PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT
Untangling Acquisition Debt:
Designing a Unified Portal for a Multi-Brand B2B Manufacturer
ROLE
Lead Product Strategist + Designer
DURATION
2.5 years
TEAM
3 Designers
15 Engineers
TECHNOLOGY
Material UI
React Web
OVERVIEW
The Problem
Years of brand acquisitions went unreconciled and the customer was paying the price.
This engagement tackled the downstream effects of a fragmented technology landscape: inconsistent ordering experiences, siloed backend systems, and an overburdened customer service team.
Across five development phases, we designed a unified self-service portal that brought all brands under one consistent experience, standardizing everything from order terminology to truckload logistics and real-time tracking.
The portal empowered customers to self-serve with confidence, meaningfully reducing the volume of requests handled by the customer care team; freeing them to focus on higher-value interactions while giving the business a scalable foundation for any future acquisitions.
PROCESS
The Road to Production
The design team was made up of 1-2 Designers and myself as the Experience Lead. We followed this process to support a team size of 15 engineers, both from-end and back-end while balancing user and stakeholder feedback.
Discover
Understand the user need and current state process
Design
Design the solution(s) to the user need with acceptance from users and stakeholders
Develop
Prepare feature documentation and pair with engineering throughout development
Evaluate
Watch user feedback and behavior to assess success of feature
VISION
Using the Customer's Voice as Our Foundation
Through user interviews, surveys, and site visits multiple personas were developed for both dealer and retail customers. They all had a few common things: Customers were happy with the product offerings from this company, but they were frustrated with the lack of transparency and trust their experiences provided.
Using this input as our guiding light we were able to create the following vision and principles:
"Build a unified, standardized, 'best-in-class' ordering platform to simplify all touchpoints along their journey."
Visibility into Every Order
Knowledge that Empowers
Make it Easier
TRACKING VALUE
The Metrics That Defined Success
While entering 2025, the team had released much of our planned phases and we were seeing the early adopters utilize the feature sets. It was time to start driving full adoption of the portal. Three key desired outcomes were defined with specific metrics to determine success. These key outcomes were:
Increase Customer Satisfaction
By being the easiest to do business with, customer satisfaction and brand loyalty will increase.
Increased .5 point
Streamline Team Member Onboarding
By supplying team members with one tool to learn, the amount of onboarding time and turnover rate will reduce.
Reduced 75%
Increase Value of Self Service by Care
By increasing adoption, the number of times customer care has to intervene will decrease, taking workload off of the team
Increased 50%
Reflections
Working across five phases of development deepened my appreciation for the balance required between business priorities and user needs. Both are legitimate, and both deserve a seat at the table, but they don't always point in the same direction. The work of a designer is often to find the path where those interests overlap, and to advocate clearly when they don't.
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This engagement also reminded me of the true beauty in the designer-developer relationship. Technology constraints aren't obstacles to good design, they're part of the problem space. The compromises made between design intent and technical feasibility weren't failures; they were the product of a healthy working relationship built on mutual respect and open communication.
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Finally, this project reinforced the value of a "good and shipped" mindset. Phasing the work allowed us to put real features in front of real users early, gather signal, and improve over time. That iterative approach (rather than waiting for a perfect, all-encompassing release) was ultimately what made the portal successful.