CASE STUDY

Building a new order entry system to compete with the fax machine.

Momar is a B2B chemical manufacturer and sales organization structured to allow sales team members to set product pricing at an individual account level. The core business revolves around a proprietary enterprise software solution called Haystack.

Haystack’s databases and interface combine product education, pricing, and inventory with sales data, customer records, and marketing campaigns. Once a sales team member is in Haystack, they can manage their book of business through this array of account features. While the system is robust, a gap in user research didn’t account for ease of use with an aging sales force. This means that while the system would benefit potential earnings the barrier for entry was too high.

The long and the short of it:

Working with an overseas development team and the Head of IT, we reimagined the order entry process to increase the sales team’s comfort with the process and decrease their dependency on legacy technology. This project has been scrubbed to remove any sensitive data.

Order entry was a complicated process. It involved pop-ups and required fields that allowed no flexibility in the order of operations. These hurdles would drive sales members to enter junk data to bypass the requirements or revert to faxing their orders through customer service.

Customer service representatives would spend valuable time entering orders and correcting incomplete data instead of being able to focus on their daily tasks.

User interview sample:

Increase the number of orders submitted digitally by increasing usability, decreasing the time customer service representatives must spend entering orders.

Build within current Haystack environment, must track customer, ship-to location, payment terms, shipping terms, sales notes, hazards, shipping restrictions, and pricing structure.

Fully functional XHTML prototype to test in a sandbox environment.

6-week opt-in beta test.