Transforming Enterprise Service Management
How we redesigned VMware's internal service platform to unlock $36M+ savings, 2x fulfillment productivity, and 95% employee satisfaction through rigorous user-centered design.
Overview
My Role
Lead Product Designer
Team
- Me + 2 UX Designers
- 4 UI Developers
- 12+ Engineers
- 3 Product Managers
- 1 Product Owner
- 3 Analysts
Timeline
2021 - 2023 (6 Quarters)
Key Responsibilities
UX Strategy • User Research • Cross-functional Alignment Usability Testing • Accessibility • Design System Delivery
Business Impact
- $36M+ annual savings on phone support & licensing costs
- 2x increase in fulfillment productivity (2x)
- 60% fewer inter-department ticket transfers
- 35% reduction in average ticket age
User Impact
- ~94% user satisfaction
- <1 min average ticket filing time
- Reduced ticket resolution time
- Lower ticket aging
Product Overview
HelpNow is a SaaS-based Enterprise Service Management (ESM) Platform that enables employees to request help across HR, Finance, Logistics, IT and other departments.
Goal
Rebuild trust and boost efficiency by streamlining how services are discovered, requested, tracked, and fulfilled across the company.
Constraints
Legacy workflows, fragmented systems, and inconsistent accessibility across request channels.
Success Metrics
- 75% drop in phone support
- 2× fulfillment rate
- 90%+ user satisfaction
The ProblemA Failing Internal System Was Crippling Productivity and Costing Millions
In 2021, VMware's internal support system was a source of universal frustration. A confusing, non-mobile, hierarchical list of over 400 service forms led users to default to phone and email, creating bottlenecks and inefficiency. The platform wasn't just broken; it was actively harming the business.
- Operational Inefficiency: The average time to submit a request was 5.2 minutes. With fulfillment teams overwhelmed, the average resolution time ballooned to 16 days.
- Wasted Resources: Misrouted tickets were rampant, with 32% being transferred across departments, causing significant delays. The company was spending over $40 million annually on this inefficient system.
- Eroding Trust: A critical lack of privacy controls meant all tickets were visible company-wide, causing over 90% of users to avoid the system for sensitive HR, finance, or legal issues.
- Constant Escalations: The broken experience resulted in an average of 852 escalations each week, making crisis management the norm.
My ApproachBusiness Alignment
I started the project by running an experience canvas session with key stakeholders. It helped us get aligned early, understand what really mattered to them, and shape clear UX goals from the start. I learnt that they all had a vision of a modern support platform that's trusted by employees and self-serviced by departments.
ResearchPreparing for Field Studies
To kick off a collaborative design journey, I brought the whole team together for a starbursting workshop - setting the tone for collective creativity throughout the project.
We generated 100+ questions, which I then grouped by theme and shared with the product team. Their responses helped us align on knowns and unknowns early.
The unanswered questions became the foundation for my research plan.
- What specific pain points are driving users to avoid HelpNow?
- What triggers escalations in the current system?
- What blockers prevent admins from managing their own services?
DiscoveryUncovering Deep-Seated Issues in Trust, Bias, and Usability
To move beyond assumptions, I initiated a multi-faceted research phase - starting with desk research and heuristic evaluation to over 12 in-depth user interviews to map the complete user journey.
Heuristics and Field Studies Revealed Foundational Flaws
My research uncovered critical usability issues and user behaviors that explained why the old system failed:
Navigation Overload
Complex menu structure with buried functionality made common tasks
difficult to locate and complete.
Terminology Clarity
Technical jargon and inconsistent labeling confused users and created
barriers to task completion.
Visual Hierarchy
Poor information architecture failed to guide users through workflows
and prioritize important actions.
Three Core Themes Emerged to Define Our Challenge
The system was fundamentally untrustworthy for sensitive matters.
Impact
- HR complaints avoided the system entirely
- Personal issues handled through email/phone
- Low adoption for confidential requests
The platform was an IT Service Management (ITSM) tool retrofitted for the enterprise.
Impact
- 60% users used phone/email for non-IT issues
- System too complex for most departments
- Departments did not have autonomy, critical for efficieny
A cluttered layout, poor navigation, and a lack of mobile responsiveness made it unusable.
Impact
- 400+ forms created decision paralysis
- Users defaulted to generic "Incident" category
- Increased support calls for form selection
Defining Personas to Guide Our Design Solutions
The Power Requester
(e.g., Executive Assistant) Creates high-volume, repetitive requests and relies on a fragile system of personal bookmarks to navigate the 400+ forms.
The Multi-Threaded Manager
(e.g., Hiring Manager) Manages complex, cross-departmental workflows like employee onboarding, requiring separate tickets for HR, IT, and Finance with no central view.
The Power Requester
The High-Volume Specialist
I have a dozen bookmarks just to do my job. There has to be a faster way to request the same services every week.
Executive Assistant, Palo Alto
✓ Needs & Goals
- Efficiency and shortcuts to speed up workflows
- Ability to save or template frequently used requests
- Quick, reliable access without deep navigation
✗ Pain Points
- Forced to navigate a confusing hierarchy of 400+ forms
- Wastes time with repetitive data entry for each similar ticket
- Manages a fragile, ad-hoc system of personal bookmarks
The Multi-Threaded Manager
The Cross-Functional Coordinator
Onboarding a new hire means opening tickets with HR, IT, and Finance. I have no idea what the overall status is without checking three different places.
Hiring Manager, Austin
✓ Needs & Goals
- A centralized view of all related tasks for a single initiative
- Clear, consolidated status tracking across all departments
- Streamlined communication without copy-pasting updates
✗ Pain Points
- No way to group related tickets for a single project (e.g., onboarding)
- Manually tracking siloed ticket statuses across HR, IT, and Finance
- Lacks a single source of truth for a complex, multi-department workflow
Competitive Analysis Confirmed a Gap in the Market: True ESM
A competitive analysis of market leaders like ServiceNow, Freshservice, and Helpzilla confirmed our hypothesis: the market was saturated with ITSM solutions, but a true, user-friendly Enterprise Service Management (ESM) platform designed for all departments was a clear opportunity. This validated leadership's vision to build this not just for ourselves, but as a new VMware product.
DesignExperimenting with Radical Simplification
My team explored ways to simplify and streamline the end user experience, while engineering did a proof of concept (POC) on elastic search using NLP. With this power, we experimented with:
- Radical simplification
- Powerful elastic search
- NLP Service Tagging
Early Failure
Usability testing revealed a major design flaw. A generic, open-ended search did not match the mental models of our users. While the design was less cluttered, we failed to meet the users where they were!
Pivot
We restored the familiar service catalog, but also added smart shortcuts to departments. The final product
OutputFinally, a modern interface to supercharge Fullfiller Workspace
I designed a simple dashboard that focussed on efficient scanning of assigned tasks and items that needed attention.
Key Feature Screens
ImpactTransforming Enterprise Service Management at Scale
The redesigned HelpNow+ platform exceeded all expectations, delivering transformative results that proved the power of user-centered design in enterprise environments. Within six months of launch, we achieved unprecedented improvements across all key metrics.
35%
Productivity increase
Fulfillment teams & mobile adoption$5M+
Cost savings achieved
Through reduced phone & licensing costs95%
User satisfaction
Exceeding our 90% target<1 min
Average filing time
Down from 5.2 minutesOriginal Goals vs. Results
Goal: 75% reduction
Achieved: Major cost savings through reduced phone dependency and improved self-service adoption
Goal: 2x increase
Achieved: 35% immediate increase with continued improvement trajectory
Goal: 90%+ satisfaction
Achieved: 95% satisfaction, exceeding expectations
What This Project Taught Me
"True transformation happens when you design with the people, not just for them."
Users as Co-Creators
This project taught me that users aren't just "requirement sources"—they're co-creators in the design process. When we involved employees, fulfillers, and managers directly in workshops and testing, we uncovered root causes that traditional requirements gathering would have missed.
Systematic Problem-Solving
The most impactful insights came from treating users as partners in solving complex organizational challenges. Their lived experiences revealed systemic issues that design alone couldn't fix, leading to more meaningful and sustainable solutions.
Design's Strategic Role
This experience demonstrated how design thinking can drive business transformation at enterprise scale. By focusing on human needs first, we unlocked operational improvements that traditional efficiency initiatives had failed to achieve.
Collaborative Impact
The success of HelpNow+ proved that when design, engineering, and business stakeholders work as true collaborators—with users at the center—the results exceed what any single discipline could accomplish alone.