Expediting the fulfillment
of purchase order
Context
The Vendor Portal is the internal product used by Moda Operandi’s buying team and the partnered fashion brands (Vendors) used to track, manage, and fulfill purchase orders. As the lead designer for the Enterprise squads, I was tasked with improving the Vendor Portal. The challenge came in two-folds:
It took way too much time for the products being fulfilled in a purchase order to make it to the ecommerce site. On average this process took 12 days!
The existing tool was not designed for scale. With bigger ambitions for the Vendor Portal to house more enterprise tools and workflows, the product had to be redesigned with scalability in mind.
Approach
I collaborated with the two groups of users: Moda’s internal buying team and the vendors – conducting the interviews to map out areas of improvement and collecting user feedback on incremental releases.
From a visual standpoint, the old Vendor Portal did not align with the recent rebranding of Moda Operandi (done by Lotta Nieminen Studio). We took this opportunity to reimagine the experience of the Vendor Portal, which was quickly accumulating design debt as new features were being added on a weekly basis. I incorporated Moda’s updated design system, which I helped design, based on the new branding.
The team for this project was comprised of 1 Product Manager, 2 Front-end Engineers, 2 Back-end Engineers, and 1 Engineering Manager. I was responsible for the overall designs, defining the strategy to testing prototypes with the buying team.
It took too much time for the pieces being fulfilled in a purchase order to make it to the e-commerce site. On average this process took 12 days.
The goal for the next iteration of the Vendor Portal was to expedite the fulfillment process and design the tool to accommodate future workflows.
Vendor Portal 2.0
Understanding the fulfillment flow
I started off by interviewing the tastemakers of Moda – the internal buying team who purchase the latest fashion pieces to sell – to understand how Moda cooperates with our vendors (representatives of fashion brands). We also collected surveys from the vendors regarding their experience.
Completing a purchase order involved tedious back-and-forth emails between the buyers and vendors and manual entries in spreadsheets for managing the orders. Unfortunately, the previous version of the Vendor Portal didn't address key pain points and was seen as an annoying step in an arduous process.
Journey map of a typical vendor's end-to-end experience
Areas for improvement
After studying the end-to-end workflows, I was able to map out critical paths that distilled the journeys into to key steps. Taking the shipment authorization flow below for example, we identified areas where the Vendor Portal could replace email correspondence and introduce automation.
Previous: Purchase orders used to be handled through email and excel docs, which caused a lot of friction in the workflow.
Updated: The workflow is streamlined by housing the purchase orders within the Vendor Portal and automating parts of the fulfillment process.
Designing for scale
An important design principle for the project was to design for scalability. The Vendor Portal's layouts and navigation had to be flexible and responsive to accommodate additional Enterprise workflows within a centralized platform.
Upcoming releases included bringing Moda's ecommerce catalog into the new Vendor Portal to consolidate the ordering, tracking, and selling of the products. For vendors, future features included the ability to upload their latest collection directly themselves.
Updated look
I revamped Vendor Portal 2.0's UI by using the latest design system components and patterns defined for the ecommerce website.
Outcome
The improved fulfillment flow shaved off an average of 4 days from the initial 12 days it took for a fulfillment to reach the e-commerce site. This meant that the business could sell the products earlier and increase the GOV (gross order value).
Following the release, about 92% of all vendors had migrated to using the Vendor Portal (as of Summer 2020). All of Moda’s subsequent purchase orders were placed through the platform.
Other Works
