saas food supplier management dashboard

Promo Feature for Price Management and Solving Expiring Products Issues

Nuwiya Amal, January - March 2024

01. about the product

TreeDots Supplier Dashboard

The core product at TreeDots is the Supply Chain Management Dashboard, a robust SaaS platform designed to oversee every aspect of the supply chain. This tool empowers suppliers or administrators to manage various tasks including product creation, order management, finance, purchasing, customer database, and delivery. This dashboard intended for internal company use and commercialized for external company too

02. PROBLEM

Initial Problem

According to report that I received from the Product Manager and Business Team, there are some specific issues happened that are quite often for the last quarter of 2023:

  • Number of request to change price after order has been placed was spiked become 27%. The current business process for offering cheaper price involves using quotations. Each Salesperson proposes a price based on the quantity ordered by the customer. The quotation then was sent to an Admin for price approval. This multi-step process is cumbersome, leading some Salesperson to bypass admin approval and place orders directly. This results in frequent requests from the Admin to the development team to adjust prices making. Despite the process is actually quite common among B2B users, but it’s not only making it inefficient for the internal business, but also causing longer time for customer to receive the order.

  • Near the end of the year, near-expired products tend to accumulate in the warehouse. Meanwhile, fresh products like chicken, fish, meat, and seafood are frequently purchased by customers. Currently, the business team promotes these near-expired items manually through salespeople, a method that proves ineffective due to its limited reach compared to app-based promotions. Additionally, the business team is uncertain about the best approach to optimize this process.

The business is seeking a swift solution that addresses both issues, while the Developer Team is already overwhelmed with their current workload. This presents a challenge for the design team to effectively resolve both matters.

02. PROBLEM

Exploring Further Findings

A. Field Site Studies to the Warehouse

After knowing the initial problems, I got a chance to implement field site studies, so I visited the Warehouse. Here’s the current flow on how to sort the non-good products.

Near Expired product in flow in the warehouse

After sorting, items that are still in good condition are re-listed under a specific section for near-expired or less desirable products. The current approach to handling these items involves manual promotion by Salesperson, an approach found to be ineffective due to its limited reach compared to app-based promotions. To avoid mixing data, a new SKU is created for clearance products, although this can lead to confusion regarding margins. Despite these issues, altering the method proves challenging, as the business team remains uncertain about the best way to conduct clearance sales through the Supplier Dashboard.

B. Interview with Sales Admin

I also held individual interview sessions with the Sales Admin to delve deeper into the issues surrounding the spike in price change requests and the existing process for managing clearance sales.

Interview with the Sales Admin

Findings:

The issues primarily occur after customers meet the Minimum Order Value (MOV) and Minimum Order Quantity (MOQ), leading them to request price changes or deductions. This also becomes more complex as each customer has different MOV and MOQ rules based on their business size and type.

As a result, salespeople frequently request price adjustments after orders are placed, eager to retain these customers and their orders.

03. GOAL STATEMENT

Stakeholder Discussion for Goal Statement & Constraints

After gathering information, the next step involves developing an actionable plan. I initiated a discussion with stakeholders. While there are numerous issues, we decided to focus on the most pressing ones for the current scope. To address these, we agreed to implement a Promo Feature.


Constraint:

The team has only three months to tackle both issues, making it impossible to develop a dedicated MOV/MOQ feature for price deduction process within this timeframe.


Goals:

  • To address the issue of price changes and deduction requests related to MOV, we will introduce a direct price cut feature.

  • To manage the accumulation of near-expired products, we will implement a 'Buy X, get Y discount' promotional strategy.

Preview of Stakeholder Discussion

04. Design

Proposed Design Solution

Come up with proposed design solution, for Promo Feature in Supplier Dashboard. Check the video for the design preview

component #1

1440 x 1024

05. TESTING

Validate Design Solution

Moderated Usability Testing

Due to time constraints, I opted for Moderated Usability Testing to gather immediate feedback and allow for early failure detection. I held separate sessions with Sales Admin from Singapore and Indonesia, recognizing that each country has distinct business workflows.

Preview of Moderated Usability Testing

The primary challenge arose with the "Buy X Get Y Feature," specifically for the Promo Settings part. Sales Admins from each country have different requirements for the promotional conditions. After several discussions, we established three specific promo conditions to accommodate these needs.

Preview of Promo Settings section in the Promo Feature

Another issue arose with the Edit Product List feature, where each Admin had different preferences for displaying prices—some with tax included and others without. For the time being, we agreed to standardize on tax-inclusive pricing to simplify the output data for customers, avoiding the complexity of showing different tax applications for promotional and regular prices.

Preview of Edit Product List in the Promo Feature

Following the second round of iterations and receiving positive feedback from both Admins, I felt confident in the design's usability and effectiveness. Finally, I proceeded to hand over the final design to the development team for implementation.

06. OUTCOME AND LEARNING

Outcome

  • Successfully launched the initial MVP of the Promo Feature on the Supplier Dashboard in a brief period.

  • Received favorable feedback from users across different countries.

Managed to introduce a feature that addresses two major issues simultaneously.

If there was more time and source available..

  • As this case study was drafted before the product's completion, given more time, I would assess the current feature's performance to guide future enhancements.

  • I would dedicate further efforts to refining the details of the MOV and MOQ features. As the business continues to evolve and require both the Promo and MOV & MOQ features, enhancing these areas beforehand would simplify future complexities.

Thank You!

Nuwiya Amal

Role

UI/UX Designer, UX Researcher

Team

TreeDots

Tools :

Figma, Figjam, Maze, Notion