Procurement Management App - Design Task
OVERVIEW
Juice Every Day is a juice bar company in Bengaluru, India. The company sells fresh-pressed organic juices, for pick-up or delivery. The brief was to create a procurement management platform that all the outlets across the country can use to procure fresh fruits and vegetables locally.
FOR
Design Task
DURATION
3 Days
YEAR
2022​
PROCESS & TIMELINE - 3 DAYS TASK
Background
Juice Every Day is a juice bar company in Bengaluru, India. The company sells fresh-pressed organic juices, for pick-up or delivery.
The company’s biggest expenses are rent, labour, and ingredients, so the owners have spent much time focused on space and location planning, talent acquisition and retention, and sourcing.
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Owners are planning to open 20 new outlets in 12 months across the country with some added investments from venture capitalists.
Local Vendors
Store Manager
The objective is to build a procurement management product that channelizes communication and streamlines the stock management system.
B2B transactions tend to happen in the supply chain, where one company will purchase raw materials from another to be used in the manufacturing process.
User Archetype
The Store Manager is responsible for overseeing the daily operations of a store, keeping the inventory in check, procuring raw materials, vendor evaluation, budget and expenses.
​Pain Points
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Current issues with inventory are that one needs a huge go down to store and maintain stock. The rent for storage for all outlets is a huge expense to the company.
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One is expected to know at all times, the amount of stock left before placing an order to procure raw materials.
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The manager has to evaluate vendors and compare prices along with the quality of products to make sure that the deal is worth every penny.
Store Manager
Local Vendors
The local vendors usually sell fruits and vegetables daily. Consistent large orders make it easier for them to scale up.
​Pain Points
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The vendor has to wait for the store manager to confirm the order after they quote their prices. There is no transparency and assurance of their return.
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One does not have the avenues to sell or display his products unless the store manager approaches them.
How to build a sustainable and healthy relationship between the Store Manager of Juice Every Day outlet and local vendors?
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The Store manager urgently requires bananas, how will he be able to sort out the prices yet not compromise on the quality?
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Stocking up a lot of fruits and vegetable requires more storage space. The cost for such spaces and maintaining them is too high. How can the Manager cut down on this cost?
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How can the owners of Juice Every Day monitor the money being spent on outsourcing raw materials?
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To answer these questions and approach the product for this business from a more strategic point of view, I build a value proposition canvas for the product.
Problems Identified
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too much time is spent on selecting the best deal in terms of price and quality and evaluating the vendors.
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the estimate of the order for fruits and vegetables is inaccurate causing shortage or excess wastage.
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Shelf life of fruits and vegetables.
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Being unaware of other new vendors in the market who offer better quality products.
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Seasonal fruits need a quality check every time they arrive.
Goals
How do you build a solution with so many manual touch points?
While making a procurement management product, certain goals were kept in mind based on the insights so far
1
Cost saving
Low cost + good quality = high returns
Cutting down on wastage caused by exess orderinng needs to be eliminated. Inventory statistics on the plaform can help in making sure the right amount is ordered.
Comparing prices before requesting for purchase from vendors.
2
Quality check
For fresh organic and healthy juices
Quality of fruits changes every time it is cultivated. Thus one cannot blindly order. To make it easier for managers to review, vendor provide images of the fruits and vegetables.
3
Loyal relationship
Building a healthy vendor-manager relation
To keep a loyal relationship, the store manager should be aware of the quality, price, order history, number or orders approved by a vendor. This history can also help the manager to place repeated orders from trusted vendor, resulting in boosting of the vendors business.
About Procurement
As a part of the primary research, I spoke to people working in the B2B supply chain industries to understand the process of procurement better.
The store manager has access to vendors who are on board. The Manager places his Request for Quote (RFQ)and then various vendors start bidding. based on quality grades Q1, Q2, and Q3 that the manager decides based on images or previous experience with the material from that vendor, he selects what works the best for him in terms of price. Lowest prices L1, L2, and L3 based on the bar they set within the organisation, the manager Requests for Purchase (RFP).
Once the RFP is approved by the vendor after checking his stock, he confirms the order and gives an estimated time for delivery.
Information Architecture
Sketches.
A bunch of sketches to explore and iterate the design solutions and build low fidelity wireframes on.
Final Design
I built a small identity for the procurement management application making it easier to build a visual system to classify information. The name of the product is ProcureFresh.
One can log in either as a store manager or a vendor.
The Inventory is the first page that one sees upon opening the application.
One can navigate to Vendor listing, RFP, Expenses, Sales, and Settings from the tab on the left.
The application pushes notifications regarding arrivals, confirmation and approvals that you can check from the top right.
All Materials have a visual representation of the stock available in the inventory.
Clicking on any one of them presents you with an analysis on the right. The software predicts the requirement based on the usage in the past using AI / ML. Then you can go check the vendor listing for fruit or veggie you are running out of.
This is a chart with detailed information about the quantity required vs the quantity available in the inventory. The closer the two lines (yellow and green) of this graph, the lesser wastage or shortage of a certain fruit/ vegetable.
Vendor listing page
There is a section called Priority where the fruits that you are running out of are visible with a bar showing you how much you are left with. That lets you restock instantly.
Instant restock is like a reorder of the last order placed. Once confirmed, RFP is sent.
Messages to get in touch with vendors .
The list is sectioned into three rows L1 L2 L3 based on pricing bars. After selecting a fruit/ vegetable, it displays the list of vendors, quanity, quality (based on what you have rated previously) and order history.
Here is a section for seasonal fruits so one can review them, since pricing and quality history changes every year.
Here is a summary of the order to Request for Purchase (RFP).
The next section is vendor listing where you are provided with a drop-down to choose a fruit/vegetable that you want to view the vendor listing for. There is a dropdown that displays a list of what you are running out of in chronological order.
RFP
The Requests are all in this section. The Request’s status can be viewed using the latest filter or pending filter.
The ones approved, let you finish making the payment. For Payment, the application redirects you to a third-party payment gateway.
The vendor request history has a record of all vendors who have the highest approval rate. This allows the manager to order more frequently from these vendors.
Since it is an inhouse product, the sales can be linked with lesser fear of data leaks. This sales section can help understand the trends of customers better.
Expenses and budget charts help to keep the finances in check.
One can get in touch and message to know more about the pending requests.
Learnings
This assignment really got my brain to think and ideate faster than usual.
I learnt about the procurement industry and how to approach problems in a layered system like this.
Building for a B2B space is demanding and requires in depth research.