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© 2016 BA Convention

Real-Time Operational Intelligence

A Design Thinking Approach

Suresh Selvarajan Vickram [email protected] Hariharan Ganesan [email protected]

mailto:[email protected]

mailto:[email protected]


Learn more. www.baconvention.com

The Background

© 2016 BA Convention 3

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Business Overview

Customer was the Logistics Operation business group of the Worlds largest Automaker with multiple

manufacturing facilities spread across North America, Europe and APAC region

Finished Vehicle Logistics operations

• $ 3 billion business unit : The Automaker’s Vehicle Logistics (VL) Operation responsible for managing Finished

vehicles Logistics across the United States ( imported as well as all U.S. exports )

• 1 + Million Vehicles : Total number of finished vehicles transported by the VL group in a year –including their

Luxury Brand and their Gen Y Brand

• Operations in 25 + States: Managed Logistics and transportation across Arizona, Alaska, California, Indiana,

Kentucky, Maryland, New Jersey, Oregon, Texas, Florida , Vermont , Nevada

• 45 + Vehicle Distribution Centers (VDCs) across the North America ( 20 U.S. and 5 in Canada )

• 11,500 routes - Total Routes managed across NA including Eight North American Class I railroads, 12 trucking

companies, 10 ocean carriers,




The Solution – A Quick Fix ?

Develop a dashboard and Automate the reporting process

SYSTEMS OPERATING

IN SILOS

ANALYTICS

REPORTS

PLANTS TO

MONITOR

70+

15+

11+

DISTRIBUTION

CENTERS 25+

BA

CK

GR

OU

ND

CH

ALLEN

GE

DATA QUALITY & LATENCY

Redundant data sources leading to system latency and limiting

process agility

THE PROBLEM OF MANY

Multiple systems generating multiple reports and alerts leading to

time consuming to look up information from multiple systems

MANUAL REPORTING

Reports were manually generated from both Internal and external

systems

Customers wanted us to develop a dashboard and automate the reporting process to support decision making process

Quick Fix ??

Decision Making

System lacked capabilities to provide insights to support business

decision making process


UNDERSTAND

Learn about user requirements and

empathize with users

DEFINE

Define user needs based on insights from

understanding

IDEATE

Brainstorm with users and develop ideas

Use prototypes for Idea generation

DEVELOP

Develop, test and demo MVPs with users

Iterate MVPs to refine the solution


DEFINE UNDERSTAND IDEATE DEVELOP

1 2 3 4

Understand User Requirements

• Focus Groups

• Laddering

• Observe in Action

• Develop Sense of Empathy




From Traditional Approach to Design Thinking

TRADITIONAL APPROACH

Structured Discussions to understand

& discover existing process, systems

Requirement Elicitation to develop

and document business requirements

User Interface Design Sessions

create wireframes and prototypes

Design Thinking Learning from the Users

Focus Group sessions with specific

business groups to understand their constraints and requirements

Observe user activities, Understand user behavior, ask questions and learn from users

Understand about Users, their Systems & develop a sense of empathy

Empathize

Laddering Identify

Meaningful and actionable needs and develop needs hierarchy

Unknown User needs

and implicit requirements

We moved away from traditional requirement gathering and stared empathizing with the users to understand needs and imperatives

From “problem-focused” to “solution focused” approach




Learning From Users

Executive Team

Operations & Logistics Managers

We need to know in “Real-Time” when there is a problem in delivering a Vehicle to the Dealer

Functional SMEs Managers

We don’t know there is a problem until it is too late and we don’t have enough time to react. We are more reactive. We need to be Proactive

Our current reports don’t tell us everything. The information is controlled and we don’t actually see what is exactly happening.

Technology Managers

The Current system require extensive technical configuration for Business to use the system

Understanding and observing the user routines to develop insights

Business Executives and Senior Managers had only limited visibility into operational information and often lacked the agility respond to operations disruptions



1 2 3 4

Explicit Vs Implicit Requirements

• Expert Interviews

• Laddering

• Brainstorming


• Understand the Challenges

Defining the User Need

• Operation Visibility – Future Roadmap

• Strategy for Improved information management

• Technology options





From Controlled Spreadsheets to Real-time Actionable information

We are here today

We need to be here

The roadmap helped us define the “Right” challenge to address, based on our understanding of people and their problem




Business and the Technology Solution Options

Various solution options were created and prioritized based on the problem and requirements stated by the users

Real-time visibility into Operations

Subscription based alerts and notifications

Download/ Modify /Upload

Ability to quickly filter and analyze information

Identify & evaluate technology options

Define parameters for Information management

Actionable Insights

End user - self service

Business Objective

Provide Real-time Actionable

Information

Integration

Ease of Use

Mobile Friendly Mobile Alerts & Notifications

Flexible KPI definitions

Multiple System / Data Integration in real time

Data Visualization Drill down capabilities for causal analysis

Legend: Strong Weak

Solution Options


DEFINE UNDERSTAND IDEATE Develop

1 2 3 4



• Laddering

• Brainstorming







Develop Ideas

• Brainstorming with everyone

• Develop KPIs

• Develop Wireframes & Prototypes




Ideation Workshops – Develop KPIs

Multiple Ideation sessions with the Business Users, Operation Managers , Functional SMEs and VDC users helped in identifying critical KPIs from other metrics that were not used for operation

Initial Analysis

• 14 Reports had more that 45 to 50 Indicators

• Not all business users were tracking all KPIs

• Not All business users were following all the operation centers

• Grouped KPI into two buckets

Critical & Non Critical

• Impact to Business

• Non Critical KPIs were economical / environmental etc.

Criticality/ Priority based Bucketing

Grouping based on Business Operations

• Ideation sessions were conducted with specific user to prioritize KPIs for the Prototype

• Overlapping business KPIs were selected for further discussions

• Three KPIs were initially identified based on business Criticality

• Users will be allowed to subscribe to specific KPIs and Alerts

• Users can also collaborate with other users using Chat tools

KPI identified for first MVP

Business Critical

Not Critical

Export KPIs

Truck KPIs

Rail KPIs

Inventory & Ageing

• No of Users • Impact to Business

Capacity Utilization

Aging Stock

Buyoff Accuracy

• Market / Environmental

• Impact to Business




Simple wireframes to mock-ups and prototypes

Ideation sessions were coupled with simple wireframes, mock-ups and prototypes to help the team understand and realize how the solution was getting developed

Discuss Wireframe Validate Prototype Validate Iterate

1 2 3 4 5 6

White boarding sessions with users to discuss

1. Scenarios

2. Ideas

3. Features

4. Functionality

5. User Profiles

Develop wireframes to depict functionality

Wireframes were prototyped using PPTs/ Excel for quick turnarounds

Wireframes were again used for scenario discussion s with the Team* and this lead to new Ideas / Scenarios which were include d back into wireframes

Refined wireframes were prototyped

Prototypes were also designed using PowerPoint presentations to provide agility to redefine scenarios / Functionalities

Prototypes had detailed functionalities and features allowing users to understand the new system and discuss advanced functionalities other than just user scenarios

Finalized Prototypes were marked for Development

Each page was designed using the same process

DISCUSS WIREFRAME VALIDATE

New Ideas Scenarios

Refine Wireframes

PROTPTYPE ITERATE VALIDATE

Advanced

Functionalities

Refine

Prototypes



1 2 3 4



• Laddering

• Brainstorming







Develop Ideas


• Develop KPIs


Develop and Test

• Develop MVP

• Test Internally

• Validate with users

• Incorporate Feedback




Developing the MVP

Prototype Design

Develop MVP

Validate Internally

Demo to Business

Users Test

Externally

Working Application

Input Defects

Feedback

User Validation

No Feedback

Iterative development approach was adopted and the development was coupled with Prototyping

Output




An Example to illustrate the Ideation to Development

White boarding session to understand the user scenarios , profiles and functionalities

From white boarding to developing a working screen – an example of how we did it

1 DISCUSS WIREFRAME 2

DEVELOP 6

4 PROTOTYPE

First draft wireframe that was sketched along with the users to develop ideas and scenarios

More refined wireframe with all functionalities – First Prototype

After multiple iterations, this was the final prototype that was signed off by the users. A drastic change could be seen from Screen 2 to the final prototype

Final screen was developed using Presto with all functionalities

4 PROTOTYPE



1 2 3 4



• Laddering

• Brainstorming







Develop Ideas


• Develop KPIs


Develop and Test

• Develop MVP

• Test Internally

• Validate with users

• Incorporate Feedback

Our Learning




Learnings from our Design Thinking approach

• Collaborated with every user to understand both their implicit and explicit needs.

• Beyond formal meetings, we engaged with each users separately ( Laddering , Observation, Brainstorming) to understand observe and learn about their work routines

• Started with white boarding then went to use to mock-ups for user story boards. No complex tools were used for wireframe development

• Multiple Iteration sessions were held with all users – In groups and individually to Develop both the KPIs and ideas for wireframes

• Simple Visual samples /prototypes helped the users to understand and participate in ideation sessions. Users started to whiteboard their ideas

• Extract ideas from everyone .

• Iterate as many times as possible. This will help in getting he right answers for solving the problem

• Understood user work routine , challenges , areas critical to each users and prioritized on specific user requirements

• Participation of all business users added interesting perspectives to the problem

EMPATHIZE

DEFINE

• Combined User Requirements , user needs and our insights to define the road map

• Defined the Business and Technology Solution Options

Ideate

• Understating User needs (empathy) was critical in defining the problem and developing

• Define the right problem to solve and collaborate with users to define a solution roadmap ( Not the Solution)

Design Thinking Principles

What we did What we Learnt




Learnings from our Design Thinking approach

Develop

PROTOTYPE

• Prototyping were developed with each ideation sessions . Prototypes were used to aid the Ideation discussions

• Created simple prototypes and allowed the users to play with the prototypes

• Involved the development team and the testing team from the first phase

• One screen was developed at a time.

• Users were again asked to test each screens instead of testing the end to end applications

Design Thinking Principles

What we did What we Learnt

• Technical team had a clear understanding of the solution and this lead to reduced MVP development and testing efforts

• Users started defining new and complex functionalities.

• More number of user story boards lead to more options to select from

• Users stared using the prototypes and started tweaking it. We had more participation than regular wireframe discussion sessions

• One screen at a time provided flexibility for users and development team to keep ideating and including options


Learn more. www.baconvention.com

Thank You!

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