Client: EQ3 | 3 months | 2026
Transforming the Furniture Sales Experience
While working as a design consultant at EQ3, Aqil identified opportunities to streamline and connect the sales and order management experience in a high-volume retail environment. Sales workflows spanned multiple systems, creating opportunities to improve alignment, visibility, and continuity across the customer journey.
Recognizing this as a systems design opportunity, Aqil led the design of a lightweight operational system that structured consultations, centralized lead tracking, and improved visibility across the sales pipeline and order lifecycle.
The result was a more consistent and intentional sales workflow — enabling consultants to follow up with greater clarity, track orders with confidence, and deliver a more seamless and personalized customer experience.
The Challenge
Fragmented quoting and order tracking experience leading to friction in customer journey and lost conversions
The operational infrastructure had not meaningfully evolved in over 15 years. The primary order management platform, Storis, is a legacy system that is difficult to navigate and highly dependent on manual input. Consultants often had to reconcile multiple order number formats across Storis, spreadsheets, and printed reports to track a single customer order.
Order tracking became time-consuming, error-prone, and operationally tedious. Instead of focusing on guiding customers through confident purchasing decisions, consultants were spending significant time managing fragmented administrative processes. Fragmented sales experience led to friction in customer journey and lost conversions.
Key problems:
• Customer details and quotes were scattered
• Follow-ups relied on memory instead of system prompts
• Order updates were difficult to sort by status or timeline
• Production and delivery delays often went unnoticed
The result: consultants without visibility into their sales pipeline, customers left waiting for updates, and managers constantly putting out operational fires.
The Approach
Applied brand and experience thinking to redesign how the brand shows up in customer interactions
Aqil approached the retail floor as a systems design problem, not just a sales challenge. While enterprise platform system changes were outside his control, he introduced a lightweight operational system that consultants could use daily. The goal was predictability with better systems.
Front End Experience
To support the human side of the system, Aqil introduced a Sales Pocket Guide for use on the floor. The guide translated product knowledge and sales best practices into a simple, repeatable framework that could be used during live customer conversations.
This included:
• A structured Fit → Funds → Feel → Confirm sales conversation flow
• Quick-reference product comparison tables for sofas and mattresses
• Pricing and configuration guidance to reduce quoting errors
He also designed client-facing tools such as moodboards and layout previews to support consultations — helping ground conversations and making decisions around scale, flow, and overall direction more tangible.
Back End Experience
Aqil introduced a lightweight system to better coordinate sales activities and improve visibility across the customer journey using a connected system designed to link intake, automation, and centralized tracking
This ensured:
• Structured intake data capture
• Accurate parsing of quotes and orders
• A digital source of truth
• Status-triggered visibility across the pipeline
• Elimination of redundant manual re-entry
Together, these interventions created a lightweight infrastructure that made the sales process more predictable, consistent, and easier for consultants to execute.
Key Initiatives
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Sales Flow Strategic Framework
Introduced a structured consultation framework to guide conversations:
Fit → Funds → Feel → Confirm
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Sales Floor Pocket Guide
Crafted a sales pocket guide summarizing key product knowledge, from sofas to mattresses based on the framework
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Sales & Order Pipeline Tracking System
Built a structured sales and order tracking system by connecting a form to a centralized spreadsheet using Power Automate — creating a clear pipeline for quotes, orders, and client consultations while improving visibility and follow-up.
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Consultation Visualization Tools
Templatized client-facing design artifacts used to visualize proposed layouts within a real space — helping ground consultations and make decisions around scale, flow, and overall direction more tangible.
The New Experience
From fragmented workflows to a connected sales experience
The sales workflow was restructured from a fragmented, manual process into one that is clear, centralized, and visible.
From a customer perspective, the experience became more continuous and personalized. Customer engagement now begins with the Fit → Confirm consultation framework. Consultants generate quotes in Storis and submit a Sales & Order form, which automatically feeds into a centralized tracker — enabling real-time visibility into pipeline status and follow-ups. Conversations resumed seamlessly, expectations were clearer, and clients felt remembered throughout the journey.
Operationally, a lightweight CRM master sheet centralized lead tracking, improved quote retrieval, and introduced clearer follow-up prompts — reducing variability and increasing consistency. The same system also streamlined order tracking by integrating sales submissions with the Open Order Reports — where active orders and production status are tracked. By updating through digital means, it also reduces paper use while creating clear real-time visibility into each order’s progress.
Together, these changes reduced uncertainty, drove sustainability, increased client confidence, and transformed the sales experience into a more guided, connected, and intentional journey.
The Impact
Improved operational clarity & sales performance
49% conversion rate across 132 opportunities
$429K+ in total quoted value, increasing visibility into potential sales
$186K+ in total sales, supported by clearer follow-ups and tracking
Beyond the numbers, the system reduced friction across the sales process — enabling consultants to follow up more consistently, track orders more confidently, and deliver a more seamless customer experience.
Reflection
“This project showed me how much impact design can have beyond what’s visible.
By bringing structure to the backend and clarity to the customer experience, the sales process became more consistent, intentional, and human. Simple shifts — from standardized workflows to moodboards and spatial planning — helped reduce uncertainty and increase client confidence.
It reinforced that good design isn’t just about outputs, but about creating the conditions for better decisions and stronger relationships."