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Commodity Management

Bringing ticket tracking into the 21st Century

Problem

Inefficient Manual Process:
- The use of SmartSheets, while a workaround, remains time-consuming and manual.
- District engineers struggle with creating and managing templates for their projects.
Missed Tickets and Prioritization:
- Claiming tickets is not prioritized, leading to missed tickets.
- Engineers juggling multiple roles find it challenging to keep up with ticket management.
Tool Overload:
- Maintaining multiple tools becomes cumbersome and inefficient.
- The hassle of using different systems adds complexity to the workflow.
Data Errors and Incompleteness:
- Manual data input commonly results in errors.
- Missing or illegible tickets contribute to incomplete data.
Lack of Formalized Processes:
- No established procedures for handling rejected loads, backtracking against purchase orders, or storing tickets for auditing purposes.
- Difficulty tracking multiple pay code numbers on the same ticket.

Solution

Create a Single-point software solution that can be utilized company-wide. This software solution should do multiple things:

1. Create a means to track the accounting codes, including possible multiple pay codes, associated with each part of the project and specific commodity being ordered. Third-party solutions missed this important step.

2. Explore utilizing new technology (Optical Character Recognition) to scan the data from the tickets into the software, eliminating the need to manually input 90% of tickets (the ability to input manually is still included for tickets that, for whatever reason, cannot be scanned i.e. illegible).

3. Reconciliation: Once the invoice is added to the software, the back-end system scans for the associated tickets, and alerts the user for any differences (missing tickets/deliveries, double tickets, etc.). This allows the Project Engineer to follow up with the vendor. If everything matches, the invoice is marked as "ready to be paid" and sent to accounting.

4. Formalizing the process for tracking tickets, handling rejected loads, backtracking against purchase orders, and storing tickets for auditing.

Tools

Figma
Mural
Teams

Team

UX: 1 Researcher, 2 Designers
Project Manager
Project Owner
Developers

Timeline

Overall: 1 year+
Discovery Research: 3 months
Design: 9+ months
Development: 6+ months

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About Me

Publications

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CONTACT ME

Tammie.Meloy@gmail.com

Tel. 402-658-3194

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© 2024 by Tammie Meloy.
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The Process

User Interviews

1

Process Map

2

Requirements Workshop

Usability Testing

Time means money, and inefficient ticket tracking costs millions

When materials like concrete, rebar, and asphalt are delivered to a construction site, they come with a delivery ticket. This ticket, which needs to be matched with a later-arriving invoice, is crucial documentation.

The challenge is finding an efficient way to track these tickets and match them with their corresponding invoices.

However, this process can be time-consuming for Project Engineers who have other important tasks to attend to. Moreover, lost or misplaced tickets can lead to significant accounting errors, potentially costing millions in annual revenue.

Why?

As members of the UX team, we have never had the opportunity to work on a construction site. We needed some context on what Project Engineers experienced when accepting deliveries and what the workflow looked like from when an order was placed to receipt of the invoice and approval to pay.

How?

Virtual interviews were conducted with various users. District Engineers set up the current tracking systems. More on their process in a moment. Project Engineers are responsible for many jobs on the construction site, including ordering materials, signing off on deliveries obtaining the tickets, and sending invoices to be paid.

I developed a discussion guide that would help me prepare for these interviews, including several open-ended questions that focused specifically on what we wanted to learn. When I emailed my interviewees, I asked them to be prepared to show and walk me through their current processes so I could better understand their workflow and the painpoints they experience. Below is an outline of those painpoints backed by user quotes and the goals we came away with following the interviews.

Virtual interviews were conducted with various users. District Engineers set up the current tracking systems. More on their process in a moment. Project Engineers are responsible for many jobs on the construction site, including ordering materials, signing off on deliveries obtaining the tickets, and sending invoices to be paid.

I developed a discussion guide that would help me prepare for these interviews, including several open-ended questions that focused specifically on what we wanted to learn. When I emailed my interviewees, I asked them to be prepared to show and walk me through their current processes so I could better understand their workflow and the painpoints they experience. Below is an outline of those painpoints backed by user quotes and the goals we came away with following the interviews.

Time Consuming

Setting up SmartSheets trackers takes a solid week to do (over time)
Project Engineers spend 2-4 hours daily inputting tickets.

"Lots of engineers don't like doing that kind of work, so if it gets to kind of the administrative type stuff, either they just don't do it, or... they'll get frustrated and want to do something else because they didn't... go to school to be an admin and punch tickets and look at spreadsheets."

Insights

Error Prone

Manual inputs add to potential errors, and finding those errors take time.

"I've gone through my spreadsheets with all the tickets and... gone in with my highlighter and highlighted 'Okay, yes, I have those. Yes, I have this...' so I can find the error."

Missing Tickets/ Information

Tickets don't always end up back in the office at the end of the day. Inevitably there are always missing tickets.
Vendor won't add the info because it's cost prohibitive

"In a perfect world I would do the exact same thing for every single vendor, but you don't get that, especially in remote locations and you have only one option."

Accounting

Split WBSs (Accounting Codes) need to be tracked and 3rd party systems doesn't account for this.
Some projects have multiple taxes to keep track of.
A lot of permanent materials aren't taxable.
Automated systems found it difficult to keep track of multiple tax situations.

Comprehensive

The most important goal for offering a commodity management product would be to provide users a comprehensive solution that would allow them to track materials, costs, and payments in a centralized system.

Goals

Ease of Use

Easily search and select the relevant project, supplier, material, etc. using a drop down or auto-complete search inputs
Intuitive form to enter ticket details such as date, quantities, and load/tag numbers
Automatic calculations of totals based on contracted rates

Tracking

Tracking inventory levels over time could utilize material type, quantity, deliver/use dates to forecast need
Payment tracking

Streamline Process

Automate data capture from tickets/invoices
Add validation checks to catch errors during entry and invoice reconciliation

User Journey/Process Mapping

Why?

Once I had interviewed the stakeholders and users, I used that information to create a process map. This reflected the workflow from the time the order is placed to delivery to invoice reconciliation and then payment and allowed the product team to visualize the flow. It was important for the users that all that data and flow be contained in one product, versus the multiple products that are in use now. This map was then used to inform the design, screens, and functions necessary to meet that need.

How?

I broke down the information provided by the interviewees into snippets which I added to sticky notes on a board in Mural. I then used some affinity mapping to group ideas together. After giving each group a descriptive title, I moved these notes to the map. I do not recommend a silo method of completing a process map and would recommend in the future working with at least one other person, such as the designer. Not only would the process have been faster, it would have helped alleviate possible bias. However, in this case, I processed this map alone, taking me approximately two weeks.

CMS Process Map_2024-07-15_17-19-48 1.png

Materials Management- Projects Screen

The initial landing page is the "Project Screen". From here the user can see the projects that are assigned to them. A new project can also be added. To navigate to a project, the user would click on the appropriate card.

Credit for these designs to my coworker and the designer on the project.

Materials Management- Order Screen

The Order Screen allows the Project Engineer to upload the material order for tracking purposes. Ideally at some point, orders may be able to be placed directly into the app and then electronically sent to the vendor. This would be a future iteration. New orders are added by clicking the "Add order" button, where a modal would appear to enter the information.

Credit for these designs to my coworker and the designer on the project.

Materials Management- Ticket Screen

Similar in appearance to the order screen, this is the Ticket Screen. This is where material tickets are uploaded (Add Ticket button) and tracked. Codes allow for quick recognition if a material ticket has been connected to an order and an invoice.

When a Project Engineer or clerk can add a ticket using OCR to translate handwritten lines to digital, sync e-tickets from vendors where capability allows, or the manual addition of that ticket.

Credit for these designs to my coworker and the designer on the project.

Materials Management- Invoice Screen

Invoice Screen- Invoices can be received as an electronic .PDF and scanned in or collected digitally through email. Once an invoice is added, tickets are scanned on the backend for matches, and connected to the invoice. Project Engineers would then be alerted to missing tickets.

Once all line items on the invoice are accounted for, the invoice can be then sent to accounting for payment. Initially, this is done through a printed consent to be sent to accounting but eventually this should all be able to be handeled electronically.

Credit for these designs to my coworker and the designer on the project.

Requirements Workshop

Why?

Due to the overwhelming number of pain points and goals determined by the stakeholders, it was determined that a workshop be held to validate the problem and the approach, review and prioritize requirements, and get business buy-in. There was a walkthrough of the process map and a demo of the initial design prototype.

Initially, it was determined that tracking orders was not needed. The most important part of the flow was uploading the digital form of the delivery ticket so that it could later be matched to the invoice. Once each line item on the invoice was verified, payment could be processed. Sometime after the workshop, it was decided that ordering was crucial and added back into the design.