Reimagining how enterprises find and trust vendors
Overview
Procurement managers across most of industries share a frustratingly common reality: they manage multi-lakh vendor decisions using Excel sheets, email threads, and phone calls. There is no system. There is no data. There is no institutional memory.
My Role
UX Designer (Solo)
Timeline
6 Weeks
Platform
Web SaaS · B2B Enterprise
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Problem
The procurement process is broken — and everyone's working around it.
Procurement managers across industries — IT, manufacturing, steel, aviation, healthcare — share a frustratingly common reality: they manage multi-lakh vendor decisions using Excel sheets, email threads, and phone calls. There is no system. There is no data. There is no institutional memory.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 — 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.
Vendor Discovery
How might we help procurement managers discover pre-vetted vendors without starting from a blank Google search?
→ AI Vendor Recommendation Engine
RFQ Outreach
How might we replace 10 separate copy-pasted emails with a single action that still reaches every vendor effectively?
→ Centralised RFQ System
Evaluation
How might we make vendor comparison feel like a confident, data-backed decision rather than a gut feeling?
→ Comparison Dashboard + Risk Indicators
Approval
How might we make approval workflows transparent and accountable — without adding bureaucratic overhead?
→ Collaboration Hub + Approval Workflow
Delivery
How might we give procurement managers live delivery visibility without requiring daily phone calls to vendors?
→ Delivery Tracking Dashboard + Alerts
Post-order
How might we 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.
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.
HIGH PRIORITY
Moderated Usability Testing
5–8 sessions with procurement managers on the hi-fi prototype. Measure task completion for vendor discovery, RFQ creation, and approval workflows.
HIGH PRIORITY
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 PRIORITY
Vendor-Side Interface
The current design covers the buyer's view fully. Vendors receiving RFQs and submitting proposals need a separate, simplified interface.
MEDIUM PRIORITY
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 PRIORITY
Dev Handoff Documentation
Component specifications including all Carbon token overrides, interaction states, error handling patterns, and edge case behaviours.
FUTURE CONSIDERATION
ERP Integration Design
Multiple users mentioned disconnected billing systems (Tally, SAP). Designing the integration surface — import/export flows, 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.