Proto OS

Supply chain management web dashboard
Project Overview
Proto OS is as CRM web dashboard that is part of a wider suite of mobile and web applications used by Proto Energy to deliver Liquid Petroleum Gas to retailers and end users.
This web app was designed to integrate with 2 Android apps: Pro Inventory & Pro Driver.
Combined, the Android apps and this web app would allow Proto Energy to manage its 1,000 strong supply chain fleet in providing last mile delivery of gas cylinders to millions of homes the East Africa Region.
My Contribution
UX Research
UI Design
User Testing
Tools Used
Figma
Useberry

Business Needs

The business was moving from a sales model where the driver collects the orders and fulfils them to a model where the orders are collected by the business directly through a call center with orders being routed to the drivers for delivery. This project aimed at changing the driver from a sales person to a delivery person thus giving the business more control over the customer acquisition and sales processes.

Project Goals

The goals of the project were:

  1. Allow the business to receive orders from tens of thousands of retail  customers directly instead of relying on the delivery drivers for this.
  2. Providing more visibility and control of the product delivery process by being more prescriptive with the orders being delivered at any one time by the delivery teams.
  3. Increase the number of customers a driver can serve by reducing the number of things they need to do and moving these to office staff.
  4. Providing visibility to business on the driver’s progress in fulfilling their orders.
  5. Providing the user with feedback on how they are doing throughout their day and what they need to do to improve.

Users

This web dashboard is used by:

  1. Customer service representatives to place orders on behalf of call-in customers.
  2. Proto Energy office workers providing support to the supply chain operators (delivery drivers and warehouse attendants) as they as they deliver Liquid petroleum gas to retail customers and businesses.
  3. Logistics staff to plan and supervise the execution of supply chain logistics plans.
  4. System Admins to create permissions and manage access to this dashboard and the 2 supported android apps.
Mildred Cheptoo
Customer Care Representative

Bio
Age: 23
Tech savviness: High‍

About‍

Mildred received customer orders through telephone calls placed through the company hotline. She and her two dozen colleagues place the order on behalf of the customer on the Proto OS dashboard which are then automatically dispatched to Pro Driver (See different case study) for delivery.

User needs‍

  1. The ability to create orders quickly while on call with the client.
  2. Ability to map a caller’s location and obtain their lat long location for delivery.
  3. Ability to  search for an order when a client calls enquiring on order progress.

‍

Insights from user research

  1. Customer service staff are tech savvy and learn quickly. A complex workflow that made them more efficient would be better than a oversimplified workflow that would reduce their speed.
  2. They work in a very noisy environment since everyone is receiving calls. Creating confirmations and summaries would be useful in reducing the possibility of mistakes.
Stacy Omondi
Logistics Staff

Bio
Age: 28
Tech savviness: Mid

About
Stacy’s job is to supervise the delivery drivers and ensuring that they fulfil their orders. She typically will be allocated about 20 drivers who she monitors and provides support to.

Her day to day work involves

  1. Order reallocation to different drivers in order to load balance orders among multiple drivers
  2. Monitoring the drivers’ performance and taking corrective measures when it deviates from the expected.
  3. Providing support to drivers to allow them to fulfil their orders quickly. eg. liaising with the finance department on the driver’s behalf to authorise an invoice sale.

User Needs‍

  1. Ability to reassign orders to another driver
  2. Ability to view orders that each driver has and their progress in completing the orders

Insights from user research

  1. Insights from user research
    The logistics staff handle a large number of drivers at a time and allowing them to be able to find the information they need quickly is critical.
  2. Providing them with the information they need to do their work is a good first step but it needs to be followed up with actionable metrics on their performance and that of their drivers.
  3. Etc
Abas Bosire
Finance Staff

Bio
Age: 31
Gender: Male
Tech savviness: High

About
Abas’ work entails ensuring that all the sales are reconciled with the payments that are received. When there are challenges with the payments or if an order is not complete for any reason, he would need to have visibility on what went wrong and correct it on the system.

User pain points‍

  1. Abas has to navigate through several systems to find what he wants
  2. Lack of visibility on what happened in the order process makes it more difficult for him to do his job of troubleshooting effectively.
  3. Etc

‍Insights from user research

  1. Abas is acts a financial control point and ensuring that he has the technological controls needed to enforce the checks and balances is crucial for the operation of the business
  2. He has to handle hundreds of requests a day and helping him not make mistakes in his work is crucial.
  3. Etc

The Shipped Solution

The trip page is accessed by all of the user personas with controls placed on what each user persona can see. This therefore required modular design that would allow some things to be hidden without leaving the page looking distorted.

The distribution point page allows several types of users to understand what is happening in each distribution point at any one time. The page gives users realtime data on each distribution point enabling them to make decisions and plan.

The order page allows for each user type to get information quickly without scrolling a lot.  The use of cards with tabs  allowed that the use could see a lot of information without  scrolling or being overwhelmed by the sheer volume of information.

The all trips page gives a user the chance to view a list of all the trips, their assignment and their current status so that they can make the decision on the next action they will take.

This is one of the steps that a customer care agent would take when placing an order for a customer they are speaking with on the phone. The process of creating an order is designed to be easy and fast while preventing the user from making errors.

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