ProspectCRM came back to us with momentum and a modern design system—but some key flows still felt developer-built.
Over the span of a few months, I acted as UX lead alongside our PM and Prospect’s engineering team to streamline high-impact features: a clearer dashboard, faster team goals setting, an automations builder… we crafted a satisfying experience that finally felt as good as it looks.
Context
A CRM built for product businesses
ProspectCRM is a “stock-aware” CRM built for B2B wholesalers, distributors, and manufacturers; surfacing product, pricing, and inventory context directly in the CRM so teams can sell what’s actually available. The company now operates under The Access Group and markets itself as the #1 stock-aware CRM for product businesses.
Problem Statement
Core flows still cost users time
The product’s look and feel had been refreshed under Access Group, but several core flows still cost users time: trial dashboards that felt empty, a dense targets workflow, an opaque report builder, and an add-to-quote step that turned into a modal maze-like nightmare.
The stakes were adoption and velocity: fewer missteps for new users, less back-and-forth for power users, and clearer handoffs for engineering.
Constraints
Inside the Access Group's world
We designed strictly inside Prospect/Access’s established system: typography, colors, and components were set. That constraint helped speed; we focused on problem framing, interaction patterns, and copy guidance, not net-new UI. Delivery was feature-by-feature with Prospect’s devs, who would implement, sanity-check in the product, and iterate quickly in tandem with us.
Approach &
Key Design Decisions
Goal was to add simplicity and speed through UX problem-solving, one feature at a time. We had the advantage of an already set and robust design system, lots of both user and dev feedback and years of a product with a loyal fanbase that gave a lot of insight. Our job become to simply make what they already had easier and more straight forward to use.
New dashboards often start empty, which kills trial momentum. We introduced clear states: Empty → Demo Data (toggleable and clearly labeled) → Connected. Widget types (reports, KPIs, tasks, recent records, pipeline, goal tracker) slot onto a simple grid; where configuration is required, a short, stepped setup clarifies what data powers each card. Titles and content are editable; widgets can be resized, reordered, or removed without ceremony.
We rebuilt the targets flow into two steps with three entry modes: by team member, by company, or by sales rep, reusing layout where possible and changing only what the flows needed. Inline-editable tables, bulk apply, and period schemes (half-year, quarterly, monthly) let Team Managers set Goals fast. Final views differ by mode: table-first for team members; chart-forward for companies/sales reps.
We designed a canvas with node-based flows that always start from one of four templates: X days after problem closure, customer purchase activity, problem created, or opportunity closed. Each step opens a side-panel editor with context-specific settings—e.g., “Send email” (choose a template) or “Create task” (assign, delay). The idea was to create a scalable structure that would allow the Team to easily add more Templated Workflows down the line.
Adding products used to mean paging through a huge table, then enduring an unpredictable, multi-step modal for discounts and bundles. We kept the fast keyboard tabbing pattern in the table, added search, sort (recent/popular), and category filters, and introduced a live “Selection” side panel. Each chosen item appears as a card with quantity controls, stock status, and per-item totals; a sticky subtotal and “Add N items to quote” CTA anchor the panel.
Upsell logic lives inline: discounted upgrade sub-cards include a one-click “Compare & Swap,” and “Frequently bought together” rows add toggled items beneath the parent. No surprise, confusing modal at the end.
Outcomes
Trials see meaningful dashboards immediately; admins set targets in two steps; automations start from proven templates and are edited in place; and adding to quotes is fast, transparent, and modal-free. Everything runs on Prospect/Access components, so it looks native and ships cleanly.
The changes remove common pain points and lessen decision time across flows. Trial dashboards communicate value sooner; Goals setup is shorter and less error-prone; Automated Workflows are straightforward yet powerful is approachable, and adding-to-quote keeps users in flow while increasing the visibility of upgrades and bundles.
Learnings & Final Thoughts
This was a UX-first, system-bound project with a very capable, enthusiastic dev team. It was a great show of collaboration and speedy building, and we kept patterns consistent to minimize resources used. The work is complete for now; Prospect’s team will continue iterating feature-by-feature using the same approach and the patterns we established.
