Carenet Health’s marketing team in a unified manner. This approach saves users time that would otherwise be spent learning various features across multiple third-party integrations.

Who are the users?

The primary persona of Nextus management platform is Tiffany, the Marketing Operations Manager.

Fig.6 - persona of the marketing operations manager

Tiffany, a marketing operations manager at Carenet Health, oversees all marketing campaigns of the company across various digital platforms, including email, Excel sheets, SharePoint, and Monday.com. The use of multiple management tools, each with their dispersed natures, has led to a lack of transparency and confusion among her internal team members and the external vendors, resulting in inefficiency and delays in the implementation of marketing campaigns. The major management tool, Monday.com, does not provide the functions Tiffany needs for organizing the campaigns. Tiffany’s colleagues consistently turn to her when they are unable to locate the information they need on the platforms. Being the only person who knows well where the information is located, Tiffany has to shoulder extra workload and pressure. She is actively researching alternative tools that might be more comprehensive to fit her needs and benefit her team.

Create a UX theme

“Effortless Empowerment" is the user experience (UX) theme for the Nextus management platform.

It is designed to evoke a sense of mastery and control for users navigating our dashboard. The experience focuses on efficiency, empowering users to effortlessly manage and track reporting.

We aim for users to understand the simplicity of the interface, fostering confidence in their ability to leverage the dashboard's capabilities for enhanced work and decision-making processes.

Architecture the site structure

Fig.7 - site map of the Nextus management platform

Fig.7 - site map of the Nextus management platform

Map out the user journey

Below is an example of the user journey of Tiffany, the Marketing Operations Manager. If her goal is to check the status of the breast cancer awareness campaign, she will first log into the management dashboard. She will land on the Overview tab on the dashboard. Then, she can navigate to the Campaign tab. On the Campaign page, she will locate the breast cancer awareness campaign and check the status of the tasks across the boards. She then notices a delay in the Google ads task. She can check which team member is assigned to the task on the Campaign page and check in with the team member.

Fig.8 - user journey of checking the status of a campaign

Fig.8 - user journey of checking the status of a campaign

Below is another example of Tiffany’s journey, as shown in Fig.9. If her goal is to prepare the flight calendar for the marketing director to report to the upper management, she will first log into the management dashboard. She will land on the Overview tab on the dashboard. Then, she can navigate to the Schedule tab. On the Schedule tab, she will see the flight calendar where she can download the calendar as a report for the upper management.

Fig.9 - user journey of preparing the flight schedule for reporting

Fig.9 - user journey of preparing the flight schedule for reporting

Solution

We designed the high-fidelity wireframes of the Nextus management platform, including the login page, overview page, campaigns page, schedule page, and budget page.

High-fidelity Wireframes

A user can input his/her company email address and password to log into the management platform. The system will, by default, remember the login credentials of a user for fast login.

Login page

Fig.10 - login page

Once the user logs in, he/she will land on the Overview page. This page shows an overview of key information about the marketing campaigns, including active campaigns, budget, and schedule. It also displays key analytics, such as the number of completed campaigns, active campaigns, delayed tasks, and budget status. Users can select a specific period using the date filter to view data for that period. They can also personalize the display layout of the "Active Campaigns", "Budget", and "Schedule" sections by moving the sections with the grid icon on the top right corner of each section. This allows the user to focus on the key information they need to oversee.

Overview page

Fig.11 - overview page

On the Campaigns page, the user can add campaigns, apply templates for new campaigns, and oversee the information of each campaign, including the name of the campaign/ tasks, status, item ID, person-in-charge, chat, due date, files, and synchronized boards.

The features of synchronized boards allow users to connect each campaign task with another board for efficient review. For example, under the “Breast Cancer Awareness” campaign, there is a task called “Email”. Users can synchronize this task with another board called “Email” so they can check all “Email” tasks of different campaigns on the same board. It helps users follow up with similar tasks with specific vendors. It allows users to oversee information from different views instead of having all information on the same board.

A user can also select a specific period using the date filter to view campaigns for that period.

Campaigns page

Fig.12 - campaigns page

On the Calendar tab, the user can view the calendar by month or by week. He/she can select the month, switch between month and week views, and download the flight calendar as a report to the upper management. The monthly calendar displays the tasks/ campaigns due on each day, while the weekly calendar displays the time for each task/campaign per day as well.

Schedule page (Calendar tab)

Fig.13 - schedule page - calendar tab (by month)

Fig.14 - schedule page - calendar tab (by week)

Fig.14 - schedule page - calendar tab (by week)

On the Timeline tab, it displays the timeline of each campaign. A user can also select a specific period using the date filter to view campaigns for that period. He/she can also download the flight timeline as a report to the upper management.

Schedule page (Timeline tab)

Fig.15 - schedule page - timeline tab

On the Budget page, the user can oversee the proportions of the projected budget, the amount of each cost of the projected budget, the actual project status and proportions of the budget, and the actual amount of budget. The budget is comprised of various costs including salary, co-working agencies, tool costs, hard costs, and soft costs, as defined by the client. For example, if a task takes longer than the budgeted period, the costs involved will increase, and the project status will be “over-budget”. Therefore, the manager can evaluate why there is a delay in tasks and how to manage the budget better in the future.

Budget page

Fig.16 - budget page

Brand Guideline

Fig.17 - brand guideline of Nextus

Outcome

What do users achieve?

Through the unified Nextus management platform, users can effectively manage marketing campaigns in one place without switching between multiple platforms. This enables them to prioritize their time and effort on important tasks. Users can oversee and manage all campaigns in one go, improve the reporting process to upper management, and monitor the budget status to enhance the efficiency of future campaign management.

Reflection

What did I learn?

It was a truly fruitful experience working on this project, as it afforded me the opportunity to collaborate with the Director of the Marketing Department and the Marketing Operations Manager of our client. This collaboration provided invaluable insights into the operations of a large company and deepened my understanding of the marketing industry.

Through our research and the design process, I realized that off-the-shelf management platforms may not suit every company due to their unique workflows and needs. I also came to understand that businesses often find it challenging to switch tools, even when they are ineffective, due to prior investments in current solutions. While customizing a management platform for a team can involve significant costs, it can also yield long-term benefits by establishing a more effective approach with a unified management platform.

What would I do next?

In the first phase, our main focus is on the user journey of the marketing operations manager. For the next step, the client is encouraged to gather feedback from the internal marketing team on the first prototype of the solution to identify areas of improvement. More team features can also be developed to empower other internal team members and external vendors in campaign management. This includes adding a chat room for easy communication, a search feature, and a tag feature for efficiently locating information on the dashboard.

A platform for enhancing the efficiency of managing marketing campaigns.