Freight & Tax UPCs
As the Senior UX Designer for HEB's new product setup application, PAM, I took on the task of designing how users would set up freight and tax UPCs.
But what are freight and tax UPCs? Why do they exist?
👋 Pssst! If you prefer a quick presentation (with Office references!), check out this deck instead!
Background
HEB’s invoice reconciliation app, Chain Track, can’t process charges not tied to a UPC. There’s no chance of changing Chain Track to be reasonable since it’s over 30 years old and still manages to work—no one is willing to touch it.
So the workaround?
Procurement Support users have to set up fake products to establish a UPC in our database. Just so we can pay freight and sales tax charges.
Cool. Cool cool cool…
It’s actually kind of a clever workaround, but the implementation put a lot of unnecessary work on the user—
going through entire product setup process!
entering fake, meaningless data!
doing things a computer could so easily do for them!
Obviously I wanted to streamline this process and eliminate unnecessary steps.
My role
I owned the end-to-end UX work for this project, from research and design to testing and handoff. Collaborating closely with PAM's Product Manager and our Engineers, I ensured that the solution was feasible and aligned with requirements.
Digging in
Interviews
I conducted interviews with users who regularly set up freight and tax UPCs, aiming to understand their existing workflow in CPS and identify opportunities for improvement.
Goals
Understand the current process of creating freight and tax UPCs in CPS.
Identify areas to streamline or eliminate steps in the setup process.
Distinguish between legitimate and fake data entered into the system.
Findings
During the interviews, users demonstrated their product setup process in CPS, which involved:
Navigating multiple screens.
Dealing with over 100 inputs.
Entering fake data in at least 21 fields (the exact number can vary, it’s a long story, but the minimum is 21).
I knew right away we could implement a much better solution in PAM.
Before
Here’s a quick look at the form users had to navigate to set up a freight or tax UPC in CPS.
Designing a solution
Based on user feedback, I designed a solution that surfaced only 4 essential fields in the interface—fields where the user actually enters real and unique data. Behind the scenes, PAM would automatically fill in any data required by the system, reducing the burden on users to enter fake data.
I presented this design to users, and they were quite enthusiastic! Together, we determined what data PAM should programmatically enter into the fields required by the system, but not shown in the UI.
Following that, I collaborated closely with the Engineering team, reviewing the designs and the data needed for PAM to fulfill setup requirements on the backend.
After
The entire form for creating a freight or tax UPC.
Results
The implementation of this solution in PAM resulted in remarkable outcomes:
Reduced the number of required fields shown in the UI by at least 81%.
Decreased the number of fields shown to the user by at least 96%.
Significantly reduced the time required to set up these UPCs.
We don’t have empirical data for task completion times in CPS, but anecdotally, the full setup flow would take 4-5 minutes.
Now it takes just a few seconds.
The redesigned process in PAM significantly streamlined the user experience, making the setup of freight and tax UPCs far more efficient and user-friendly.