- Pure Procurement
- Posts
- Can A Single User Experience Question Rule Them All?
Can A Single User Experience Question Rule Them All?
Or how to come down from the "UX clouds"...
Joël Collin-Demers
November 03, 2024 • 📖 9 minutes
Hi readers,
I hope you had a great weekend. Two things before getting into it tonight:
I’m testing some design changes to the newsletter this week (“à propos” given the user experience topic 😅). Reply to this email if you’ve got strong feelings either way.
A big thanks to Matt Aaronson this week. His Workplace Application Usage Frequency chart was the inspiration for tonight’s Sunday Night Note. Show him some love on LinkedIn.
Onwards!
📰 In this week’s edition:
📋 5 procurement jobs that caught my eye
🏆 The Road to the ProcureTech Cup : Episode 10
🌙 One User Experience Question to Rule Them All!
Tap the poll at the bottom of this email after reading.
It helps confirm I’ve not yet turned into a mad scientist…
Note: Some of the content above is only available in the email version of this newsletter. Don’t miss out! Sign up for free to get the next edition.
👀 In Case You Missed It… My Best Linkedin post this week:
Calculating On-Time, In-Full (OTIF) deliveries from suppliers is easy right? WRONG!
The Journey Continues…
Join me as Aerchain comes on the show to demo their autonomous sourcing platform.
Aerchain is all about helping Enterprise streamline its sourcing processes to increase process efficiency and cost savings.
Last Week’s Episode
Sievo demoed their Procurement Analytics solution last Friday.
From helping track the savings lifecycle, CO2 emissions tracking, OTIF calculations, materials forecasting, diversity and sustainability analytics, Sievo is much more than a spend analytics tool.
If you missed it, I’ve made ALL the replays available for you:
(Subscribe while you’re there 😉)
What is the ProcureTech Cup? Start Here.
👀 In Case You Missed It… I was a guest on the Art of Procurement podcast last week:
Listen to Ep. 747 - Continuous Improvement as the Cure for Transformation Fatigue
One User Experience Question to Rule Them All!
Without high adoption of your new processes and tools, “transforming” your procurement function is a fool’s errand…
You won’t realize the benefits of a business case, especially a tech-enabled one, if nobody buys into the operational realities needed to execute on your vision (whether they be requesters, sourcing managers, category managers, or otherwise).
That’s why you always hear me yapping about change management and finding the Minimum Viable Scope for your projects — You want to reduce the number of people on which success is dependent (especially given 80%+ of digital transformation projects fail…).
And for every person involved, you need to provide a user experience (UX) that both:
Improves the quality of their day-to-day work life
AND
Enables your vision
If you don’t, they will fight you every step of the way to keep their “old ways of working.”
It’s that simple… We all get this on paper…
However, user experience is a funny thing… It’s on everyone’s lips at the start of any procurement technology selection and implementation process but typically fades into oblivion as the implementation march on.
Why?
There are dozens of ways to measure UX out there but they all fall into one of 3 groups:
User behavior metrics (number of clicks, number of functionalities used, number of documents/transactions created, number of issue tickets, etc.)
“Bottom line” metrics (delta in cost savings, in cost to execute activities, etc.)
Qualitative (survey) metrics (NPS scores, customer satisfaction surveys, UMUX, etc.)
Each group has it’s own set of challenges:
#1 - User behavior metrics are great but typically hard to calculate.
ProcureTech providers typically don’t do a great job at providing usage and behavior statistics and dashboards “out-of-the-box” in their solutions.
Companies are stuck manually tabulating and calculating metrics of choice (e.g. number of requisitions created — Total, by BU, by User, etc.). With bigger budgets, you can build out dashboards yourself in a separate BI platform but “bigger budgets” are few and far between…
Therefore, the analyst tasked with manual compilation stops as soon as humanely possible in an attempt to do something more interesting with their time…
#2 - “Bottom Line” metrics are lagging indicators… It’s too late to do anything.
Ultimately, good user experience leads to high adoption. This leads to you realizing the benefits of your business case (and the impacts to the bottom line). So, you could just monitor your BCase business metrics and infer a good user experience when you’re successful…
The problem with this is that the feedback loop is horribly long. By the time you get to BCase value levers, any other number of other factors could also be at play. It’s hard to definitely tie things back to user experience.
#3 - Qualitative (survey) metrics are VERY easy to get wrong…
Sampling bias, response bias, measurement errors and administration issues are just 4 of the dozens of things that can produce faulty survey conclusion.
(Just ask McKinsey regarding their latest procurement benchmarks report…)
Surveys also very labor intensive (distribution lists, chasing responses, compiling and interpreting results, etc.).
A survey is always better than no survey but the value isn’t always worth the play.
Example: As an employee, if I’m going to be asked every month or quarter about my experience with a given process or system, I might just start answering positively so I am left alone… Or stop answering altogether and hope nobody notices...
Automatically calculated, contextual user behavior metrics (#1) are the best option. However, until all ProcureTech providers start providing this to solution administrators “out-of-the-box”, we’re a bit stuck aren’t we?
Can a Single Question Help Us Evaluate UX?
In lieu of easily accessible and valuable UX metrics, could we use a single question as a proxy for user experience “health”? Let’s find out.
As an example, let’s examine the behavior of a typical requester sitting outside Procurement. They just want to “buy stuff” and get back to their job role…
While the requester isn’t always the key to unlocking business value through procurement technology (or simple process optimization!), the principles from this example apply at large.
Your typical requester is bombarded with tools and tasks
Above you see a typical requester’s available tools/processes to accomplish their work (give or take a few…).
Easily accessible tools/processes are top left because they are used a lot and/or very easy to grasp (messaging, Google searches, email, videoconferencing, etc.).
Tools/processes requesters hate using are on the bottom right because they are unfamiliar and/or complex to understand and use.
In yellow, using a PCard (credit card) and forwarding supplier invoices to a group AP email address are both things people can do relatively easily because they surf on email and personal credit card knowledge.
However, also in yellow but lower on the curve, interacting with your procurement systems is considered cumbersome by most, regardless of how beautiful the screens are… (“What the heck is a GL and Cost Center?”)
Similarly, the typical requester also curses the heavens when…
They need to enter and update their yearly goals,
Submit an IT help desk ticket or, god forbid,
Try to get in touch with legal…
This curve will vary depending on specific user context and skill level but consider this an average…
Users want to stay in the top left as much as possible. That’s where their soul pulls them... If they can’t figure something out, you better believe you’re getting an instant message or an email…
As you can see, this is not a problem specific to procurement… However, if we contextualize it for procurement, we can get a bit more insight…
Requesters only have limited patience…
I’ve just added the “You’re Testing My Patience” Line…😅
Generally speaking, users want to do the right thing. They want to follow your process and use your tools… At first.
However, with every minute that goes by without achieving the objective, your requester’s patience dwindles…
“Why is it so complicated to buy a replacement part for the printer?!”
…and so does the risk that they engage to MaVeRiCk BuYiNg practices increases 😱
Maverick buying refers to the practice of purchasing outside established procurement processes or approved vendor lists. This can lead to unapproved spending, missed savings opportunities, compliance risks, and a fragmented supply chain that disrupts efficiency and transparency across the organization.
Anything that’s harder than the easiest process available is at risk!
Concretely, if buying something with a PCard or simply having a vendor “send an invoice to AP” (maverick buying) is easier for requesters than your established procurement processes and systems, you’re in trouble…
The temptation of turning to the “path of least resistance” will grow stronger in proportion to how long a requester struggles with your established process…
Anything that’s easier than maverick buying channels will lead to high adoption.
However, there is hope!
If you can craft a user experience that leverages tools, knowledge, reflexes and processes the requester already masters, maverick buying will be a thing of the past!
THAT’S the secret to a great user experience…
Leverage familiar applications/tools/processes to eliminate maverick buying…
You can’t look at user experience in a vacuum… User experience needs to consider each user’s COMPLETE experience.
“I don’t understand why requesters aren’t using our new requisitioning tool? The colors are so pretty…” 😅
To win procurement’s digital transformation, you need to move your procurement experiences into “No Training Needed” territory!
Creating a request to buy that printer part needs to be easier than going out to Staples and buying it with a PCard (or getting it shipped without a PO, having AP deal with the non-PO invoice and ignoring the angry emails that are sure to follow…).
If you can achieve this, adoption with sky rocket with basic training and change management. Users will train each other. Word will spread like wildfire.
And you’ll rake in the business case benefits…
So What’s the Magic Question?
“Will the new user experience be easier than the lowest friction alternative?”
If the answer is yes, your chances of high adoption drastically improve.
If the answer is no, go back to the drawing board because you’re heading for the digital transformation graveyard.
The above is why I’m so bullish on Intake & Orchestration. The whole point is bringing requesters to the top left of the chart…
It’s also why I immediately pay attention to any application that’s incorporating this concept into their solution category…
If it’s easier to create a PowerPoint category strategy than to use a tool, you’re toast.
If it’s easier to source with telephone and email than to use a tool, poof - you’re gone.
If it’s easier to contract with track changes in MS Word than in a CLM, forget it.
Etc.
If we want to stop continuously talking about the same issues over and over again, we need to give users experiences that stops “testing their patience…”
Questions? Comments? Insults? Let me know in the comments 👇
👀 In Case You Missed It… My Last 3 Notes:
1/ Digital Procurement Is Not a Job for B-Players...
2/ The Most Forgotten Stakeholder in ProcureTech
3/ The Need for a Common ProcureTech Taxonomy
A user interface is like a joke. If you have to explain it, it’s not that good.
Need Help Building Your Digital Procurement Roadmap?
I’ve been helping global procurement teams digitalize their processes and practices for 12+ years. Reply to this email to get a conversation started.You have something to share with our 10,000+ readers?
The digitally-minded procurement professionals reading this newsletter are thirsty for knowledge, insights, and solutions. Reply to this email to get in front of them.
See you next week,
P.S. Please rate today’s newsletter.
Your feedback shapes the content of this newsletter.
How did you like today's newsletter? |
First time reading? Sign up here.
Reply