Supplier Experience
Users have to manage their inventory one branch at a time.
How can we help?
“It would be so much easier if we could just…”
”We have over 100 branches, and in order to update the pricing and availability of our products we have to upload our data branch by branch.”
When an external vendor (Supplier) updates their Product inventory they must upload an inventory spreadsheet based on what content each Branch is authorized to sell in its respective Stores.
What about other suppliers? What happens to error handling at scale? How does our portal display products once they can also be viewed from the lens of multiple branches?
Working with Product and Engineering partners we sought to enhance the supplier experience in managing products across multiple branches within the current Supplier Experience.
Role
Working as UX lead I oversaw coordination and execution of research and design activities as well as generating artifacts at every level of the project. My team identified the current state workflow and personas required to test against business assumptions. After interviewing our participants my team and I synthesized common themes from the responses which were prioritized against risk and knowledge of the theme. We built an iterative rapid prototype to validate with stakeholders based off of our current design system which was then used in the generation and refinement of of engineering stories.
“What do we know?”
Referring to our current state site map we are able to refer to previous architecture patterns to identify where work will need to be done, and what engineering teams will be needed.
We can use this to establish what screens are going to be impacted or added into our current experience.
Mapping the current state
Working with Product and Engineering partners, we identified and mapped screens of the current state workflow. This flow was used as the basis for generating testing protocols, as well as identifying elements from our design system for review, and building a rapid prototype.
Selecting Participants by Persona
Our goals for testing included:
Identifying appetite for multi-branch controls in the Supplier Experience
Create a visual model that could be used to identify pain-points in current state process.
Our recruiting emphasis was on the following:
Most frequent users of the branch or bulk spreadsheets
A mix of suppliers who experience higher error rates
Record and Comparing
Our testing protocol divided testing activities into a series of slides over the course of a 1:1 interview allowing easy comparison across participants.
Identifying Themes
Stakeholder, Researcher, and Design resources participated in finding themes in our recorded feedback. Individual groups of similar observations were pooled together and measured across persona identifiers allowing to find the most prevalent themes.
Prioritizing Work
In a collaborative stakeholder session user themes were plotted on an axis of Knowledge versus risk, and results compared across the team. Priority of work was determined based on the following quadrant breaks
Design According
To The System
Once work is prioritized we can begin constructing a higher fidelity model for validation and execution. We use an Atomic Component Design System. Every component is build from nested sub-components so that interface level changes can happen more iteratively within a Sprint cadence.
Prototyping Workflow
Screens, once build are mapped against a testing workflow that includes screen variants and data accurate validation.
Design Variations
Part of our testing process is to include screen variations to test against engineer fidelity as well as user expectations.
Story Breakout and Refinement
Our prototypes are also used to facilitate in breaking work into Agile stories for refinement and implementation.
What’s Next?
Are our suppliers ready for an API?
Our research suggested over half of the participants interviewed were interested in an API solution to inventory management. Our next interview will be testing the degree to which and API can be implemented and work around what our taxonomies look like in this space.
A better tool for Suppliers?
Excel is king in the space of inventory management for small companies. Our research into error handling and correction indicates that if users connected to a data-table we manage, some manual data entry could be removed entirely.
What Multi-Branch control do we improve next?
Project Scope limited this release to the Creation of new records in the database, research has ensured continued work in this field has been added to the product roadmap.