Deal Registration — Rocio Martinez

📋 Overview

Over three years, I led the modernisation IBM’s partner experience by redesigning Deal Registration — simplifying workflows, unifying fragmented systems, and supporting IBM’s global partner strategy.

Role

Title: UX Designer, Service Designer and Researcher
Focus: Global Partner Experience
Scope: Deal Registration & System Unification
Team: 7 global squads — UX, content, legal, ops, engineering

⚡ The Challenge

Partners experienced high friction: multiple systems, redundant form fields, slow manual processes, and inconsistent UX across regions.

45
separate apps for partner tasks

Manual
validation causing delays

25
clicks to finalise agreements

💥 Design impact

I led and contributed across experience design, system unification,and global release coordination — translating complex enterprise constraints into scalable, usable solutions.

Experience Simplification

Redesigned Deal Registration and streamlined Opportunity Management flows to reduce friction and eliminate redundancy.

System Unification

Led Carbonization of Salesforce Lightning pages and aligned fragmented tools into one scalable system.

Design System Enablement

Created a reusable Carbon for Salesforce component library for global consistency and faster deployment.

Content & Compliance

Refined enterprise content and partnered with legal to balance clarity, compliance, and usability.

Global Release

Coordinated cross-functional squads across regions to support simultaneous worldwide rollout.

🔍 Research & Insights

To understand the core issues, I conducted stakeholder interviews and reviewed existing partner feedback and historical support tickets.

Key insights:

Users needed real-time status visibility. They couldn’t see approval progress in one place
Partners weren’t sure when protections were secured or where to go next
Manual coordination caused rework and delays

🎯 These insights showed that the problem wasn’t just layout or UI, it was process visibility and clarity.

🌐 Global Release & Localization Challenges

This transformation wasn’t a small regional launch — it was a massive worldwide release across multiple countries simultaneously.

Coordinated translations across global markets
Adapted legal language per region
Ensured terminology consistency across languages
Aligned UX patterns despite regulatory variation

🚀 Phases

Phase 1 - MVP Launch
Salesforce Lightning components, centralized Deal Registration, legacy tools sunset.

Phase 2 – Carbonization & System Unification
Reusable component library for visual consistency and global scalability.

🖥️ Phases 1: MVP Launch

To move quickly, we launched an MVP using Salesforce Lightning components embedded within a Carbon navigation shell. This allowed us to:

Centralize deal registration into the Partner Portal
Sunset some legacy tools
Validate simplified flows quickly
Validate simplified flows quickly

🔍 Research

After launching the first MVP, we leveraged the initial momentum to evaluate and refine the experience. Embracing a “fail fast” approach, we conducted user research to uncover key insights and identify opportunities for improvement.

Our partners opinion

“Good improvement”

VAD, Portugal

[Surprised by how much data is shown, in a good way] “Pretty self-explanatory”

Reseller, Botswana

“Pretty logical. I can’t think of any improvements”

Reseller, Mexico

“Don’t have to do it [Deal Registration and opportunity creation] twice anymore”

VAD, Spain

⚠️ But still there was room for improvement

🖥️ Phase 2: Carbonization, System Unification & Iteration

Before After

The second phase focused on long-term scalability and consistency. I designed components for the Carbon for Salesforce library, translating Lightning components into Carbon equivalents.

We also prioritszed iterative improvements based on user feedback gathered through interviews. As we transitioned to Carbon, we were able to refine labels, improve content clarity, and make meaningful usability enhancements informed directly by our users’ insights.

What this achieve:

Full visual consistency across the portal
Reusable components for global deployment
Reduced duplication across squads
Easier localization due to standardized components
Alignment with IBM brand standards

📝 After MVP2

Deal Registration is the revenue engine for partners. It determines access to incentives and co-selling opportunities.

Before

• 4-step process
• Dense legal language
• Limited contextual guidance
• Multi-system touchpoints

After

• 3 streamlined steps
• Clear progressive disclosure
• Improved content clarity
• Reduced duplication

📊 Results

30s
Registration time

Multi-billion dollar
Revenue supported

1M+
Deals created

15
Clicks to access 10 incentives

3
Clicks to finalize agreements (was 25)

406h
Saved manual effort

🌍 Business Outcomes

✅ 45 legacy applications sunset

🌐 One unified global portal

⚡ 10x faster revalidations

📉 Reduced operational overhead

🚀 Increased deal velocity

👥 Higher partner adoption

🌎 Globally scalable system supporting regional variation

🎯 This wasn’t just a UX redesign. It was operational transformation at global enterprise scale.

💡 Key Learnings & Reflection

Enterprise simplification is political — negotiation matters
Localization affects layout, validation, and data models
Automation is strategic UX — improves satisfaction and efficiency
Design systems enable global scale — unified components essential

Designing for dozens of countries under legal, political, and operational constraints strengthened IBM’s partner ecosystem and its $12B growth engine.