Case Study
Dependency Mapping
Ethnographic Analysis of Onboarding Dependencies
The Brief
Vacasa is the largest vacation rental management company in the US. Thousands of new vacation rentals are onboarded every year. The process is inconsistent and fraught with delays among the dependencies. The goal of this project was to illustrate the dependencies for the business and uncover opportunities to optimize the "pipeline" while maintaining customer-centricity. My role was researcher.
The Process
Inspiration
To understand the nature of dependencies and how to illustrate them, I looked to the construction industry for analogous inspiration and the project management tools used to coordinate the building of homes.
Research
I conducted in depth interviews with 9 expert leaders throughout the onboarding pipeline. Within many of these interviews, I was granted an “over-the-shoulder” view of their team’s day-to-day reality. For each interview, I created a snapshot summary of each intersecting dependency, the delay-causing pain points their teams experience, and opportunities to mitigate those disruptions.
The Results
The results of this project came in the form of recommendations for process change, represented by cost savings to the business and reduction in the amount of time needed to onboard a new unit.
Cost Savings Example
Changes to the process of scheduling photography have the potential to save up to $420,000 in rescheduling fees annually. I partnered with our finance team to pull a 30-days worth of expenses submitted associated with rescheduling of "New Home Photography" and multiplied by 12 months.
Time Savings Example
I uncovered that there can be up to a 7 day delay between a new homeowner signing a contract and being assigned an Onboarding Coordinator. With a few highly feasibly changes in Salesforce, this could be reduced to 24hrs.