Designing a New Process in a Complicated Sale For Dealers
Built across competing business, finance, and IT systems inside one of the world's largest automakers
Information Architecture · Requirements Documentation · Systems Orchestration · Process Design · Stakeholder Navigation · Cross-Functional Delivery
2025 - 2026
Ford Model-e
Project Summary
CX Manager, Business Owner, & Experience Design Lead
I led the design of the dealer sales process and supporting tool that created a net-new home charging sales channel inside the Ford Power Promise program. My work spanned requirements documentation, IA, dealer process design, and stakeholder alignment across legal, finance, IT, product, and operations — navigating legacy Ford systems to bring something entirely new to market.
Ford Power Promise launched as a Ford-funded incentive — a complimentary home charger installation included with every electric vehicle purchase. It worked. But sustaining it as a fully funded program was not a forever, long-term option. The program needed to evolve into something dealers could offer, customers could choose, and the business could support at scale.
That meant building something that had never existed: a dealer sales channel for home charging. Not a workaround. Not a referral to a website. A real, integrated process that lived inside the vehicle sale and gave dealers the ability to order, price, and present a charger to a customer without losing the room.
Doing this inside a company the size of Ford meant the work was never just a design problem. Every decision touched systems that had been built for a different era, teams that had never been asked to support this kind of transaction, and approval chains where one dependency could send the whole process back to the beginning. Every thread we pulled led somewhere deeper. Finding the solution meant following all of them.
Listen
Current State
In the beginning, the only way a customer could get a home charger through Ford was to buy it online, separately, after the dealership visit was over. That was not a sales process, it was a missed opportunity for the dealer and a disconnected experience for the customer.
Dealers Selling Priorities
Selling a vehicle is a long, high-stakes process. Dealers are protective of that experience for good reason. Any new element introduced into the sales conversation had to be fast, simple, and easy to explain. If it created friction, dealers would skip it entirely.
The business shift from Ford-funded incentive to customer-paid option added another layer. Dealers now needed to be able to present a price, handle a customer objection, and integrate the charger into their own financing conversation. That required a process and supporting tool that did not yet exist.
The core design challenge was clear:
How do you add a product to a dealership transaction without disrupting the transaction itself?
Also, Data Integrity
As part of a larger strategy, operations, and customer support, there was a need for increased data integrity from existing processes. This was a key consideration for the process and tools that needed to be developed. It had to be built inside Ford's existing systems infrastructure — legacy platforms that were never designed to support this kind of transaction, across teams that had never been asked to work together on something like this.
That required mapping the information architecture across existing Ford systems and determining what could actually be connected, what needed to be built, and what had to be worked around.
And Lastly, Compliance
Legal held one piece. Finance held another. Operations determined what dealers could realistically execute. Every thread we pulled led somewhere deeper. We needed to make sure that this met all required protocols to minimize risk for the company and dealers.
Simplify
The work happened across three tracks simultaneously: designing the dealer process, building the tool, and navigating the stakeholder dependencies that determined what was actually possible.
The Right Moment
The process design came first in terms of priority. A dealer needed to be able to introduce the charger offer at the right moment, present clear pricing, handle a customer question, add it to the order, and move on. That sequence had to feel natural, not like a detour.
The Right Tool
The tool had to support that process without adding cognitive load. Dealers needed to be able to order and pay for chargers through an interface that integrated with their existing workflow.
The Right Teams
The stakeholder navigation was where the work got most complex. Legal, finance, and operations all had requirements that shaped what the solution could be. Their feedback was critical and often required reworking the approach entirely. That was not a setback. It was how the solution got better.
The IT and product teams were a different kind of dependency. They determined what could actually be built, on what timeline, and to what specification. Working with them meant understanding their constraints as clearly as the customer and dealer constraints, and designing within the intersection of all of them.
Getting all of those inputs to converge on a single, coherent dealer experience required consistent facilitation, a clear point of view about what was non-negotiable, and a willingness to rework what was not.
Solve (so far)
The dealer sales channel is officially in development. This will be piloted in select dealerships and prepare for a national scale with the launch of a new electric vehicle.
This experience and tool will allow the customer to leave the dealership and figuring out home charging separately, customers could get the whole solution in one conversation.
What I would do differently...
I would get IT and product teams into the design conversation earlier. Getting working level buy in helped show leadership the details of the request so that it could be appropriately prioritized and allocated. Alternatively, proceed with an even earlier pilot to begin the "test and learn" process with time to inform development before the national launch.