This project was part of an initiative at Lightspeed for the R-Series POS to help merchants manage their shipments arriving from their supplier. Once merchants place an order to their supplier, their shipments would arrive in batches. R-Series is known for their robust inventory management features that is top of the line in the industry.
To maintain this status, we wanted to help merchants manage their shipments within their purchase order. The reality is the merchants are receiving their orders in batches of shipments and the system was not adapted to their reality.
This project was initially owned by another product manager and product designer, the project got cancelled. When I joined the team, we’ve picked it up and we rewatch all the recorded interviews that was done. The previous product manager interviewed 9 merchants and the main insights we got from these merchant is
Batch Ordering Receiving
They are receiving their orders in batches of shipment
Multi-Shipment Orders with Individual Invoices
One order from their supplier can contain many shipments and each of these shipments have their own invoices
Lack of Shipment Quantity Visibility
Merchants do not have visibility on the quantities and cost of items per shipment batch, so they can't compare the quantities on hand against the quantities of items on the invoice to see if there's any discrepancies
Error-Prone Manual Workarounds
Merchants have created workarounds to document their orders received but they are prone to human error
How might we create a record for each shipment in a purchase order, so that the merchants can compare their records with the supplier’s invoice to see if there are any discrepancies and pay the supplier the correct amount.
Getting merchant’s first impression on the feature
Discoverability of the new feature within their workflow
Merchant’s interpretation of the information
Shipment Reference Number Tracking
Suppliers are using shipment reference numbers to identify shipments sent to merchants and merchants are identifying their shipments
Accounting's Need for Shipment Overview
Reality is that accounting needed an overview of all shipments in order to pay for the invoices and shouldn't navigate within each purchase orders to see each shipments
Invoice Due Date Management
Supplier will send invoices with due date and merchants would need an area to input that due in order to pay their suppliers on time
