Internal CRM for Gestión & Servicios

UX/UI & Frontend Dev — (React + Node)

UX/UI

Frontend Dev

🏢 Company Overview

Gestion & Servicios is an insurance company based in Argentina, providing coverage for various needs, including health, vehicle, and property insurance.

🎯 Objective

Deploy an internal Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system to streamline operations, enhance internal communication, and improve data management.

🧩 The Team & my Role

— 1 Lead Developer & Team Leader
— 1 UX/UI Designer
— 1 Backend Developer
— 2 UX/UI Designer & Frontend Developer (My Role)    

Ideation and Planning: Collaborated on conceptualizing the CRM from scratch using React, Node.js & MySQL. Took part on the decisions of which technologies were going to be implemented.    

Component Development: Built layout and components using React, HTML & CSS, ensuring consistency with the provided designs.    

Component Ideation: Contributed to the design and functionality ideation of various components.

💻 Design & Development

Design Consistency: Ensured all components adhered to the design guidelines, maintaining a cohesive and user-friendly interface.

Component Development: Created reusable React components such as forms, tables, and menus following Atomic Design principles to enhance productivity and maintainability.

🗺️ Planning & Ideation

Collaborative Workshops: Participated in brainstorming sessions with the other developers, designers and the team leader to define the CRM's requirements and features.
Technology Stack: Decided on using React for the frontend, Node.js for the backend, MySQL for the database, Express.js for the server framework, and Figma for Design.
MVP Development: Focused on creating a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) to quickly deliver a functional CRM that addresses core needs, allowing for faster user feedback and iterative improvements.

🏔️ Challenges and Solutions

Design Consistency:
Ensuring design consistency across various components was challenging. Regular design reviews and close collaboration between designers & developers helped maintain uniformity.
Data Management:
Integrating complex data structures from MySQL required careful planning. Collaborating with backend developers ensured efficient data handling and performance optimization.
User Experience:
At times, we encountered situations where our understanding of certain features was limited. Continuous communication with the CEO and users was crucial to gain deeper insights and ensure iterative design improvements.

✨ Outcome

Although I left Gestion & Seguros before the CRM project was fully implemented, the development of the MVP laid a strong foundation for significant improvements in operational efficiency. The anticipated key benefits included:

Enhanced Data Management: Streamlined data handling and retrieval processes. Limiting data entry to the required value for each field prevents future issues.

Improved Customer Service: Fast access to customer information to enable better service delivery. (Automatic PDF creation)

Increased Productivity: Reusable components and a responsive design to enhance productivity and user satisfaction.

💡 Lessons Learned

Collaboration is Key:
Close collaboration between Dev & Design teams is crucial for successful integration and functionality.
Iterative Development:
An iterative approach, starting with an MVP, allows for continuous improvement and refinement of the system.
Although not officially documented as a report during this project,

I learned the importance of UX heuristics, which I now apply to

all my projects:

Visibility of System Status: To ensure that users know the following steps a progress bar was added.

User Control and Freedom: In the CRM, this meant allowing users to easily edit, delete entries in their lists or go a step back.

Help Users Recognize, Diagnose, and Recover from Errors: In the CRM, error messages were descriptive and offered actionable steps to resolve issues.