Supply Chain
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B2B
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2022
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Product Designer
Scaling Supply Chain
Zencargo is a digital freight-forwarding company that helps customers manage and optimise their global shipping and supply chains. The goal of this project was to help the operations team handle increases in orders as the company grew.
Repeatability and scalability
Bookings should completed in line with Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs). However each coordinator completes orders in their own way. This means orders are finished but not in the most effective way.
Poor data health
Operations team managers don't have access to live data on the platform, which means they are being reactive instead of proactive. This can lead to delays and poor allocation of team resources and staffing.
Poor visibility
Lots of communication and data happens off platform in emails, slack and even on post-it notes. This means there is missing information about bookings at every step, making it hard for the team to have a clear picture on booking updates.
Automate when possible
The team had integrated a new workflow system into the platform which would automate actions and tasks when possible. This allowed us to create workflows which could automate the right task, to the right person, at the right time
What do operators need?
We worked closely with stakeholders from operations leadership to the coordinators across different geographies to see what features they would need in a task list. I sketched different versions with features such as nested tasks, lists with contextual data and live progress bars. This ultimately led to us creating a list which would be time-based and intelligently rank tasks based on urgency.
Testing and user feedback
We tested various concepts and features over the course of the project. We shifted from a chronological task list to an urgency-based list by working closely with stakeholders at all levels of the operations team. We also ran critiques inside the design team to get further feedback on how to vbest optimise the list.
"Ranking tasks based on urgency is really straightforward." - EMEA operations coordinator
"Having data at our fingertips can help us better allocate our staff during busier periods ." - NA operations manager
Workflows on platform
A new workflow system was integrated onto the platform. This allowed us to automate tasks and actions that would populate the users list. This was the starting point for our goal to build a more flexible and powerful workflow system akin to Zapier.
Smart task list
The new task list automatically populated with the right tasks at the right time and ranked them based on urgency, eliminating guesswork on the users side about what they needed to do and by when. Users could escalate tasks to management if needed. Key in formation was available once the task ahd begun so any coordinator could see what needed to be done even if covering for a team member.
Resource management
Operations team managers could assign coordinators to any task if they needed cover during busier periods, saving time and allowing them to better control their teams resources.
