Supply Chain
Internal Tools
B2B E-commerce
Birla Pivot
Redesigning a quote management system for the supply chain industry
How keen observation and listening improved the UX for internal users - a story of finding the right problem before designing the right solution.
Project Details
My Role
Product Designer
Duration
4 Months
Team
1 Designer · 3 Engineers · 1 PM
Company
Birla Pivot
01 - Problem
Background and the issue
Birla Pivot operated a complex B2B supply chain network where procurement teams raised hundreds of Requests for Quotation (RFQs) every week. Each RFQ involved multiple vendor interactions, pricing negotiations, and approval workflows.
The flow: The ops team receives a parchi (list of items to buy) to upload. Once uploaded the preview page lists the items with additional details. The ops team was then tasked to verify the details, make necessary changes and submit the quote.
The problem: The ops team complained of the page being too cumbersome. They often missed on their SLAs and they missed out on filling all the required details. Further the adoption was low and they relied too much on excel to make changes instead of using our UI. The business impact was measurable: average RFQ cycle time had increased by 40% over 6 months, and user satisfaction scores were at an all-time low.
The ops team
02 - User Research
We followed the work. Four problems kept repeating
💬
User Interviews
4 sessions
1:1 interviews with ops members, SMEs, and finance approvers across three offices
👁️
Contextual Inquiry
3 sessions
Observed users in their natural work environment - watching them navigate the existing system in real scenarios
📊
Tickets’ and Large RFQ analysis
3 months data
Mapped the support and escalation tickets and analysed large RFQs to find common patterns
"Just to get the price of a single line item I have to click through five different screens. By the time I find it, I've already lost the context of the negotiation."
Navigation overload
Users lost context switching between vendor screens, item details, and approval chains. Critical information was buried three levels deep.
"पेज पर काम करना मुश्किल होता है, इसलिए हम ज़्यादातर बदलाव Excel में ही करते हैं। कई बार ज़रूरी डिटेल भरना भी छूट जाता है।"
Workaround culture
7 out of 7 interviewees maintained personal shadow systems - spreadsheets and sticky notes - to compensate for gaps
in the tool.
What was actually breaking
A lot of back and forth happen either due to product replacements or due validations upon editing the qty, price or discounts
Users relied on calculators and excel sheets to make edits and validate the prices
Users needed only 20% of the total information presented to them to create an RFQ successfully
Users spend 30-40 minutes for large RFQs as compared to the expected time limit of 15 mins
12%
Support tickets
20%
Large RFQ analysis
40%
Ops interviews
Nearly 40% of our research time went into understanding ops
03 - design audit
More issues with the existing experience
Lack of Overview
Managing large datasets was tedious due to constant opening or closing of rows.
Product Replacement Hassle
Manually copying IDs, switching tabs, and pasting back was time-consuming.
No Immediate Feedback
Users couldn’t see the impact of edits (e.g., price/discount changes) in real-time, leading to trial-and-error workflows.
Error Visibility
Errors were hard to locate and resolve across multiple line items
Delayed Error Feedback
Missing/incorrect fields weren’t flagged instantly, causing submission delays
Existing Experience 1 : Nested accordion based design with 10+ fields
Existing Experience 1.1 : Multiple error states with further details/actions hidden inside
Along with the PMs and Operations members we explored multiple ideas on what was feasible and what was not. Our ideas
proposed a full revamp of the module and a excel introduction but because of engineering and licensing constraints we chose to do a partial UI revamp and push for tech enhancements that compliments it.
04 - Visual Design
Final Designs
The final design system comprised 17 new components across 12 screens, covering the entire RFQ lifecycle from creation to vendor selection and PO generation.
Edit focused and minimal overview section that prioritised quick view to aid decision making by the ops members.
Changed the accordion based section into a edit focused view that prioritises faster actions from the operators 50% reduction of fields that further minimise congitive load and faster RFQ scan
The nested fields were updated to read only fields to allow deeper information searches about the RFQ
Quick filters and bulk action tools built to reduce the overall time taken to edit the RFQ
Upfront visibility of errors without requiring to click and open
Connected and redesigned the product catalogue to the system that mitigated the need to save and search products by stepping out of the system.
05 - Impact
Evaluating the impact
The redesign was rolled out in phases over 4 weeks. Results were measured at 30 and 90 days post-launch against baseline metrics established before the project began.
85%
Reduction in average product replacement time
From 10-20 mins to 1-2 mins
5x
Drop in support tickets related to the RFQ module
Measured over 90 days
~75%
Reduction in avg RFQ creation time ( for RFQ with 50 + rows)
From 40 mins down to 10 mins
91%
User satisfaction score
Up from 24% pre-redesign
Thank you for reading!
If you'd like to see another case study, take a look at my AI project. It was a particularly rewarding experience to play hands on role in the product strategy.
rath.desh@gmail.com
9040144121