Novartis embarked on a digital transformation journey to enhance its core technology infrastructure. The goal was to simplify workflows, improve operational efficiency, and elevate the supplier experience through digital tools. This initiative introduced platforms for supplier requests, self-service registration, Master Data Governance-Suppliers (MDG-S), and a Supplier Portal to facilitate seamless interactions.
As the Lead UX Strategist, I spearheaded efforts to integrate human-centered design across the program, ensuring that real user needs were at the core of decision-making. Through a structured approach—spanning research, persona development, iterative design, and validation—we created solutions that optimized supplier onboarding and engagement.
Engagement Time:
6 months
The Problem
One of the critical challenges was incorporating the perspectives of key stakeholders—including internal teams and suppliers—throughout the design, implementation, and change management processes. Historically, enterprise platforms were developed with a process-first approach, leading to usability issues and inefficiencies. The key objectives included:
Bringing real user insights into every stage of product development.
Enhancing supplier onboarding through a streamlined, intuitive experience.
Reducing inquiries and improving transparency in supplier interactions.
Approach
First Attempts
1. UX Strategy and Team Onboarding
To embed UX principles into the program, we integrated our team with the Supplier Experience subchapter. This enabled us to understand the program landscape and define an end-to-end (E2E) UX strategy. We initiated foundational research, including persona development and empathy mapping, to create a framework for translating insights into actionable design improvements.
2. Persona Segmentation Workshop
We conducted a 90-minute online workshop using Miro to map out key user groups in the supplier experience landscape. The session identified six primary customer groups:
Requestors, P2P Back Office, Procurement Teams, Third-Party Risk Management (TPRM), Suppliers and Business Owners
Using the convergent and divergent methodology, we first explored broad persona possibilities (divergent thinking) and then narrowed down the most impactful personas for further research (convergent thinking).
Iteration
3. Three-Step Process for Persona Development
Identify Personas
- Engaged country SPOCs to identify interview participants.
- Selected 10-20 participants per persona group for in-depth interviews.
- Sent pre-read materials to set expectations before interviews.
Empathize
- Conducted semi-structured interviews to understand users’ roles, goals, pain points, and aspirations.
- Created a psychologically safe environment to encourage honest feedback.
- Ensured anonymity to foster openness.
Synthesize
- Aggregated interview data on Miro.
- Clustered insights into key themes.
- Created validated supplier personas that represented real user needs.
4. Release and Iterate
- Socialized emerging personas with project teams.
- Gathered feedback through large forums.
- Iterated on personas based on stakeholder input before finalization.
Leveraging Insights for Product Enhancements
Using the insights from personas, we designed a simplified and automated supplier onboarding experience with:
- Self-service capabilities for registration and onboarding.
- Improved process visibility, reducing manual interventions.
- Faster and easier supplier data gathering to enhance workflow efficiency.
UI Design Strategy
We focused on two key goals:
1. Reducing inquiry volume by providing clearer, more intuitive user journeys.
2. Enhancing transparency in supplier interactions through accessible, real-time information.
To achieve this, we leveraged:
1. Design best practices for enterprise UX.
2. Tested UI components from the OneDS design system for consistency.
3. User validation at each stage to ensure a seamless experience.
Overall Results
With a dedicated team of four UX practitioners, we successfully embedded user insights into the supplier experience initiative. Key outcomes included:
- Enhanced supplier engagement through intuitive design.
- Reduced onboarding time via self-service tools.
- Increased efficiency by minimizing manual interventions.
- Improved stakeholder collaboration through validated research insights.
Future Considerations
If I had more time I could spend in this project, I would have liked to:
- Create a living, centralized persona catalog for ongoing reference by product teams.
- Enhance adaptive design elements for improved accessibility and usability.
Our overall approach not only delivered a best-in-class supplier experience but also set a foundation for future enhancements in enterprise UX within the organization.
Our overall approach not only delivered a best-in-class supplier experience but also set a foundation for future enhancements in enterprise UX within the organization.