Cision’s Press Release Workflow
Redesign of an internal enterprise workflow
Summary
From 0 to 1, alongside my product collaborators - I drove the vision and redesign. Making this enterprise workflow more efficient and usable.
Timeline, 6 months
Team
Lead designer (me)
1 Product Manager
1 Delivery Manager
5 Backend engineers
2 frontend engineers
Skills
User testing/research
Prototyping
Visual Design/UI
User Experience
Cross-functional Workshops
BACKGROUND
Cision press release distribution platform, is in need of revamping how their internal team processes releases.
Experience Strategy:
Offer a workflow that empowers the internal processing team to effectively and efficiently distribute press releases.
Business Strategy:
Improve processing time by 70%
Reduce onboarding time from 3 months to 1 month
Automate significant parts of the workflow
Built in 2007, the product team has used the same software for over 15 years. Adding workflows, buttons, and tables to serve the teams evolving needs, this Frankensteined product has now become a burden to use.
Problem 1: Difficulty Finding Priority Press Releases
Before: Customer service specialists wasted time determining which press releases to work on first, manually checking deadlines and customer contract details.
Solution: Created an intelligent queue that:
Automatically shows highest priority orders first
Provides filtering and sorting options
Highlights late releases and those already in progress
Filtering, sorting, showing late releases, and releases that have been picked up all help provide context to an order that wasn’t available before.
Problem 2: Manual Workflow with High Error Rates
Before: Specialists relied on memorized steps or separate documents as checklists, and wrote manual notes about incomplete items.
Solution: Implemented a To-Do list panel that:
Displays required tasks for each release
Tracks completed vs. incomplete items
Eliminates need for manual note-taking
Problem 3: Ambiguous Release Status
Before: Status communication happened outside the platform via Slack, creating confusion.
Solution: Created:
Clear status indicators for each release
An activity section for detailed notes
Ability for any specialist to follow up on orders
Problem 4: Complicated User Interface
Before: Lack of information architecture and a cluttered interface where specialists struggled to find information.
Solution: Redesigned with -
A consistent left panel showing tasks, deadlines, and ownership
A right panel organizing all release content in a logical hierarchy
(BEFORE) Incredibly dated and clunky, this screen is where specialists would leave notes on the order, in addtion to teams messages.
The left Panel provides a consistent section for specialists to “work from”. From here, they know what needs to be done, when it needs to be done, and who has been working on it.
The right panel provides all the content needed to review and distriute a press release. It shows content uploaded from the user in a centralized place. All content hierarchy was tested by specialists to provide information in the order that makes most sense to the workflow.
Challenges
Legacy Platform Distinguishing between genuine user needs vs workarounds evolved from years of technical debt.
Scope Creep Feature requests by stakeholders continuously pushed our launch date
Stakeholder buy-in Stakeholders had a hard time trusting that the MVP would be sufficient
Outcome
A functioning MVP was built in 4 months, however due to company lay-offs the project was paused.