Sales Negotiation Process Solution

iPad App

About the project

Multinational Company, leader in both own and generic pharmaceutical products with a presence in nearly 90 countries spread over Europe, North America, Latin America, Asia, and Africa, is currently distributing its products in the UK through wholesalers.

However, there are some accounts/products that are directly managed by a dedicated sales team. This team negotiates with clients periodically (at least once a month) adjusting prices according to supply/demand of each product. Its main objective is to maximise sales by product for the stock available. Each of these negotiations must be approved by a team of managers prior to its encoding in SAP.

After analysing the customer’s problem and looking to reuse their technological resources, a solution was proposed based on mobile solution and BPM (Business Process Management).

I was part of the mobile team as a UX/UI designer together with the product manager and two iOS developers.

The problem

• The sales team worked with spreadsheets which made it very difficult to maintain and consolidate.
• Communication between members of the sales team was inefficient (phone and email).
• The approval process was managed both through email and telephone.
• Reporting activities were costly because they did not have consolidated data.
• Coding in SAP the negotiations were 100% manual, so apart from the time wasted, it caused coding errors. Consequently errors in customers' orders and therefore rework.
• There was no visibility of the process in other departments/areas of the organisation.

Proposed solution

• Negotiate both Offline/Online with the customers.
• Automate customer notifications by sending emails with negotiations, details of the negotiations and keeping the customer informed when the negotiations are finally approved.
• Integrate within the APP all the information needed for the negotiating process, as data and market evolution, historical, comparative, etc.
• Have an instant messaging system built into the APP for sending/receiving messages broadcast to all members of the sales team.
• Implement the negotiation approval flow by the managers.
• Keep devices synchronised with the central platform.
• Implement security mechanisms for managing devices and users.

User flow

After interviewing the sales team, we identified some challenges and define the two main roles of the app (KAM and Sales Manager). We created the user flow to make sure all the possible scenarios were identified.

Wireframes

We built up wireframes to outline all the necessary elements on each screen. These wireframes were shared with the client to agree on the content and structure.

Findings

• Users preferred to group the negotiations by status.
• Users value the option of having messages on the same screen.
• Users asked for a quick way to send a message.

Wireframes were made with Fireworks and prototype on PowerPoint

UI Design

Once the client was happy with the layout, I started designing the final screens in Illustrator.

Since the app was meant just for iPad, we used the iOS 7 style guide for the visual design adding the corporate brand colours.

Results Obtained

• High acceptance of the solution by the users.
• Improved productivity of sales teams.
• Efficiency and effectiveness between members of the sales team.
• Sharing of information between members of the sales team.
• Minimisation of approval negotiation times.
• Reduction of the cost associated with the negotiation process.
• Increased commercial advantage in negotiations.