Pillar to Post is a successful and growing home inspection franchise who needed to replace their outdated inspection software. Their previous process consisted of note-taking on paper in addition to data entry on a bulky laptop during and after an inspection. The home inspection itself would take several hours, with another 3 hours on average to finish up notes and generate a report, per inspection.
As part of a larger business transformation, they wanted to attract more franchisees by offering a superior home inspection capture and reporting tool. It was important that reports, payments, and signatures could be handled onsite, printed, and left with homeowners immediately after the inspection, rather than the usual 2-3 day turnaround.
This was a very complex product to design and build. Some considerations and risks before we even got into requirements included offline capability, coordination with a third party scheduling software firm on another continent, managing expectations across a large group of stakeholders with varying degrees of decision-making authority, and some non-negotiable deadlines around demo readiness in time for the annual franchisee conference.
The new inspection app needed to:
As UX design lead, I worked in collaboration with my technical architect, project manager, business architect, account director, and developers to strategize around this project. We coordinated with our client's project manager, various program directors, business analysts, and home inspectors.
Key activities included:
The new app is flexible and intuitive enough that inspectors can capture and document the entire home inspection while on site, and and in less time. In addition to making their job easier to perform, the new app puts more time back in the inspectors’ day to perform additional inspections and increase their earning potential with easy upsells that homeowners understand. The app can be purchased by franchisees who have valid licensing credentials.
This is another instance where I would have enjoyed facilitating user testing with inspectors who are just learning the new app. I suspect that if I have to choose a home inspection company, it would be this one, if only to observe them using the app and ask them more about it.