Streamlined procurement operations through workflow automation.

Designed a centralized solution for creating and managing purchase indents, streamlining procurement for both requesters and approvers. Integrated inventory data with multiple modules to eliminate manual effort in selecting items and calculating required quantities.Provided end-to-end visibility into indent status for both requesters and approvers, eliminating the need for manual follow-ups and improving procurement efficiency.

SMEAssist Purchase Indent list with status, quick filters and priority

My Role
Product Designer - End to End

Platform
Internal B2B Operations Tool - OfBusiness

Timeline
3 weeks - Discovery → Launch

Team
1 Product Manager, 6 Developers, 1 Quality Analyst, 1 Product Designer (Me)

OVERVIEW

What is Purchase Indent?

Purchase Indent is a collection of purchase requests raised by multiple users for the items they require. These requests can be created for various purposes, such as supporting production, fulfilling sales orders, or maintaining sufficient stock levels.

PROBLEM STATEMENT

What was happening earlier?

Employees raised material requirements through different channels, while purchase managers had to manually validate and consolidate them before processing orders.

Without a consistent way to capture request context, check requirements and track progress, teams relied on repeated coordination to move procurement forward.

  • Using spreadsheets
  • No centralised process
  • Duplicate requests
  • Scattered channels
  • Manual follow-ups
  • Delayed processing

Opportunity

Simplify and automate the procurement process from request to order while reducing manual effort and operational errors?

Give users end-to-end visibility of their procurement requests, from indent creation to order processing, without relying on offline tracking?

CORE USERS

Whom we are designing for

Each team had a different way of raising purchase requests, depending on their day-to-day needs.

Illustration of Ramesh Yadav

Ramesh Yadav

Warehouse Supervisor || Requester 01

“I spot low stock in a sheet and send the request on WhatsApp. I never know if anyone has seen it.”

PAIN POINTS
Manual stock checks, no request status, repeated follow-up calls.

Illustration of Priya Sharma

Priya Sharma

Sales Coordinator || Requester 02

“For every sales order, I retype the item details into an email for the purchase team.”

PAIN POINTS
Retyping order details, requests not linked to the sales order, missed delivery dates.

Illustration of Vikram Singh

Vikram Singh

Production Planner || Requester 03

“Before production starts, I have to work out how much material to order myself.”

PAIN POINTS
Manual quantity calculation, errors in required quantity, production waiting on material.

Illustration of Anjali Mehta

Anjali Mehta

Purchase Manager || Approver

“Half my day goes into collecting requests from email, WhatsApp and calls before I can place a single order.”

PAIN POINTS
Consolidating scattered requests, duplicate indents, confirming details with every requester.

RESEARCH & DISCOVERY

Identifying the real problem

To understand the existing procurement workflow, I conducted 8 stakeholder interviews across key user groups — two participants from each group — to capture different perspectives within the same operational context.

8Stakeholder
interviews
2 Warehouse Staff
2 Sales Team
2 Production Teams
2 Purchase Managers

Key insights

What we heard across all four groups.

01

Requests weren't linked to their source

No structured way to raise a request against a Sales Order, Production Order, or stock need — users retyped or forwarded order details by hand.

02

Stock checks and quantities were manual

Users checked stock separately, then worked out the required quantity themselves — slow, and inconsistent in accuracy.

03

Every request used a different channel

Email, WhatsApp, and verbal handoffs meant inconsistent formats, with item details buried inside forwarded messages.

04

Managers pieced requests together

Purchase managers collected and cross-checked requests from multiple channels before they could even start processing.

USER JOURNEY

One standardised flow, two paths

A single request flow that branches on what triggered the need — faster, less error-prone, and easier to coordinate.

Creator journey: open Purchase Planning, create request, set priority, set expected delivery date, set delivery location, add items — either by selecting a source order number (system auto-fetches and calculates quantity against inventory) or manually — add comments if needed, submit request.
Approver journey: view all requests in one queue, create a purchase order with items fetched from the request list, add purchase order details, optionally add other items, process the order.

Final Deliverables

Final solution lets the system do the calculation, not the user.

A standardised request experience with two paths: order-linked requests are auto-calculated against live stock, while manual ones surface stock inline so decisions stay informed. Purchase managers now work from a single queue instead of compiling requests from scattered channels — easier to adopt, and more accurate and efficient across departments.

Purchase Planning screen — centralised page for creating a request, starting from a clean empty state 1

Design Decisions

  1. Centralised page for creating an Indent, starting from a clean empty state.

Hover the image to show annotations.

Purchase Planning screen — form split into Basic Details and Item Details, with priority, expected delivery date, and manual item entry 1 2 3 4

Design Decisions

  1. Automate and ease the process for creating indent for all kinds of user.
  2. Set your priority based on urgency.
  3. Set Expected Date, when Item received.
  4. Split the form into Basic Details and Item Details instead of presenting one long form.

Hover the image to show annotations.

Purchase Planning screen — selecting a Source Order from the dropdown, showing order value, EDD, and item count for each option 1 2

Design Decisions

  1. Contextual information for source order for easy selection.
  2. Only active orders will be shown in the list.

Hover the image to show annotations.

Purchase Planning screen — item list auto-populated from the selected source order, showing order qty, available stock, and required qty per item 1 2

Design Decisions

  1. Auto-populated item list based on the source order — no manual calculation needed, the system does it.
  2. Add comments for each item if required.

Hover the image to show annotations.

Purchase Planning screen — centralised list of every indent created, with indent number, creation date, EDD, source order, creator, and status 1 2

Design Decisions

  1. One centralised list of all the indents created by multiple users, with clear context.
  2. Easy, quick search for finding an indent from the list — complete visibility.

Hover the image to show annotations.

Purchase Planning screen — indent detail view with a prominent Mark Receive CTA, linked source order, and required/received/pending quantity per item 1 2 3

Design Decisions

  1. Prominent primary CTA for receiving the item.
  2. Quick navigation to see the linked source order.
  3. Easy, quick navigation to see multiple indent details from the list with less effort.

Hover the image to show annotations.

Purchase Planning screen — Mark Receive modal listing pending items with a Receive Qty column and a 'Receive all pending quantities' checkbox 1 2

Design Decisions

  1. Items can be recorded once or multiple times as they arrive.
  2. Quick checkbox to record all items in one click, and the indent closes automatically.

Hover the image to show annotations.

Manual Process

Creating a request without a source order

Users can raise a request manually when there's no source order — for falling stock, or any other need.

Purchase Planning screen — adding items manually without a source order, with available stock and required quantity per item 1 2

Design Decisions

  1. Add items manually based on requirements to manage the stock level.
  2. No data loss — the user can leave the platform at any stage and pick up right where they left off using "Save as Draft."

Hover the image to show annotations.

Order Processing

Quick order-processing screen for procurement managers

A one-click flow to create and process a purchase order from requests raised by multiple users.

Purchase Planning screen — indent list for procurement managers with selectable rows, quick filters and a priority filter 1 2

Design Decisions

  1. Every indent is selectable from one list, so requests from different users can be grouped together.
  2. Priority and due-date filters surface the most urgent requests first.

Hover the image to show annotations.

Purchase Planning screen — three indents due in the next 7 days selected together, with a Purchase Order button to create one order in one click 1 2

Design Decisions

  1. No more hassle finding multiple indents from multiple sources.
  2. Quick, easy one-click flow for creating a purchase order to process items with suppliers.

Hover the image to show annotations.

Design Decision

Design decisions that replaced manual checking and scattered channels with one calculated flow

  • Automated the request-to-order quantity calculation — order-linked requests fetch every item, compare it against stock, and calculate what's needed, removing manual entry and the inventory-check step entirely.
  • Surfaced available stock inline for manual requests — users see current stock against each item as they add it, so quantity decisions stay informed.
  • Linked Sales Orders and Production Orders directly to requests, removing the need to retype or forward order details.
  • Integrated request creation across Sales, Inventory, and Production so users could raise a request from their existing workflow.
  • Standardised the request format to cut errors, duplicates, and dependency on email and WhatsApp.
  • Optimized the workflow, cutting purchase order creation time from 15 minutes to ~5 minutes.

Business Impact

These decisions moved real numbers, not just workflows

75%

User adoption in 3 weeks

30%

Operations efficiency increased

100%

Request status visibility

Key Learning

What this project taught me

  • Automating the calculation, not just the form, is what removed manual work — a structured form alone wouldn't have solved this.
  • Not every request needs the same automation — order-linked ones could be fully calculated, while stock-driven ones still needed human judgment with better information.
  • Linking directly to Sales Orders and Production Orders removes the need to retype or forward information.
  • A single queue is often more valuable to approvers than faster individual requests — it removes the collection burden entirely.
  • UX improvements can produce measurable operational impact.

Enterprise design is less about adding features and more about removing the manual thinking a system can safely do for the user — while leaving room for judgment where it's still needed.

Thanks for Reading

More Work

Here's a preview of other modules I've designed.