RECEIVING UPDATE
The future is the path to the present
Receiving home screen and purchase order
UX lead
My role
Engineering team
UX researcher
Content strategist
Product manager
Experience team
Background
The Sam’s Club Backroom application was developed in 2018 to replace a combination of manual, paper based and legacy “green screen” systems. The app was very successful in cost reduction, saving the company millions of dollars.
Once it was launched, we continued to add functionality and improve features. This particular update was something I worked on closely with our product manager to prioritize after hearing from our associates about what was working and what was not working.
It’s a story of starting with an ideal future direction in mind and then working back to create realistic and possible phases to get there.
Backroom of a Sam’s Club
Previous designs
Sam’s Club associates use the receiving app to scan pallets of items that are delivered from various suppliers. They are able to find purchase orders (POs), scan items and enter in the quantities that have arrived.
Based on feedback from associates, we learned that it would be helpful to have a better understanding of what expected to arrive in the backroom so they could better plan space and arrangement of pallets.
Previous Receiving screens
Evaluating the home page
We looked at the sections of the home page and the purchase order page to better understand their usefulness from an associate’s perspective.
Work to be done
Appointments and PO exceptions both represented work to be done.
The appointments section led to a web-based scheduling system that only showed a partial list of truck arriving.
The PO exceptions were showing any POs that were overdue.
Completed work
Both of these categories were representing POs that had already been processed by an associate and were awaiting an update to the main inventory system. Essentially, there was no action for an associate unless there was an issue that they needed to address.
Search tools
Search was the most used section of the home page. An associate would use this if they were unable to find a PO number by scanning.
While most backroom associates use the physical scan feature on their specialized devices, the scan button was useful for those who did not have the specialized device.
Evaluating purchase order
On the PO page there was an opportunity to optimize and improve how information was displayed.
Hard to tell the difference between items, especially when item names or numbers are similar
Redundant PO number
Column headers take up vertical space
Supplier ID # not needed if we have the supplier name
The future shapes the present
After talking with associates, it was clear that the home screen should prioritize incoming deliveries and deprioritize completed work. Ideally, an associate would have an idea when a delivery was expected and where it was coming from. We knew there would be constraints but thought it would be best to look ahead at where we wanted it to go so we could create a roadmap to get there.
Home
In the ideal future state, the home page would be able to show deliveries that are arriving soon as well as the total number of deliveries. It is also important to keep track of overdue POs since those may be arriving too.
To make room for this information we created a Completed POs section in the bottom navigation.
Additionally, we proposed a Notifications feature to let associates know of any actionable items they need to take care of.
Incoming purchase order (PO) list
We introduced a list of all incoming POs. This would show trucks coming in from suppliers as well as Sam’s Club distribution centers (DC).
Purchase order (PO)
On the purchase order page we created product cards with a thumbnail image and product name to help associates better differentiate items. Item number and unit price moved under product name to be supporting information. We represented the quantity as received / ordered. The card format also allowed us to remove the column headings in the previous design.
Final designs
As anticipated, there were resource and system constraints so we needed to modify our designs to meet what could be achieved. The main constraint was combining our supplier scheduling system with our distribution center information. The notifications page was another piece that needed to wait due to bandwidth. However, since we started with the ideal in mind, both of these features were added to the project backlog to picked up in the future.
Home
Because of the scheduling system constraint we were unable to show supplier times. We created 2 arriving sections one from the distribution center (DC) and one with a link to the supplier schedule. We also created an aggregate list of all incoming POs.
We also removed the notifications from the bottom navigation until it could be added in the future.
Incoming purchase order (PO) list
The incoming POs list shows those deliveries from suppliers and distribution centers. Due to a system constraint we removed the time information.
Purchase order (PO)
There were no changes from the ideal to the final design - we were able to achieve the ideal!