Actrol Virtual Engineer: pivoting from retail vision to internal impact

Reece · Senior Product Designer / Product Manager

TL;DR

  • What we achieved: A live tool that saves Sales Engineers an estimated 20 minutes per quote.
  • What I did: Made the case to pivot the whole product from end customers to the 24 internal Sales Engineers, then shipped in small, frequent releases.
  • The call to make: Keep building the retail product the team had started, or change course this late in the project?
  • What I inherited: A journey map, research and wireframes all built for a retail experience that interviews showed wasn't practical.
  • The business: Actrol, a Reece Group refrigeration business, where engineers quoted using spreadsheets, printed manuals and a 15-year-old tool.

A bit about Actrol

Actrol is a Reece Group business unit serving the small-to-medium commercial refrigeration market across Australia and New Zealand. It's the trade that keeps everything from a small fridge to a walk-in cool room running for pubs, hotels, grocery stores and farms.

Reece acquired Actrol in 2016. As part of Reece's 2030 digital transformation, Actrol's systems needed integrating, and its fragmented, partly paper-based processes needed replacing with something faster and more reliable.

Actrol's service offerings, with Application Engineering Services covering heat load calculation, product selection, quotations, industry advice and energy conservation

The people at the centre of it were 24 Refrigeration Sales Engineers. Their day was gathering customer requirements, calculating heat load for a cool room or freezer room, finding and selecting the right products, and putting together a quote. All without getting the heat load, equipment or pricing wrong.

The two core jobs: heat load calculation, or how much energy keeps products cool, and product selection, or what equipment finishes the cool room

All of this ran across disconnected systems and processes, which limited how quickly the business could respond to customer enquiries.

The tools engineers relied on for each job, including a 15-year-old Virtual Engineer tool, pen and paper, spreadsheets, printed manuals and copying product codes between systems Current state: more than six third-party calculation tools, heavy reliance on spreadsheet workarounds, and room to cut quote turnaround time

What I inherited

An internal group had already run the initial evaluation and discovery. They saw long-term business value and set up a small team of three to get it moving: an Engineer, a Product Manager and a UX Designer.

I joined after kickoff and inherited a journey map, some in-person research insights and early wireframes. All of it was built around a retail experience for the end customer, not the internal Sales Engineers.

After working through what I'd inherited, I pushed for more interviews, this time with the 24 Sales Engineers and the project stakeholders, to properly align on the vision. What came out was real misalignment. The value the project had been built on wasn't practical.

On top of that, the team was small for a product this deep in domain knowledge.

Team comparison: currently one PM/UX, two developers and a three-month UX research intern, against a future need for one PM, four developers and one UX designer

Keep going, or change course?

Do we keep building the retail product the team had already started, or pivot to a different user and problem? And how do we make that case credibly, this late into the project?

Changing course

Making the case to pivot

I worked with the Product Manager and Engineer to make the complexity and effort of the retail product visible. Then I made the case to pivot the whole product to the 24 internal Sales Engineers instead of end customers.

This was a big scope change on a live project. It meant getting engineering, product and stakeholders to agree on why the original premise didn't hold up.

Why do this: improve the efficiency, accuracy and consistency of refrigeration system design and product recommendation to increase customer trust Product vision: a one-stop commercial refrigeration design and selection tool to quickly and accurately calculate heat load and select equipment and pipe sizes from anywhere Efficiency opportunity: an end-to-end online solution, up-to-date product information, and a single source of truth for data

Mapping the real workflow

We mapped the journey from enquiry to install through three people's eyes: an engineer, a branch manager and a customer.

Journey maps for an engineer, a branch manager and a customer, from enquiry through calculation, product selection, quoting, ordering and install

Learning in small releases

We kept looping through research, experiments and improvements, and released in small beta milestones instead of one big launch.

Learning process cycle of research, experiment and improve, with methods such as interviews, usability tests, beta releases and usage tracking Project timeline from kickoff in December 2019 through two pivots to the first release of equipment selection and pipe size calculation in March 2021

We rebuilt Actrol Virtual Engineer around how the engineers actually work: heat load calculation, product selection and quoting. It's live and in use at ave.actrol.com.au.

Virtual Engineer dashboard designs for desktop and mobile, with tools to create quotes, calculate heat load, select equipment and calculate pipe sizes Product roadmap of epics from foundation and equipment selection through heat load calculation, accessories and quote generation

What we achieved

The tool saves Sales Engineers an estimated 20 minutes per quote. That's the turnaround problem the original brief set out to solve. We just got there through a different user, and a more accurate read of where the value actually was.

Project metrics: 23 of 25 engineers active monthly, 393 uses over 12 weeks, a satisfaction score of 3.1 out of 5, about 15 minutes saved per quote and over 200 quotes generated The old Virtual Engineer tool and worn printed product manuals, replaced by the new tool to save 15 to 20 minutes per quote Usage by section, with equipment selection at 54% and pipe size calculation at 28%, alongside survey and usability test results Quotes from engineers praising Virtual Engineer, including its pipe size calculation and the frequent updates

What we learned

Lessons learned: earning the Application Engineering team's trust, frequent small releases driving engagement, and pairing simpler tools for branch staff with domain training

Additional visual reference: Dribbble shot.