From tedious year-end paperwork to a daily coaching tool

Every Northwestern Mutual advisor has to meet a minimum earnings requirement each year. Checking it ran on printed reports, spreadsheets and email between managing partners in the field and the home office, and no one person used a standardized process. I mapped it end to end, then redesigned it as a single shared view with clear status at every handoff. It also reframed the job: instead of a year-end compliance chore, managing partners now see who’s falling behind as it happens. It saves an estimated 1,750 hours a year, and 93% of managing partners said they’d use it to coach their teams.

A paper process for a coaching problem

Northwestern Mutual advisors must reach a minimum level of earnings each production year. The home office reviews the results. Managing partners, who run local offices, can grant exceptions, such as for a disability or military service. Advisors who miss the requirement may owe a fee and recurring misses end in dismissal.

The process ran on paper. Every year, the home office generated printed reports. Managing partners wrote resolutions in the margins (“Will pay fine,” “Moving to AFR”) and sent them back. Then came weeks of calls and emails to sort out changes and corrections.

The bigger cost was hidden. Managing partners only saw who had missed the requirement once the year was over. By then it was too late to help.

Highly manual

Reports, resolutions, notes and calculations were all done by hand, absorbing hours for Home Office and Field alike.

Dated data

With little visibility into current numbers, managing partners reacted late, and struggling advisors missed coaching.

Cluttered communication

Every change, update or submission meant another call or email between Field and Home Office, and more time waiting.

Mapping a process nobody had written down

There was no documentation, and no single person knew how best to use the system of reports, spreadsheets and individual emails. Through interviews with the home-office specialists and managing partners who ran it, I pieced together the full flow, role by role. Along the way I found the points where people got stuck waiting, or lost track of where things stood.

Three decisions that shaped the solution

1. Design for coaching, not just compliance

The project was to digitize for a year-end review. But the interviews showed the real opportunity: managing partners wanted to help advisors before they failed, and they couldn’t see who needed help. So the new view shows each advisor’s progress against the requirement, updated daily, all year long. Year-end resolution became the last step of a process that starts in January.

Timely updates

Managing partners couldn’t identify or help struggling advisors when they needed support.

Now they have a clear view of at-risk reps, updated daily, so they can track progress, check in and support their team before anyone is at risk of failure.

2. One shared view, with a clear status at every handoff

Instead of separate reports for each side, managing partners and the home office work from the same data. Every handoff carries a status and a notification:

• A managing partner submits exceptions, one at a time or in bulk, and the home office is notified.
• The home office approves or denies, and the managing partner is notified.

Status is no longer a mystery to either party.

3. Let the home office work by exception

Home-office specialists reviewed hundreds of offices. I gave them:

• a filter that shows only the offices ready for approval
• bulk approval
• documentation as an option rather than a requirement

Their review time now goes where a decision is actually needed.

Focus for the home office

Smart filtering

After years of slow processes and cluttered screens, the home office can view only the network offices ready for approval, and focus on what needs attention.

Clear communication

Representatives who miss minimum earnings are flagged clearly, and the managing partner’s phone and email sit right in the view, so the next step is one click away.

Simplifying through feedback

My first wireframes met every requirement, and that was the problem: internal users found them overwhelming. We reviewed them with the people who’d use them and simplified in rounds:

• A clearer flow
• Stronger hierarchy
• Plain status indicators

Then came a step-through mode, so a managing partner can move advisor by advisor at year-end to set resolutions and add notes.

What changed

An estimated 1,750 hours a year saved: roughly 200 hours of home-office time the manual process consumed, plus an estimated 1,500+ hours saved across managing partners in the field.

• 15+ hours saved per managing partner each year (estimated), about two working days
• 93% of managing partners said they’d use the new view to track and coach their teams

The longer-term impact is the one that matters most. When an advisor misses the requirement, it’s often partly because their leader didn’t see the warning signs in time. With a daily view, managing partners can step in early.

What I took away

The brief is a starting point. The request was to digitize a form. Listening to the people involved turned it into a coaching tool, and that’s where the real value was.

Simple is earned. The first version did everything and helped no one. The final one does less, more clearly, and that took several rounds.

Hand off with context. When I moved into the Director role, a senior designer finished the work. Because the process maps, decisions and feedback were documented, the design kept its direction through the handoff.