A Story of Strategic Partnership

This is the story of how I worked with a multi-billion dollar global manufacturing and marketing company for household, personal care and specialty products to deliver 3 key features in the span of three months.

The Director of Global Manufacturing Services on working with me:

About the company

They are a leading CPG (consumer packaged goods) company best known for its 11 major brands in the household and personal care space. They have grown volume faster than other major players in the personal care space in the last four years.

+ more about the company

Project Significance

Having a platform for collaboration with suppliers is a key priority for the CEO. They are focused on the success of this project and we have all their attention. They have 90 co-manufacturers in their network, many of whom don’t have systems to connect and collaborate with this company. This is a community that represents a huge market opportunity for our solution.

The goal

Within the first 3 months of the project (October to December 2019) the goal was to connect 12 of their suppliers to the platform to enable visibility into supplier data, and have both brand and supplier using the existing features, as well as three new features yet to be developed:

Results

My role

I was the sole designer on the product team comprised of 6 developers, 1 agile tester and 1 product manager. I was responsible for designing Production Tracking, Materials Overview, and Scorecards in time for development and release by the end of December 2019.

Notable elements of this project

Solutions

Production Tracking

Production Tracking gives brands visibility into the day to day production of their suppliers. With this visibility, brands can better track the progress of their orders and troubleshoot issues immediately as they arise.

Surface the most urgent information first

The table is by default sorted to surface the highest priority statuses first, so planners can identify the Purchase Order Line Items that require the most immediate action.

Line Item Table
Provide visibility at the right level

Visibility into daily production records can be viewed on each Purchase Order Line Item.

Production Records Table
Make it easy to collaborate

Planners can collaborate with suppliers on production plans on a per Line Item basis.

Comments on Purchase Order Line Items

Materials Overview

Materials Overview gives brands visibility into where their material is located across their network, how much inventory is present, and helps brands reduce waste by surfacing which materials are at risk of expiry.

Optimize for action

At Risk, Expired and Good inventory is surfaced immediately, to allow users to act on the inventory as needed.

Materials Overview Summary
Build flexibility into viewing information

Users can filter to see inventory they care about, even down to the individual Item level.

Filtering on Materials Overview
Provide appropriate detail

When necessary, users can drill down to individual lot code and expiry data for inventory.

Details on Inventory

Scorecards

Materials Overview gives brands visibility into where their material is located across their network, how much inventory is present, and helps brands reduce waste by surfacing which materials are at risk of expiry.

Maximize visibility with real-time monitoring

Brands are able to track Inventory Levels, Weekly Schedule Attainment, Finished Goods Produced, and troubleshoot Attainment Issues. The graphs show the current date by default, so brands can track real-time performance.

Scorecards
Make it easy to focus

Brands can filter to see historical data and focus on the categories they care about.

Scorecards with filters

Learnings

This project challenged me to work with customers in a much more collaborative way. The weekly calls kept me prepared to present my work at any point in the design process, and taught me how to take a deep understanding of our stakeholders’ needs and incorporate those into the design of features.

The biggest value that this partnership unlocked was access to their end users. Once we were able to deliver the features promised, we earned their trust and willingness to let me shadow their planners and run user testing with them on upcoming features. Our partnership continues to grow into 2020.