Generative research in procurement data comparison (NDA)

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Overview

Problem Space:

While SAP provided vast variety of products and software for enterprise resource planning, there was a lack of UI consistency throughout its different products. In order to deliver consistent and coherent user experience across SAP products, I collaborated with the UX framework team to establish design principles for the UX pattern library.

Disclaimer: Due to NDA, the page primarily highlights the research process, decision making, reasoning and generalized outcomes.

Objectives

• Identify user needs and pain points when comparing data in a procurement process.
• Visualize users’ touchpoints of typical use cases through journey mapping.
• Serve research findings to better inform design decisions in building comparison pattern.

Impact

• Provided high-level recommendations to address major user needs and pain points to stakeholders involving UX framework team, sourcing product team, procurement organization, PM, and dev team.
• Set the foundation for the next step of research that involves ideation and concept testing.
• Established user-data driven design principles for data comparison framework.
• Evangelized the user research process by constantly involving stakeholders in regular meetings, user interviews, and collaborative workshops.
• Validated major research findings that matched with previous research.

Research Questions

“What are the different use cases that involve comparing data in sourcing?”

“How does typical workflow look like, and what are the needs and pain points at each touchpoint?”

High Level Research Process

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1. Preliminary Research

Goals:

• To first understand the product space in procurement and sourcing
• Use the preliminary research findings as a guide for designing preliminary research
• To explore what has been done in the past to avoid overlapping work

At a Glance (Intentionally not readable):

Outcomes:

• Identified knowledge gaps and lack of understanding of end-users because all of the past work were evaluative research focusing on specific design concepts and usability studies.
• Pivoted the focus of the study to establish stakeholders’ better understanding of the users.
  • In order to inform future design decisions, the primary user research was designed to focus on foundational research to understand users’ needs, behaviors, pain points, and typical use cases in their sourcing workflow.

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2. Primary User Research

Goals:

• Identify major use cases and touchpoints in sourcing and data comparison
• Understand users’ behaviors and pain points
• Develop user journey map of typical use cases

Study Design:

The purpose of the study was generative to understand users’ behaviors, needs, and pain points.

• 60 minutes of qualitative remotely-moderated contextual inquiries and interviews via Respondent.io
• Design of the study was 2 folds:
  1. High level start to end process of sourcing
  2. Detailed step by step of data comparison process from analyzing bids to making decisions

Study Demographics at a Glance:

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3. Data Analysis & Collaborative Workshop

3.1 Data Analysis:

3.2 Thematic Analysis and Journey Mapping:

• Each sticky was broken down by corresponding themes.
• Visually laying out the participants’ sourcing workflow from start to end helped understand the journey of each participant.
• I was able to identify emerging patterns, characterizing behaviors, needs, and major paint points at each touchpoint in the journey.

3.3 Collaborative Data Synthesis Workshop:

• Over two days, my supervisor/mentor and I facilitated data synthesis workshops to onboard stakeholders with the research findings. In order to make the data more digestible, I made sure the data was organized and presented concisely.
• For every stakeholder to participate, we broke into two groups: one group discussed about the findings at high level, and the other group (which I moderated) was focused on detailed step-by-step of data comparison workflow.
• After group affinity diagramming, we discussed and presented emerging themes and patterns to each group.

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Research Findings & Deliverables

Outcomes & Deliverables:

• Identified three major use cases in sourcing
• Developed persona, user story, and journey map for each use case highlighting actions taken, pain points, quotes, and emotions at each touch point.
• Delivered general findings related to sourcing, and data comparison habits
  • Including high level objectives in sourcing and data comparison
  • Major pain points
  • Recommendations for each pain point to improve the experience
  • Showcasing examples of data manipulation workflow step by step

Example of Journey Map #1 of 3 (Redacted):

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Limitations & Challenges

1. None of the participants were able to share their interactions in the e-procurement tools due to company compliance reasons. As the moderator of the interview sessions, it was my responsibility to maneuver and extract the information needed to address the research questions that have been set out.

2. Because of time constraints, the scope of the project was focused on the “buyer” side of the procurement process. To have a better holistic understanding of the process, “supplier” side of research needs to be done.

Lessons & Reflections

1. I learned to engage with stakeholders as early as the project planning stage.
   By weekly updating the stakeholders and asking for their feedback, I was able to plan and develop a research plan that addresses their needs. Moreover, facilitating a collaborative data synthesis workshop session helped better synchronize the stakeholders as a team to share key findings and results.

2. Knowledge of product domain is essential especially in the B2B space.
   My initial challenge was to get my head around the B2B space and procurement processes within a short period of time. Despite studying the terms, watching tutorial videos, and reading, it took time to really soak the information in. My way around the challenge was to not only study hard, but also to acknowledge that I am new to the field and asking follow-up clarifying questions during the user interviews.

3. It was fascinating to speak to users from all over the world from different industries.
   One major reason that I love user research is being able to speak with users and approaching a problem from users’ perspectives. During the interview sessions, I was speaking to a consultant in Belgium one day and to a procurement executive in India the next day.

4. Last but not least, I had fun with amazing mentorship, rich resources, and owning the project.
   The lessons I learned were not limited specifically to user research, but also taught me how to navigate myself through the corporate organization and personal networking.

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