Context
Zeta Gas is the largest cooking gas company in Latin America. The project begins in Guatemala, where the company operates over 1,200 franchises. The vision is to enhance internal processes, specifically sales, and improve workflow with custom digital tools.
Product Request
Create an inventory control system. The system should analyze sales for each franchise, optimize order distribution from the Call Center based on stock levels, and reduce delivery time for clients. Currently, delivery takes almost 2 hours (ideally, it should be 30 minutes).
Product Request
The company has worked in a traditional way (paper) for 40 years.
Sales control is not effective due to inventory and hierarchy issues.
Users have diverse demographics, and not all are accustomed to technology.
The system has to remain in the franchise, so a cellphone was not an option.
My Role
Product Designer
Responsibilities
Wireframes
Meetings conductor
Final designs
Microinteractions
Product Iteration
Team Members
Technical Product Manager
1 FE and 3 BE engineers
Head of Design
Final Designs
Internal Research
To identify internal pain points, I conducted interviews with stakeholders from the franchises, the Sales department, and the Call Center.
Some findings:
Slow delivery time and inventory inaccuracy were causing financial losses and client dissatisfaction.
Customers are permanently assigned to a franchise, leading to long waiting times if one franchise has more customers in the area.
Franchises wait until the next day to deliver reports to trucks, resulting in one-day delayed inventory updates.
Most franchises conduct audits on paper, leading to varying methods and requiring the sales department to double check numbers.
Field Interviews
To understand franchise processes, I interviewed 10 individuals with different locations, ages, and experience levels in operating the business. Questions focused on daily work and personal approaches to technology.
Some findings:
Clients choose the stay with the franchise based on the customer service they receive.
Reporting methods vary in all franchises; some use paper sheets, while others use notebooks. However, everyone records the gas cylinder size and quantity sold.
90% use apps, with WhatsApp and Facebook being the most common.
60% of sales come from "Own Sales," which is their priority for delivery.
User profile
This provides an example of various groups of franchisers and what they were looking for in the company.
Other key pains to consider
Need for control over each sale and fast reporting.
Competition among other franchises affecting their business.
Over time, they feel unmotivated to grow sales.
Designing the System
After discussions with developers, we decided to link Call Center requests with Inventory requests using an API. The logic aimed to reduce order manipulation and improve delivery time.
I optimized the process by removing truck drivers and delivering final results through the system instead of supervisors.
New delivery time logic
The solution I came up with was to show the waiting time in each order from the Call Center in three colors depending on how long they were placed in the system.
Value proposition for users
The system was achieving the company's goals, but the focus shifted to providing added value for users' motivation. The existing marketing strategy involves clients accumulating points for purchases, redeemable for products.
A proposed enhancement is the "My Progress" section, allowing users to track and receive rewards for achieving goals like self-sales growth or franchisee of the year, with rewards tied to increased points for exchange. The idea received approval from the board members.
First user testing with prototype
For confidentiality purposes, testing was allowed with only 2 users, representing opposite profiles. The test was conducted with a high-fidelity prototype.
Key findings:
It’s not that obvious if the orders were confirmed or canceled, so now it has a color status.
A daily money report was added because they find it useful.
In the “My Sales” section, I divided own and call center sales into two columns because color division wasn't enough to understand the difference.
Some button names were changed due to confusion.
Results after pilot
The pilot was tested for 1 month to see how users interacted with the new digital system.
It takes 1 minute to enter the order, and most users didn’t show any problem.
The reports that arrived after 2 days, now are delivered at the end of
each day.
The testing region has 350 users, the next step is to implement the system in the 1,200 franchises.