Case 03Personal project2024

ProcureEdge

Rethinking how enterprises find and trust vendors

My role: UX designer
Platform: Web SaaS · B2B enterprise
Timeline: 6 weeks
Design system: IBM Carbon

The problem I solved

Procurement managers across IT, manufacturing, steel, aviation and healthcare manage multi-lakh vendor decisions with Excel sheets, email threads and phone calls. There is no system, no data and no institutional memory.

The impact I created

5 In-depth interviews

Procurement leads across three industries

3
Personas: 18
How-might-we statements: 8
Production-ready screens

What it is

ProcureEdge is a concept for a B2B vendor management platform: one place for enterprises to discover vendors, run RFQs, compare bids and keep the institutional memory that today lives in spreadsheets and inboxes. A six-week, end-to-end design project from research to high-fidelity UI.

What I did

Research across three industries
Five interviews with procurement leads in steel, aviation and IT, with workflows mapped from both the buyer's and the vendor's side.
Synthesis into a framed problem
An affinity map of 30+ observations, three evidence-based personas and competitive SWOTs of SAP Ariba and Jaggaer, distilled into one precise problem statement.
Opportunity framing
A nine-stage journey map with emotion layers, 18 how-might-we statements tied to pain points, and six design directions with clear feature links.
Architecture and UI
Information architecture of nine modules and 40+ sub-pages, the core end-to-end user flow, and eight high-fidelity screens.

In the product

The vendor discovery screen — Vendor discovery: search, verification signals and shortlisting in one view

The bid comparison dashboard — Comparing bids side by side, with the reasoning kept for the next decision

The full story

Solution

I followed a rigorous non-linear design thinking process

Committing to not touch any visual design until the problem was clearly defined and the opportunity clearly framed.

Discover, understand the problem space. 5 in-depth user interviews across steel, aviation, and IT industries. Mapped both buyer and vendor-side workflows. Identified domain-specific differences in how procurement operates across verticals. Tags: User Interviews ×5 · Workflow Maps ×2 · Industry Case Studies ×2
Define, synthesise and frame the problem. Built an affinity map clustering 30+ observations into themes. Developed 3 evidence-based personas. Ran SWOT analyses on SAP Ariba and Jaggaer. Defined a precise problem statement from synthesised findings. Tags: Affinity Map · 3 Personas · Competitive SWOT ×2
Ideate, frame opportunities and design directions. Mapped Arjun's current-state journey across 9 stages with emotion layers. Derived 18 HMW statements tied directly to pain points. Defined 6 core design directions with clear feature linkages. Tags: Journey Map (9 stages) · 18 HMW Statements · 6 Design Directions
Design, structure and build the solution. Full information architecture (9 modules, 40+ sub-pages). Detailed end-to-end user flow for Arjun's core journey. 8 production-ready hi-fi screens in IBM Carbon Design System. Tags: Information Architecture · User Flow · Hi-fi UI · 8 Screens

User Research

Five real people, three industries, one shared frustration

I recruited procurement professionals across verticals to understand not just what they do, but why they do it that way, and where the system is working against them.

Who are they?
What roles do procurement managers hold, how many vendors do they manage, and what does their daily workflow look like?
How do they work today?
What tools do they rely on? How do they discover vendors, evaluate proposals, and get sign-off from finance and leadership?
Where does it break down?
What causes delays, what information is missing, and where do they feel the most friction, risk, and loss of control?

Consolidated pain points

Analysing all five interviews against both buyer and vendor perspectives revealed eight cross-cutting pain themes that appeared in every conversation, regardless of industry.

Everything is manual
Requirements, outreach, proposals, comparison: all done in separate tools with no connection between them.
Vendor discovery is ad hoc
All users found vendors via Google or word-of-mouth. No structured, reliable source of pre-vetted vendor intelligence.
No institutional memory
After each order completes, vendor performance is never recorded. Every new cycle starts from zero.
Approval black holes
Getting finance and leadership sign-off through email chains with no visibility into status, causing multi-day delays.
Risk is invisible
No structured way to assess vendor compliance, certification status, or financial risk before shortlisting.
No delivery tracking
Monitoring order status requires daily phone calls to vendors. No system alerts, no milestone visibility.
Bill and payment chaos
Physical bill handoffs to finance teams disconnect billing data from procurement data entirely.

Synthesis

From observations to a clearly framed opportunity

Research only becomes useful when it's synthesised into decisions. I used three methods (affinity mapping, persona development, and competitive analysis) to turn raw observations into actionable design principles.

User personas

Three personas, grounded entirely in interview data, not assumptions. Each represents a different usage context and risk profile, ensuring the design doesn't over-index on a single archetype.

IT Procurement Manager

Goals

Find the right vendor fast, without back-and-forth emails
Compare proposals side-by-side with consistent, data-backed criteria
Get team sign-off faster through shared visibility
Track all active orders without daily follow-up calls

Pain points

Everything lives in Excel and email; nothing is connected
No performance history; every cycle starts from zero
Approval delays add days to every decision cycle
No early warning when a delivery is at risk

Sr. Procurement Officer

Goals

Ensure every vendor meets certification and compliance standards
Maintain full audit trail for all vendor decisions
Tools simple enough that her whole team actually uses them

Pain points

SAP Ariba is too complex; half her team avoids it
Manual certification verification is slow and error-prone
No early-warning when a compliance issue is building
ERP integration is broken; data lives in disconnected silos

Operations Head

Manufacturing

Goals

Get the best market price without spending hours negotiating
Quick reorder from trusted vendors, with no full cycle restart
Track delivery without making daily phone calls to vendors

Pain points

PLB rate complexity changes constantly; impossible to track manually
No performance trend data to back up large-order decisions
Owner sign-off adds days to every major purchase decision

Competitive landscape

SWOT analyses on SAP Ariba and Jaggaer revealed where the market had gaps and where ProcuraEdge could build a meaningful differentiated position.

How might we (HMW statements → solutions)

STAGE	HOW MIGHT WE…	WHAT WE BUILT
Vendor discovery	…help procurement managers discover pre-vetted vendors without starting from a blank Google search?	AI Vendor Recommendation Engine
RFQ outreach	…replace 10 separate copy-pasted emails with a single action that still reaches every vendor effectively?	Centralised RFQ System
Evaluation	…make vendor comparison feel like a confident, data-backed decision rather than a gut feeling?	Comparison Dashboard + Risk Indicators
Approval	…make approval workflows transparent and accountable, without adding bureaucratic overhead?	Collaboration Hub + Approval Workflow
Delivery	…give procurement managers live delivery visibility without requiring daily phone calls to vendors?	Delivery Tracking Dashboard + Alerts
Post-order	…ensure every completed order makes the next procurement cycle meaningfully smarter?	Vendor Performance History + Quick Reorder

Information architecture

The IA reflects the mental model of a procurement manager, not a product manager. Modules are ordered by the natural cadence of procurement work (discover → source → evaluate → approve → execute → learn), so the navigation feels intuitive from day one.

Module	Contents
Authentication	Login · Register Organisation · Forgot Password
Dashboard	Active RFQ summary · Pending approvals · AI insights feed · Delivery alerts
Vendor Discovery	AI recommendations · Search & filter · Vendor profile view · Save to shortlist
RFQ Management	Create new RFQ · Bulk send to vendors · Proposal inbox · Status tracker
Comparison	Side-by-side table · Risk indicators · Scoring weights · Shortlist finaliser
Collaboration Hub	Share evaluation · Comment thread · Approval workflow · Approval status
Contracts	Draft contract · Digital signature · Payment schedule · Contract repository
Order Tracking	Live delivery status · Milestone alerts · Issue raising · Delivery confirmation
Performance	Performance scorecard · Trend graphs · Reviews & ratings · Quick Reorder
Settings	Team & roles · Notifications · ERP integration · Audit logs

Final UI screens

8 production-ready screens built in IBM Carbon Design System (G100 dark theme). Every screen maps directly to a journey stage and a HMW brief.

Dashboard

Vendor Discovery

RFQ Management

Comparison Dashboard

Reflection

Recommended next steps

This case study covers Discovery through Hi-fi Design. The following work remains to bring the product to a validated, shippable state.

PRIORITY	NEXT STEP	WHAT IT COVERS
High	Moderated usability testing	5 to 8 sessions with procurement managers on the hi-fi prototype. Measure task completion for vendor discovery, RFQ creation, and approval workflows.
High	Accessibility audit (WCAG 2.1 AA)	Dedicated audit of contrast ratios in the G100 dark theme, focus state visibility, and screen-reader compatibility before any engineering handoff.
Medium	Vendor-side interface	The current design covers the buyer's view fully. Vendors receiving RFQs and submitting proposals need a separate, simplified interface.
Medium	Mobile responsive flows	Key use cases (approval nudging, delivery alerts, and Quick Reorder) would benefit significantly from a mobile-optimised view for on-the-go managers.
Medium	Dev handoff documentation	Component specifications including all Carbon token overrides, interaction states, error handling patterns, and edge case behaviours.
Future	ERP integration design	Multiple users mentioned disconnected billing systems (Tally, SAP). Designing the integration surface, with import/export flows and sync indicators, would complete the full operational loop.

What this project taught me

The biggest UX risk with AI-powered products is that users don't understand why the system is making a recommendation, and therefore don't trust it. Building explainability directly into the UI (scoring weight breakdown, AI reason chip on every vendor card) was the core answer to the product's central design challenge. Trust is earned through visibility, not just accuracy.

Next case studyDesigning a vision and hearing screening that children think is a game

Lukhman

Selected Work

Building a B2B SaaS from 0 to 1, reaching 5,000+ users by focusing on accessibility

One design system that made a 9-person team design 70% faster

Rethinking how enterprises find and trust vendors

Designing a vision and hearing screening that children think is a game

About Lukhman

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