It's scary enough managing a variable income without worrying about getting paid on time.
The experience of Contractors getting paid on Expert360 lacked transparency and trust.
Imagine hearing nothing after lodging your invoice until your payment is overdue, which it often is.
You also need to upload receipts for your expenses, and fill out a manual timesheet all via email, before you can lodge an invoice on-platform... every 2 weeks.
What we set out to solve
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How might we enable users to gain clarity on the stages of the process so that they can trust that they will get paid?
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How might we enable users to submit timesheets and get them approved by their managers?
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How might we reduce errors in invoices before they are submitted?
My goal as the sole UX designer
To collaborate on the research, design & build with my squad to streamline invoicing & payment by:
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Reducing number of related support enquiries by 80% by giving users more transparency.
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Adding missing features so users don't have to go outside the platform.
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Minimising errors to reduce risk of payment delays.
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Working within the constraints of 3 sprints (6 weeks), using as many existing components from the existing Design System as possible.
Kicking off with customer journey mapping
In order to understand our users' experience better, I facilitated a service & customer journey mapping exercise with the finance team.
I posted real artefacts alongside like email correspondences so we could actually see how each of our key users interact, when and why, what the key touch-points were as well as the flow of data from one point to the next.
Customer journey map artefact
Key friction point that led to 15K annual cost-savings
This helped us later in the project timeline in justifying more time and budget to solve the core problems in the invoicing & payment than the originally allotted 3 sprints.
The most significant outcome from mapping was uncovering that the business was losing $15K annually covering for errors and fees that clients felt surprised by.
Other key opportunities identified in our blueprint
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Invoices were being manually approved by clients via email causing consistent 3 day lag.
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Consultants are typically paid late (3wks on average) and given no communication throughout.
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Main errors were GST miscalculations, with 3 touch-points it could go wrong.
Invoicing journey map translated from sticky notes
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
How we got there — tonnes of research & teamwork
I gathered data by conducting a UX audit, interviews, surveys and journey mapping exercises. Together with my PM, we analysed all of it to arrive at 11 key problems, defined in a prioritised implementation matrix to review with engineers.
We identified the top 3 problems for this project, and shipped all 3 solutions within 5 sprints, instead of the allotted 3 due to the fact that we discovered unexpected tech debt through an early workshop I facilitated with our engineers.
Solutions delivered:
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Error-minmised invoice with expense upload functionality.
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Timesheet entry & approval flows.
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Invoice status tracking & escalation flows.
Customer feedback — Interview & Survey
This is my favourite part of the design process — I love understanding the stories behind the data and static processes we'd just mapped out. I also use this technique to get larger sample sizes to better quantify and validate our findings.
Together with my PM we received 53 responses our 3 question survey, interviewed 11 users who played different roles in the process, and reviewed existing feedback on Intercom.
The survey showed that 48% of consultant users named the inability to track invoice status and payment date as their single biggest pain point.
This led to the rapid implementation of early value for users - surfacing an 'invoice sent to client' status on the existing dashboard. In the meantime, we'd bought ourselves time to work on other competing problems of lesser complexity.
Key problem distribution from survey results
We also discovered we were able address some of the issues that caused delays in client approvals — they weren't all the client's fault!
We learned that clients themselves were exasperated with errors & extra manual work associated with processing Expert360 invoices, apparently much more so than any other vendor they work with regularly.
"Invoices were never paid on time. Follow up was excruciatingly painful and delayed by 7 weeks. What's worse, is no one seems to care"
Consultant user on Expert360 platform
Lo-fi Ideation
By sketching on whiteboards with my PM and the finance team, we came up with some initial invoice statuses and information users might need to see on each card.
Given how form-heavy invoicing is, I opted to use sketch to utilise our design system to quickly compose a couple of lightweight high fidelity prototypes to get some early feedback from users. I iterated about 15 times before I arrived at the prototype I used for testing.
One of the many whiteboard sketch iterations
Workshops & Proto-personas
When presenting our early sketches, engineers knew the 'what', but not the 'why,' seemingly pushing back on technical requirements based mostly on business, not user needs.
To mitigate, I ran a cross-disciplinary workshop with Finance and Engineering discussing the problems from a user-perspective to build on this understanding.
Quick proto-personas I used to build empathy and understanding of key users
In the workshop we sketched out alternative concepts to our early sketches to explore more MVP options.
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This proved incredibly beneficial when negotiating certain functionality with the engineers.
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We could stand back objectively and review the customer empathy map I'd created to help guide discussions about user needs.
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This resulted in our trade-off not to integrate our platform with Xero, but include an invoice download button and CSS stylesheet as a light-weight compromise.
User Testing
Before the developers started building the front-end, I created a prototype using sketch and Marvel to validate our concepts with users — 5 consultants in 4 rounds during prototyping phase, and finance team very often throughout.
Key findings from testing that changed design
I conducted usability testing to evaluate the efficiency and effectiveness of the design, assessing factors such as speed, ease of use, and user comprehension of the interface. Specifically, I focused on users' ability to seamlessly navigate the UI, log time in the timesheet without encountering any obstacles, and locate essential information effortlessly.
Finding 1
Table pattern preferred
Invoice list card style took ~2x longer to read and understand key information than table.
Decision
We went with table-style navigation and introduced roll-up numbers to improve scannability.
Finding 2
GST clause addition
Users were making assumptions about whether amounts were GST inclusive or exclusive.
Decision
We added (+GST) microcopy to amounts so users didn't need to question or assume.
Finding 3
Rollup figures needed
Users expressed desire to understand at a glance how much they've invoiced & owed.
Decision
We added some roll-up numbers for invoiced, paid-to-date and outstanding.
Before
After
The UI & solution
Mobile-optimised invoice tracking, timesheeting & expense solution.
How might we enable users to gain clarity on the stages of the process so that they can trust that they will get paid?
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Track the stage of any invoice real-time, from any device.
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Take smarter action - know when to follow up or speed things along.
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Expected payment date - know when you'll get paid.
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How might we enable users to submit timesheets and get them approved by their managers?
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Timesheet approval workflow - no more email back and forth!
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Ability to modify timesheet - charged for a public holiday accidentally? Quickly update and resubmit for approval.
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Separate timesheet & expense submission in line with industry standards.
How might we reduce errors in invoices before they are submitted?
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Preview before submission step to prevent typical errors
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Pre-filled Rate & Deliverables from the Contract to save time
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GST auto-calculated based on new information fields collected
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Upload receipts against expenses
Results
This truly had an impact on consultants' livelihoods.
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15% increase in CSAT score - consultants reported being able to more easily plan their expenses around payments.
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8% decrease in consultant churn
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Recovery of $15K lost revenue in unexpected fees for our clients
75%
Reduction in inbound enquiries
15% better than 60% goal. And 100% of feedback was positive 2 months later.
66%
Reduction in invoicing errors since release
From ~18 errors a week, down to 6 errors/wk. Unfortunately it was 4% shy of our target.
~60%
Reduction in time to process an invoice
This saves the internal team a collective 12hrs/wk. That's a projected 78 days per year.
"This list of invoices is quite cool.
This is the view I was wanting to see."
Abhir, Management Consultant and Expert360 user
"Great. This is so much better. Lillian [in finance] is going to love this!"
Head of Lettings
TITLE OF THE CALLOUT BLOCK
Learnings
Aside from learning about taxes and GST? Here's what I learned.
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I need to present problems relative to competing problems to get the business behind them.
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Never rely on recall alone to document complex processes, use contextual enquiry or interview.
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To always conduct my own primary research if I can. The richness in observation of tone, body language and choice of language is often lost when it changes hands.