Valuation Workflow Redesign

Overview

Active users

7000+

Globally

Clients

200

Companies

Appraisal Firms

227

Companies

Appraisals

~ 15,000

Per quarter

Despite AVI supporting over 7,000 users globally and $1.2T+ in valuations under advisory,
user adoption and retention was low. Clients and internal teams found AVI unintuitive, overly rigid, and poorly integrated into their daily workflows. File management was clunky, collaboration fragmented, and standardization inconsistent across regions. Clients often avoided AVI altogether, using Box or email for communication, leading to inefficiencies, lost files, and friction in valuation timelines.

Screenshots from ARGUS ValueInsight

Discovery

Interviewed

120

Stakeholders

Surveyed

800+

Employees

Target group of

Super users

Global
Regions

We launched a global research initiative, interviewing and shadowing stakeholders across the US, Canada, EMEA, and APAC. We conducted:

1:1 and group interviews with appraisers, analysts, asset managers, and valuation leads
Shadowing sessions during critical valuation milestones (project setup, RFPs, reviews)
Surveyed 800+ internal team members
Created a champion group of 5 users for deep dives and iterative feedback, and a Teams chat for impromptu questions
Mapped current and future end-to-end user journeys

User journey with phases, activities, feelings, tools, notes and pain points

Definition

Findings

I synthesized qualitative themes by extracting and cleaning up transcripts from our interviews, and analyzing them using Notion AI. For surveys, I used Sprig's AI-powered tools to analyze themes and run usability tests using Figma prototypes.

Key problems included:

Workflow frustrations

Users need more control and flexibility in their workflows (e.g., ability to customize review steps or adjust templates by asset type or region).

“We have to manually roll back the status so clients can upload files… and lose those files in the process.”
– Consultant

“Project setup is a little messy… depending on the office, the region, the type of project, there's different criteria for setting up project folders.”
– Sr. Director

“It’s just different based on each client. Even though you need to send quarter-end reports, what you include is different for each.”
– Consultant

File management challenges

File intake and collaboration must be seamless, with visibility into file history, comments, and ownership.

“Once the client let's us know they've uploaded all the files, all we gotta do is go to Box or to their own file manager.”
– Sr. Consultant

“A lot of people have issues just submitting drafts. They find the site super difficult to navigate.” – Consultant

“AVI is a bit more rigid in terms of how to upload and download files.”
– Sr. Consultant

Task management and project setup

Roles, responsibilities, and deadlines must be clear, and tracked centrally, to reduce redundant back-and-forth.

"Usually one of my tasks is to chase the other appraisers down. I would find it useful if AVI would just send the reminder when it’s past the deadline.”
– Consultant

“There’s a lot of going back and forth just for us to understand why the numbers have changed from the previous quarter, and whether it makes sense or not.”
– Sr. Consultant

Software ease of use

Clients want self-serve tools for setting up appraisals, managing files, assigning collaborators, and viewing timeline progress.

“We've lost big clients because they prefer other tools.”
– Director

“Adding and managing users is not self-serviceable. Multiple employees have to get involved every time a client wants to manage users or roles.”
– Company Admin

“Even after the RFP bid submission deadline has passed, third party firms want to submit bids and clients still want to receive and assess those bids. Currently, that all happens over email, as the deadline is final on the tool.”
– Technical product manager

Ideation

Idea generation

Based on the problems identified above, I came up with the following ideas and mapped them in an effort/value matrix.

AVI Feature Effort/Value Matrix

Quick Wins

Big Bets

Fill-ins

Questionable

Low Effort

High Effort

Low Value

High Value

Flexible Workflow Builder

New Appraisal Dashboard & Appraisal Page

Smart Intake / RFP Setup

Improved Collaboration & Commenting

Data Integrations & Sync

Flexible workflow builder

One of the most recurring pain points was the rigidity of the existing AVI workflow system. Offices around the world had different valuation processes, but the software enforced a single linear flow, often requiring workarounds that led to lost files or status issues.
‍
Design goals:

Let admins or power users build, save, and reuse custom workflows
Enable branching paths, conditional stages, and region-specific templates
Assign roles, deadlines, and required actions at each step (e.g., file upload, value review)
Configure automations (e.g., send reminders, update dashboards, trigger data syncs)
Display analytics on usage, bottlenecks, and standardization across teams

New appraisal dashboard

A centralized place to manage their assigned appraisals, to support better task management, visibility, and collaboration.
‍
Design goals:

Create a dashboard of all active appraisals, deadlines, and open tasks
Highlight overdue items, missing files, or delayed workflows
Redesign the appraisal page with a timeline of each appraisal, value summaries, and relevant documentation
A clear list of pending appraisals, milestones, files, and team comments

Smart intake (RFP)

The RFP process was a common source of inefficiency and frustration, clients had to rely on Altus staff to initiate and manage bids, and internal teams lacked the upfront documentation or clarity they needed. This would reduce dependency on company admins and ensure that every appraisal starts with clarity and consistency.

Design goals:

Empower clients to initiate appraisals directly, whether for internal or third-party providers
Guide them through selecting properties, deliverables, deadlines, and required files
Offer templates to standardize recurring requests
Enable internal teams to review work with better upfront alignment
Auto-populate the correct team members, workflow stages, and notifications based on project type

Improved collaboration and commenting

File-level comments, review stages with threads, and value-change discussions, instead of resorting to emails or Excel trackers. This would reduce communication overhead, improve transparency, and support audit trails for regulatory complience.

Design goals:

Allow users to tag colleagues and leave comments on specific files, stages, or value changes
Support threaded replies, resolution tracking, and version history
Allow internal vs. client-visible comments
Enable automated reminders for unresolved comments or review cycles

Data Intergrations

Many users manually re-entered or copied data between systems, from ARGUS models to Excel reports to AVI. Connecting all these points of contact directly through data integrations, would reduce manual significant work and offer clients real-time insights.

Design goals:

Entity resolution between the platform and ARGUS Valueinsight, this would allow ARGUS Enterprise models uploaded to appraisals to be automatically pulled into the platform
Auto-populate standard fields, like property address, IDs etc.
Push appraisal results into benchmarking databases automatically

Bonus ✨: Product led growth strategy

Through this research and design efforts, I realized there was a broader strategic opportunity: to shift from a sales-led model (focused on large institutional clients) to a product-led growth approach, where users can onboard themselves. By enabling flexible, self-serve workflows and better onboarding experiences, we could scale adoption among private investors, who own the majority of CRE assets but remain underserved.
I developed a PLG proposal and presented it to executive leadership, outlining a product lifecycle strategy tied to user behaviour, value drivers, and monetization paths.

Design

Using our design system Fusion 2.0, I was able to quickly prototype these screens.
There were components that were not available in the library, so I designed a few custom components that would match the design system's look and feel.

Flexible workflow builder

Inspired by tools like Zapier, I designed a flexible workflow builder that allows users to start from a templates, or start from scratch. Assign tasks, people, data flows, automations and scheduled events.

New appraisal dashboard and appraisal details

A new appraisal hub combining a timeline, file tracking, comments, and values in a unified view. I drew inspiration from Github.

Smart intake (RFP)

This was a great opportunity to reduce dependency on admins and ensure that every appraisal starts with clarity and consistency. A smart intake (RFP) where clients initiate appraisals, select properties, upload documentation, assign reviewers, and track status.
The vision for this was inspired by tools like TurboTax, where users go through a wizard experience that feels engaging and manageable.

Improved collaboration and commenting

Inspired by tools like Figma and Google Docs, I envisioned a more collaborative appraisal process. Users can leave contextual comments on files or values, tag teammates, track resolution status, and view all discussions in one place, reducing email back-and-forth and bringing transparency to the review process.

Data Intergrations

Data integrations were scoped out as part of a separate project and handled by another designer, however I identified the critical role integrations would play in solving key valuation management problems during my research. Many of the inefficiencies we observed were tied to manual data entry and poor system connectivity, especially between AVI, AE, and Excel-based workflows. I highlighted this as a must-have in the platform vision and collaborated closely with the team defining the ingestion and sync experience.

Product led growth strategy

This research work led me to beyond design into business strategy. I proposed a shift from a sales-led to a product-led growth model as a way to reach a broader market by enabling self-serve onboarding, self-serve valuation (AVM) with optional assistance of an expert (advisory), premium upsell screens or paywalls, and I shared this vision with my peers and other cross functional partners, this helped further define key product opportunities that could enable this growth model.

Hand-off

While this product vision hasn't shipped, this work became a path to conceptualize Altus’ complete platform vision . This and other North Star work from the UX design team was presented at a company-wide town hall, generating strong momentum and positive feedback from executive members and other employees.

To further drive alignment, I created:

An actionable Now, Next, Later roadmap with 80+ detailed user stories and a shared shared backlog with linked documentation, visuals, and Figma flows

Shared on company Confluence, along with user stories, linked documentation and visuals

Actionable steps:

Worked on CSAT improvements on AVI, like single sign on (SSO), and streamlined user management, which are now live on the platform
Further developed features for admin settings, like collaborations (adding external orgs as guests)
Worked on data ingestion features like lease ingestion

Evaluation

This project deepened my understanding of how user research can uncover not just usability issues, but structural and strategic gaps within a product ecosystem. By stepping back from surface-level fixes, I was able to reframe the problem space and highlight opportunities for long-term improvement, both in product experience and business growth. It also reinforced how critical it is align user needs with business strategy and how design can help connect the two to guide organizational direction.