As the Lead Designer I managed all stakeholder communication, research, workshops, testing and handover.
Summary
To improve the current internal manual process for receipted to collected cash.
Problem
Accounts receivable were spending a lot of time manually adding cash to a third party system with very little visibility. With the backlog of tasks teams were struggling to get through, we needed to see how we could improve and speed up the process and bring down the total amount of unallocated cash.
Research
1. Workshop (current processes)
2. User flows (current vs suggested)
3. Problems with the process
Goals
1. Speed up the time it takes from receipted to collected cash.
2. Get 80% receipts to resolve automatically with small cohort (test).
3. Improve manual process for internal team.
4. Introduce automated process through UI features and visibility from third party system (salesforce) .
Understanding the painpoints
Process included
1. Feedback sessions / loops
2. Usability testing
3. User flows
4. Refinements and handovers
5. Testing and UX improvements
We entered our biggest decisions around:
1. How to visually include a journey where someone can attribute an account to a payment.
2. How to make the manual processing time quicker for our teams.
3. How to automate the process.
Features needed
1. Needed a listing where we could display all payments received (receipts).
2. Needed the ability where we could allow internal teams to search and select an account to add the receipted cash to.
3. Needed the ability to split payments across multiple accounts.
4. Needed the ability to allow for automatic process.
Testing and output
1. Developed a number of wireframes, user flows and high fidelity prototypes to demonstrate the functionality, journey and gather feedback.
2. Tested the prototype with a group of internal users to identify usability issues and improvements to be made.
3. Continuous feedback loops and demos helped us prioritise the backlog.
Problems in delivery
1. Limitations with third party systems.
2. Testing and the process was done internally.
3. Teams still use three separate systems.
4. Teams still rely on a spreadsheet in some cases. We couldn't cater for all cohorts or user types.
Outcome
1. Saved manual processing time for team.
2. Teams can track progress of tasks.
3. Introduced an automated process saving time.
4. Managed to reach 80% automation on a large cohort.
2nd initiative - Automated Satements and reminder letters (Dunning)
