Zycus procurement services includes products like Procurement of product or service through catalog buying & guided procurement, Manage invoices & credit memos for deliveries made by suppliers, Supplier onboarding and information management, User intuitive reporting platform, Analyses spend and helps effective cost management, Sourcing of suppliers by running RFI, RFQ & Auction events, Create Contract, negotiate and sign-off contracts with sourced suppliers, Manage savings, Create & manage projects, Evaluate supplier performance, Supplier portal to manage purchase orders, track deliveries, raise invoices and collaborate with buyers.
Challenges
The key challenge was to create a one-roof solution for all Zycus based procurement solutions. Create simpler journeys that are simple and easy for the consumer and end consumer to comprehend and execute. Thus creating a positive impact on the overall productivity for the consumer.
The other glaring challenge was to create a dynamic and viable framework that will help:
1. Reduce turn-around-time for new developments
2. Ensure UI consistency across products
3. Reduce complexity & ambiguity around the framework (Frontend UI/Backend/Development )
Task
To design one big product suite, where all procurement products will perform together seamlessly.
To achieve this, I began with:
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Gathering Data with the help of UX processes that includes understanding the product, design it, launch & thereafter perform analysis.
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Utilising Design Thinking approach coupled with known historic challenges, we came up with range of solutions to solve our problems.
Product issues
- No information architecture
- No site maps
- Users journey and user mapping missing
- No documentation of products use cases
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Usability and user experience issues
- Improper content placement
- User journey too complex
- Scattered information on page
- Individual login for individual services
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UI issues
- Aged Design style
- Unnecessary use of colours
- Font readability issue
- Inconsistent buttons, tab, tables and components
- Scattered icons and illustrations style
Design Systems
We came up with the Design System after a thorough analysis of various other products and their use cases that further established its usage and importance. Design System is the backbone for the entire process to commence. It helps close the gap between the UI designers and UI developers who on multiple projects at the same time duplicating work by other teams. Designer and Developer communication helps improve project workflow, as it helps save time and resources. It also improves consistency across platforms, bring more intuitiveness to the products & allows the resource time to be spent on bigger issues.
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​With the help of this Design System I was able to establish a list of common elements, components, tasks, user journeys, page templates. Established UX & UI process for the DewDrops project (For web app, mobile).
Design Guideline, Components, UI language & Illustrations
As a part of the Design guidelines, I incorporated the Agile methodology for the entire process. I had setup pilot sprints and design feedback sessions to help review & manage tasks regularly. This also helped us at Zycus manage and address issues/adhoc problems quickly.
In this design guideline I have setup and standardised various aspects of the guideline like typography, fonts, buttons across the ecosystem, user flows, model windows, pages, components, created dynamic, nested symbols, illustration and other elements that could be standardised. Thus benefiting from both component-driven design framework and style guide based framework.
Results
The entire Design System exercise proved to be of great help to bring all the services under one single window. It also helped create a better collaboration between the design and development teams. Also increasing efficiency in adopting to newer requirements, new tools, creating far better user experiences overall.
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Additionally, the solution of providing the varied services under one single window, helped drive better ROI for the existing consumers which helped create better Case Studies which helped drive more business.
After implementation of UX process, design system, common component, Illustration style product quality improved by 200%. With the design templates UX-UI designers have improved design productivity by over 400%. ERT (Product down fall issues) decreased by around 60%. Front end development team improved their productivity by over 200%. Backend developers improved their productivity by over 100%.
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Stake holders and clients are happy with new design style guide. They are happy with simplistic approach, where their productivity increased by almost 100%. Now we have proper documentation of each products with their respective use-cases. With the help of new Information architecture implemented we can add any new product & their feature easily.
