PitchPerfect platform

Project: FMCG

Channel: Internal sourcing platform

Timeline: 2017 - 2021

Role: Project owner & UX/UI designer

Tool: SharePoint

Team: Global purchasing team

Problem: Incoherence in knowledge sharing at that time was mainly driven with classical communication means what showed up to be inadequate for the target audience.

Solution: Creating an internal communication platform for marketing and sales partners to source services according to established guidelines.

KPIs

Generate an increasing amount of site visits measured by unique seassion monthly.
Reduce the rate of non-compliance & minimize percentage of risk cases
Decrease of support calls from business partners to the purchasing office.

Business requirements

To establish a unified global communication & learning hub place
serving the aim of knowledge sharing for compliant sourcing and pitching rules and guidelines
available on the category level for marketing & sales
for internal usage of business teams and related functional units on marketing & sales as the end-users.

Situation

Incoherence in knowledge sharing at that time was mainly driven with classical communication means what showed up to be inadequate for the target audience.

Business objective

Enhance awareness of sourcing guidelines in marketing & sales.
Raise the required level of knowledge.
Establish a qualified toolkit to support an onboarding process.

Context

Challenges

Constraints

Wide scope & high business importance to satisfy the needs of sourcing compliance rules, guidelines & purchasing audit policies.

There are significant expectations to reduce high-risk compliance breaches across all divisions.

Limiting time frame to implement a realistic & feasible concept implementation for global pilot scope & the origin market in Germany.

Planning of proof of concept viability review & afterthat global enrollments for local markets in multiple timelines.

UX approarch

Project Vision: Think Globally & Act Locally

I pursued in the direction of creating a complex information architecture based on empathizing with my users who need to apply global sourcing frameworks on the condicions of the local market.

Discovery

UX research

Since the beginning of the project, I had concentrated at that current stage in terms of data collection about how the communication and information flow was driven between purchasers and internal end-users (business teams, marketers, sales & related functional teams).

During the project preparation phase, I gathered various types of feedback and reviews from users based on their past experiences and organized them to highlight pain points.

Additionally, I reviewed all relevant platforms and tools, assessing their relevance for users, accessibility, and overall experience. I paid particular attention to their usefulness and independence from users’ locations and local requirements.

We learned that ...

User feedback highlighted significant pain points affecting their daily business operations and sourcing processes. This provided me with a sufficient dataset to put together strong user insights to inform my next actions.

We identified source granularity

Users faced a large number of differently structured, one-on-one independent platforms given as information sources that they needed for their daily operations, causing frustration about what and when to apply.

We identified accessibility issues

Another point reflected covered the overall limited accessibility of existing source platforms to the business teams. These mainly were available to the end-user in business only at certain restricted levels or required individual access.

We identified information inaccuracy

Extending the previous pain points, end-users continued to experience confusion and inaccuracies in information provided across various sources. The shared details were often distributed in an incomprehensive form and lacked any connection to the other parts of processes in business operations.

We identified update complexity

This complexity frequently led to the inability to keep up with many guidelines & topics, as well as with their updates. This was caused especially due to the uncoordinated usage of classical communication means (e-mails, chats, calls, face-to-face meets) what often resulted into the incompliant sourcing actions.

Design

Trade-offs

During the preparations & discovery rounds with purchasing sponsor and business stakeholders I prepared couple of recommendations for the execution phase enabling smooth implementation.

Pilot & proof of concept scope

Document library

Audit minimum requirements

Pipelines & prioritization

Pilot & PoC scope

For the approved platform concept, I coordinated with the purchasing team to ensure alignment on relevant tender rules, processes, & sourcing templates at a global level. The training project was postponed.

Document library

To address the limited scope, our purchasing team had started creating a centralized document library, which requires an automated update setup for many documents.

Automation flows were shifted to the next phase.

Audit minimum

As per agreement, the mandatory minimum of global guidelines included also the global audit policies required for sourcing purposes. This we ensured by the initial cooperation with audit representatives in the pilot phase.

Pipelines & prioritization

Due to the high requirements from purchasing & business partners, I created a timeline to manage the content preparation. I collaborated closely with several purchasing owners & subject matter experts to gather all the necessary materials.

Key impact

User-friedly with a clear information architecture.

Digitally accessible for all revevant business groups in all divisions 24/7.

Responsive design & functionalities for all type of used corporate devices.

Stable site visits monitored monthly per landing page & sub-pages.

Increased overall transparency of sourcing policies and empowered trust from business partners upon receipt of feedback.

Declared one source-of-true place for the onboarding & guideline purposes used by business partners globally.

Drop in support calls by 60% & decrease in the reported high-risk compliance issues by 25% within the first year of the pilot scope and further after the first release of the global enrollment .

Global enrollment

After the first pilot launch, I have reviewed the released content structure with several feedback loops with purchasing colleagues and asked for the feedback from business users. This helped me to finetune any reported discrepencies and coordinate also on technical improvements with IT as a current platform admin and project owner. This prepared a solid foundation to initiate a global phase.

I have triggered this phase upon schedule with different regions where I established a working groups consisted on me and regional or local purchasing managers assigned for this initiative. I gatekept certain level of the global topics and unified UX/UI standards for all locations. However, I kept it flexible for purposes of each country and region so the local colleagues would be able to take over the content ownership for the own locations. I remained a technical & mentor support contact after the enrollment.

Global content structure:
- globally efective sourcing policies, guidelines & rules
- global document library
- global training area & materials
- other related channel as Yammer chat groups

Local country structure:
- standardized country page template
- regional & local topics/specifics, tables, guidelines
- local document library
- cross-linking to the global landing page

Pilot scope

First of all, I want to mention that I was assigned to this project because I had experience on both sides, allowing me to deliver the best value for end users while meeting the expected results for the purchasing department as required by my sponsor. I worked in the marketing department for several years, where I dealt with purchase ordering and invoicing. This experience familiarized me with the purchasing domain from the end-users' perspective. After that, I transitioned directly to the purchasing sourcing team, where I initiated this project.

Drawing on my previous experience and research with the marketing and sales teams at the headquarters in Germany, I have developed a strong foundation of materials and insights to prepare the initial concept. I can plan the execution of this concept after having the sponsor's approval. My focus has been on balancing user needs for understanding, transparency, and support with the requirements from the purchasing and audit departments.

This led me to create a comprehensive guidance landing page, integrating all the previously mentioned points into a coherent information architecture for pilot scope and implementation in Germany as the origin market.

Global guidelines & templates - Pitching guidelines & process, templates, minimum audit requirements

Global usage rights - Stock materials, music management, influencers & withholding tax rules

Global ordering & invoicing - cross-linking to the relevant tools & interconnected document library

Global audit - shortlisted audit requirements & policies together with attached templates & tips for preparations

Global sustainability - principles of sustainable sourcing & cross-linking to the Sustainability platform, green awarding guidelines, respective materials & templates

Global Yammer chat group - cross-linking to the international chatting platform to support any questions & related demands from business or to communicate any announcements related to this communication platform & initiatives

PitchPerfect global platform

Audit

This area covered the audit requirements on sourcing & invoicing & preparations for auditing.

Here, we also included specific alert & after-the-fact exception policies together with the audit documentation.

Payments

This part covered all Purchase-to-pay process:

Master data, invoicing setup, purchase ordering, billing details, invoicing processing, payment settlements, supplier portal & supplier support.

Sourcing

This part covered all Source-to-purchase processes:

Sourcing events, awarding, contracting, onboarding of new suppliers, or updates on existing suppliers in marketing & sales service baskets.

PitchPerfect Global Landing page III.JPG

Final reflextions

Reflecting on the project, I gained valuable experience in managing a complex design initiative, emphasizing efficiency and value for both users and business needs throughout the entire project lifecycle. I enhanced my design thinking approach at every step of the process. This experience reinforced my belief in the importance of continuous review and improvement to achieve a high level of usability and user experience, which is my ultimate design goal.

From the project perspective, I managed to cover:

project coordination from start to launch and beyond,
story ideation & UX research,
concept definition,
UX/UI design setup,
information & sites structure,
content management, including after-launch updates,
proof of concept reviews & testing
improvements in coordination with the global category team & related stakeholders.