Contact One View
Designing a Contact-First CRM Experience
Duration: 4 MOnths
COMPANY
Tekion Corp
ROLE
Product Design • IA
SCOPE
Lead Creation + Contact/Lead Architecture
PARTNERS
Product • Engineering • Dealership Stakeholders
ABOUT TEKION
Tekion is a Silicon Valley based automotive retail technology company that launched the Automotive Retail Cloud (ARC), the industry’s first cloud-native DMS. It combines DMS, CRM, digital retail, and AI-driven analytics into a single platform to deliver a seamless, customer-centric dealership experience.
PROJECT INFO
Transitioning from a lead management system to a customer-centric CRM to support the growing operational needs of dealerships and expand Tekion's CRM capabilities across a broader automotive ecosystem.
MY CONTRIBUTION
Owned Lead Creation Experience redesign
Owned Lead & Contact Information Panel redesign
Defined information architecture and workflows
Align with stakeholders for feedback and validations
01 / CONTEXT
The product was built around leads. The business needed to think in customers.
Tekion was expanding from a lead-management system into a broader CRM for automotive dealerships. The challenge was not simply to redesign screens—it was to establish a customer-centric model without disrupting familiar dealership workflows.
THE DESIGN CHALLENGE
How might we make the customer the persistent relationship while keeping leads focused on individual opportunities?
02 / WHAT WAS BROKEN
All the issues pointed to one underlying problem: the data model was lead-centric.
Operational Friction
Customer information was fragmented across records.
Duplicate records reduced confidence in customer data.
Users had limited context while managing leads.
Existing workflows made CRM expansion harder.
Business Tension
The platform needed to introduce CRM capabilities while preserving workflows dealership teams already understood.
That created a product-design constraint: improve the underlying relationship model without forcing users to relearn the entire workflow.
01
Customer identity was not persistent enough across opportunities.
02
Contact and opportunity information had different ownership needs.
03
A new CRM model had to coexist with established lead workflows.
03 / BEFORE → AFTER
We changed the mental model before changing the interface.
The key shift was to treat Contact as the persistent customer entity and Lead as an opportunity associated with that customer.
Before • Lead-Centric
Lead A → Customer information
Lead B → Customer information
Lead C → Customer information
Customer context was repeatedly represented inside individual lead records.
→
After • Contact-First
Customer / Contact
↳ Lead / Opportunity 01
↳ Lead / Opportunity 02
↳ Lead / Opportunity 03
Persistent customer identity with opportunity-specific context attached to it.
04 / DESIGN STRATEGY
Four principles shaped the solution.
Defining the clear principle helped in explorations.
01
Customer first
Establish customer identity before creating an opportunity.
02
Clear ownership
Keep persistent customer data separate from opportunity data.
03
Progressive change
Introduce CRM concepts inside familiar workflows.
04
Design for reuse
Create a model that can support multiple opportunities and future CRM capabilities.
05 / WORKSTREAM A
Contact-first lead creation
Instead of asking users to create a lead and then establish the customer relationship, the flow begins with the information needed to identify the customer.
DESIGN STRATEGY
Start with identity, not opportunity details.
The first step captures the lead type, customer name and communication details so the system can check whether the contact already exists.
WHY IT MATTERS
Duplicate prevention becomes part of the workflow.
Users can establish or reuse the customer relationship before continuing with opportunity-specific information.
1
Capture key details
Start with the lead type, customer name, and communication details. The system uses the information to check whether the contact already exists.
2
Identify or Create
Present relevant existing contacts with basic information, allowing users to select a match or continue with a new contact.
3
Complete with context
Pre-fill known information from the selected contact, then capture additional lead details such as vehicle, source, and trade-in.
EARLIER DIRECTION
Lead-first creation
The existing mental model prioritized opportunity creation, with customer identity treated as supporting information.
→
REFINED DIRECTION
Contact-first creation
Move identity earlier so matching, reuse and data quality become part of the primary workflow.
06 / WORKSTREAM B
Separate the customer from the opportunity.
The information architecture distinguishes persistent relationship information from the details of a specific lead.
CONTACT
Persistent customer context
Name and communication details
Address and preferred contact method
Relationship-level context
Multiple associated leads
LEAD
Opportunity-specific context
Lead status and type
Vehicle / opportunity information
Lead-level activities
Assignment and opportunity context
Contact Panel
Centralizes customer information, providing a consistent view of the individual and their relationship context.
Lead Panel
Focuses on opportunity-specific information, helping users understand and manage the details of each lead independently.
DECISION
Give each entity a clear ownership boundary.
This prevents customer attributes from becoming duplicated across opportunity records while keeping lead-specific information focused.
SCALABILITY
One contact can support many opportunities.
The model can extend beyond a single lead lifecycle toward a broader customer relationship history.
07 / CONSTRAINTS & TRADE-OFF
The goal wasn't to replace the old workflow. It was to evolve it safely.
Constraint
Dealership teams already understood lead-centric workflows. A completely new CRM entry model could create adoption friction.
Opportunity-specific context
Rather than introducing a separate customer-management journey everywhere, the new contact-first model was introduced within familiar lead creation and panel experiences.
DESIGN MOVE
Change the underlying relationship model while minimizing the amount of behavioral change required from existing users.
08 / OUTCOMES
From isolated lead records toward a reusable customer relationship model.
Product Model
Established Contact as the persistent customer entity and Lead as the opportunity entity.
User Workflow
Moved customer identification earlier in lead creation and made duplicate prevention part of the flow.
Future Platform
Created an information architecture that can support multiple opportunities and broader CRM capabilities.
WORKFLOW IMPACT
Helped salespeople and BDC teams create leads quickly, without adding unnecessary fields.
The streamlined form captured the necessary data points while keeping lead creation efficient. The Contact panel brought relevant operational records into one place, while unified communication records reduced the latency involved in finding customer context.
09 / REFLECTION
The work was ultimately less about a form and more about changing the product's mental model.
The most important design contribution was establishing a clearer boundary between who the customer is and what opportunity the business is pursuing with that customer.
That distinction gave the CRM experience a stronger foundation while allowing the product to evolve without forcing dealership users to abandon familiar workflows.
Back to Work
©
Mrunali Ogriwala
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