Reimagining a Custom CRM to Reduce Inefficiencies and Cost

The Opportunity

Archa had been a vital tool at AllCampus, but it hadn’t kept pace with the growing complexity of its users’ needs. While the platform offered breadth, it lacked depth, delivering a one-size-fits-all experience to users with vastly different goals and responsibilities. Advisors toggled between tabs to locate context, often relying on memory to guide high-stakes conversations. Admins leaned heavily on spreadsheets, exporting vital data as a workaround to track performance and generate reports. These limitations disrupted daily work, forcing teams to rely on fragmented data, workaround tools, and off-platform processes just to stay productive.

Rather than treat these issues as isolated UX bugs, AllCampus recognized an opportunity to reframe Archa as a strategic product. With the right foundation — simplified workflows, improved data access, and role-based experiences — the platform could scale with the business and better support day-to-day decision-making. Just as importantly, the redesign became a model for organizational change: embracing a product-minded approach that positioned design, engineering, and business alignment as core to growth.

At the outset, teams across the organization worked in silos, each relying on separate workflows and fragmented tools. One of our early contributions was helping form cross-functional product teams that could break down these barriers and build shared momentum. Through our partnership, AllCampus adopted a more integrated product model, redefining the role of internal tools and reigniting confidence in the platform’s future.

Our Approach

We began with the needs of the people Archa served. Through stakeholder interviews across enrollment, marketing, admin, and leadership teams, we identified key friction points and opportunities to improve. Those insights fed into a service blueprint that mapped user journeys, backoffice systems, and internal handoffs, providing a clear picture of where the CRM was falling short.

Research Insights

Through interviews, observations, and mapping workflows across roles, we uncovered core tensions between how the CRM was being used and what users actually needed. These insights helped shape both the prioritization and the design direction for the project.

Insight 1: Advisors were navigating a high-volume, time-sensitive workflow without context.

Advisors needed to build trust and momentum with prospective students quickly, but the CRM forced them to rely on memory, instinct, or multiple tabs to piece together a student’s status.

Insight 2: The CRM was rich in data, but poor in visibility.

The system technically held the data users needed — program info, start dates, funnel stages — but the interface didn’t surface this data at the right moment or in the proper context. This forced teams to use external tools or workarounds just to complete daily tasks.

Insight 3: The platform treated all users equally despite them needing very different things.

Admins, advisors, and marketers all relied on Archa, but the system delivered a one-size-fits-all experience. This created friction, confusion, and duplicated effort across roles that should have been complementary.

Activities

To translate insights into action, we focused on targeted improvements that would reduce daily friction and unlock platform potential, including:.

• Redesigning the Advisor Dashboard to highlight key metrics, appointments, and tasks.
• Streamlining prospect filters and tray views to reduce guesswork and time spent navigating.
• Standardizing labels and terminology across screens to improve clarity.
• Overhauling the Identity Access Management (IAM) system, unlocking the ability to deliver role-specific experiences.
• Enhancing the bookmarking system so teams could share, edit, and organize saved views.

These improvements aligned directly with AllCampus’s decision criteria: improve advisor efficiency, clarify user roles and permissions, and reduce friction in daily workflows — all without requiring a total rebuild.
 

Collaboration That Created Lift

Through structured discovery, assumption mapping, and business validation workshops, we co-developed a roadmap with AllCampus leadership that aligned business goals with platform evolution. Our embedded product trio — design, engineering, and product — worked closely to ensure every recommendation was technically feasible and strategically sound.

Co-Creation Through Prototyping 

Prototype testing with enrollment advisors and directors gave us fast feedback and became a rallying point across departments. We used interactive prototypes to simulate real tasks — filtering prospects, logging calls, navigating appointments — and invited stakeholders to critique and co-create in real time.

These sessions gave design immediate validation, and more importantly, gave teams across the organization a tangible sense of progress. Advisors saw their ideas reflected in the interface, directors aligned on priorities, and product leads had the clarity needed to move forward. This hands-on testing became a unifying tool, creating shared ownership and accelerating buy-in across the board.

Unlocking Innovation Through IAM Reform 

A critical moment came when we uncovered that the Identity Access Management (IAM) model was a central blocker to delivering a more modern, role-specific user experience. While early designs highlighted potential for a cleaner, more intuitive UI, it became clear that these improvements weren’t feasible without first addressing the IAM structure.
 

Rather than treat this as a design issue alone, we collaborated with product and engineering stakeholders to define a shared solution. By prioritizing IAM reform, we unlocked scalable, role-aware design, laying the foundation for long-term innovation and earning lasting stakeholder trust. Internal champions amplified early wins, accelerating buy-in for future development.

Designing With, Not Just For: Mentorship That Multiplied Value

Throughout the engagement, our 8th Light team mentored an early-career AllCampus designer, guiding them through research synthesis, UI design, and stakeholder communication. This mentorship accelerated their growth and enabled them to contribute meaningfully to key deliverables and design presentations within their own organization.

More broadly, this investment reinforced the value of product design as a discipline. It modeled how intentional coaching and cross-functional exposure can cultivate design maturity from within an organization, laying the groundwork for stronger internal practices, better collaboration across roles, and a culture of continuous learning that supports long-term innovation.

Key Takeaways

AllCampus’s reimagined customer relationship management system shows how customer-based organizations can adjust their internal data systems to better serve both the employees who use it and the customers who benefit from it.

If you’re wondering if it’s time for your organization to reimagine your internal data system, start by asking these questions: 

• Is our internal data system large enough to benefit our entire organization or does it need to scale?  
• Does our internal data system provide personalized data for each type of employee who uses it?
• Does our internal data system provide the visibility and context necessary for employees to use the data to do their job better?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, schedule a call with us to discuss how 8th Light can help your organization reduce reliance on external reporting tools and scale its efforts more efficiently.