Bosch Contract Management Platform

Summer internship 2023 - A B2B contract platform build from 0-1. I worked with account payable team to improve their experience of invoice clearance and contract management experiences.
It finally got user satisfaction rate 4.5, UI satisfaction rate 4.3.

My role

UI/UX designer

User researcher

Duration

April - July 2023

Team

1PM, 2 Designer

Tools

Figma

Context

Our Client: Account Payable Department

Every month, the Accounts Payable (AP) department receives over hundreds of invoices. They need to clarify the invoice service type, match it with the existing contract, and then make the payment on time. The AP department often experiences payment delays due to contract issues. This can affect the AP’s monthly KPI and cause delays for our clients in receiving their money on time.

The problem

AP clerks found it is inefficient to clear invoices, because they need to use over 10 platforms to deal with a single tasks and have issue with communication efficiency with other department. This may influence AP make payment delayed and also influence their monthly KPI. Also the user department may not receive money on time.

Our Solution

We executed an end-to-end 12 week design process, through deep understand three main user groups’ pain points and solve them within one platform.

Impact

UI satisfaction rate

User satisfaction rate

Platform from 4 in 1

Project Goal

We defined the specific goals, metrics, and timelines during the project kick off meeting.

Design a platform from 0-1 to help AP to clear invoices. Make the task process more standardized and efficient.

Business goal

  • Dive deep reasons of unmatched contract from different departments

  • Dig into the pain points to prevent future payment delay issue.

Research goal

UX goal

  • Simplify AP’s current workflow, help them not using 10+ platform to deal with the invoice clearance tasks

  • Improve the user satisfaction rate towards workflow

Process

We conducted stakeholder map workshop narrow down our core users into 3 groups, and conduct 8 interviews to understand why AP clerk have problem of matching invoices and contracts.

Expertise interview

Persona 1

AP Department

Persona2

TAX Department

Persona3

User Department

Ideation

Based on the research and findings, here are the goals I aim to achieve:

  • A platform that shows updated invoices and contracts with auto-filled information for AP

  • Auto-matching functions for existing contracts and invoices

  • Simplified cross-border communication process

  • Provide standard contract information and tips to third-party users (UD)

Iteration

Understand users’ real needs

In our interview, users mentioned wanting a progress bar to check the status of payments. After designing it, we discovered they preferred to be notified when it was their turn to take action, rather than frequently logging in to check the status.

Through this process, I learned the importance of understanding the intent behind users' words, instead of simply implementing every suggestion they make.

Simplifying problems in complex B2B context

During the interviews, each participant provided different contexts for the issues they faced, making it challenging to address, especially in a B2B environment involving three different departments and an unfamiliar finance field. To tackle this, I focused on simplifying the tasks and integrating them into a single, cohesive workflow. This approach proved to be very effective.