The goal was to provide our users an easy way to migrate their documents from their existing document management system into Canopy’s.
Problem
With the transition to paperless document management systems (DMS) comes a unique set of challenges for accounting professionals. Instead of a filing cabinet where papers can be filed away and moved between locations, documents are typically stored in a document management software and often cannot be moved between systems easily.
Canopy was experiencing a significant amount of friction when asking users to migrate their files from their current DMS to Canopy’s. Users often spent months on end zipping and downloading their files and folders from their previous DMS and reuploading and unzipping them in Canopy before they could even get started.
Many users were so frustrated with the tedious process that it was a deal-breaker.
My team was tasked with the challenge of designing a streamlined solution to help users migrate their existing documents from their current DMS into Canopy’s DMS.
To solve the problem, it was imperative that we really understood it.
RESEARCH
My project manager and I conducted user interviews with users who had recently made the move to Canopy to understand the tasks they were performing to get their files into our document management system and their feelings toward the process. I also sent a user survey to get a better understanding of how we could track the progress of our new solution.
Old flow
We found that the average time of each full file migration was around 2.5 months for mid-sized firms.
The time varied depending on firm size and the number of clients each firm represented.
After gathering our research, I created an affinity map with our qualitative data to determine the biggest areas of concern with the current process.
We found that not only was the process inefficient and time-consuming, it was also exceedingly frustrating for our users because the migration was a critical task for starting to use Canopy as a practice management tool. Without their files and folders in place for their clients, they were losing the time they needed to do their jobs.
I started brainstorming a flow that would present a seamless and cohesive experience for our users.
It was clear from talking to our users that we needed to make it easier for them to bulk upload their files to Canopy once they were exported from their previous DMS. They also needed an easier way to map their client’s files to the corresponding client record in Canopy.
New flow
After our first round of testing, we were able to identify weak points
in the design.
Key Findings:
Users were happy with the ability to bulk upload files but they were still hesitant about the time investment of needing to manually map each contact to a folder.
“I’m going to have to do this for all 300 of my clients?”
The jump from the desktop application to the web application was jarring and confusing to users, they didn’t understand why the migration and mapping processes were segmented into two different areas.
An opportunity
Even though the first iteration of the design was solving one of the big pain points, which was actually getting all of our users’ files into Canopy at once, we weren’t addressing the biggest pain point of all. The process was nominally easier but still required our users to spend time that they didn’t have mapping each folder structure to the corresponding contact in Canopy.
The whole process got me thinking, how could we help our users get their files into Canopy without the huge time investment that mapping required?
Automate it.
With the help of my amazing developers, we got to work designing a system that would allow us to pull from our existing contact database in Canopy and automatically match the contact’s name to the name of the contact folder, regardless of formatting. We called it Smart Matching.
new new flow
key findings:
By automating the mapping process, we significantly reduced the time it took to get from preparing the migration to actually starting it.
All of the mapping and prep work took place inside of the desktop application before the migration actually started so users could feel confident that everything was going to the right place.
Since it could run in the background, they could get back to focusing on important tasks while we took care of the migration behind the scenes.
OUTCOME
Since its release, the Canopy File Migration Tool has helped migrate over
2.7 million files into Canopy.
2.71 million migrated files since release.
Files uploaded year over year has rapidly increased.