Reducing invoice resolution time by 67% For Axway E-Invoicing
Axway’s legacy e-Invoicing platform suffered from usability gaps driven by engineering-led development. I advocated for user research, studied how our power users actually worked with and redesigned a core, error-finding workflow for the beta platform. The redesign reduced invoice resolution time by 67% upon testing.
timeline
5 weeks
team
Product Designer (me), Product Manager, Operations Team, Full-Stack Developer
my role
User Research, Design, User Testing
the product
B2B invoices need to be regulatory compliant, and Axway's
E-Invoicing Solution makes this possible by 1) automating the flow of invoices between enterprises and trading partners, and 2) transforming the invoices during this flow to make them compliant with regulatory laws.
This is made possible by integrating Axways’ e-Invoicing solution with existing Accounts Payable/Receivable (accounting) software used by enterprise companies. Once that’s completed, the process starts by receiving an invoice from a sender (supplier), which is then transformed/processed to be regulatory compliant, before being sent to the receiver (buyer).
the users
We had two personas - Operations team (power users) and enterprise AP/AR (accounting) professionals (secondary USers).
Operations team: Using the platform, they analyze customer accounts (customers of e-Invoicing), spot failed invoices, and fix invoices. Once fixed, they process an invoice again to ensure it is complaint with the regulations.
AP/AR professionals: They primarily use the platform to review the status of invoices that have been sent/received.
how i got started
The Leadership was concerned about the growing complaints of Bad UX raised by our secondary users, especially the younger demographic, who were quickly replacing the older enterprise workforce.
I was brought in as the first designer onto the team to bring in a fresh set of eyes and to give my take on how we could improve the usability of the platform
While I knew nothing about the product at this time, I jumped in and applyed a heuristic lens to what was newly developed. Turns out, there were a lot of problems.
insight
stakeholder alignment
First Win & Constraint: Got the green light to conduct research on how our users were using the existing platform, but we had to limit ourselves to our power users due to timeline constraints
The goal was simple - learn what tasks they currently use the platform for, how they go about performing those tasks, and what problems they face while using the platform. This would not only allow us to uncover needs and problems, but also identify opportunities that can be pursued down the line.
research
I planned and conducted A two-part Research Study with our power users (Users interviews & observational study), and uncovered a few interesting findings
Operations team are always feeling overwhelmed
On average, 150 invoices fail each day. Delays in resolving them lead to SLA breaches that heighten their stress.
01.
'Error Finding' workflow is repetitive for all failed invoices
Fixing a failed invoice involves two steps: ‘Error Finding’ and ‘Error Troubleshooting’. The first step looks identical across all cases.
02.
'Error Finding' workflow demanded too much effort
The Operations team had to move across multiple screens just to view an invoice’s status and understand why it failed.
03.
AP/AR professionals depend on Operations to explain failures
In their rush to fix failed invoices, AP/AR professionals reach out to the Operations team to understand why an invoice has failed.
04.
Converge
ideation
To get started, I first mapped out the existing flow, and worked out something new which We thought was promising
ideation
The solution was obvious - clearly Surface invoice Status, and make it easy to find error details
The interface was missing the status information for invoices, so that needed to be added to the 'Documents' screen for the new redesign. Since the 'Invoice Detail' screen didn't need to reworked, we simply needed a way to connect both screens.
solution
The final solution simply introduced two columns
impact
Impact: Through User testing, the time on invoice resolution came down 67%
By surfacing information earlier and having links between relevant pages, users no longer had to go through the various pages that they needed to before.
Feedback
Feedback: my manager, who has overseen this product for over a decade, had some words to say during my final presentation with the company
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