Audit Support App
Problem space : Our team set out to modernize the manual Audit and Audit Support workflow for IBM Finance and Operations.
My role: User Experience and User Interface design.
Responsibilities : I created storyboards, interacted with development for technical feasibility, created a low-fidelity prototype, and iterated with key stakeholders through deployment.
Design team : We began with three designers. One facilitator and two generalists. After two quarters, I became the only designer on the project.
Client feedback
“...this team was able to provide a design for a tool that is supporting a complex and sensitive process; always listening the users, the engage support demand team, and developers of Engage Support.
It was a real team work following Garage methodology, and adapting/re-adapting the design according to new needs, user testing, and taking into consideration the limited delivery resources available.”
- NPS feedback survey
Award video
Strategy
This team came together to reduce manual effort and risk in the Audit process. It is a process that involved the Auditors, an Audit Support Team, and IBM’s Quote to Cash operations — the organization that receives, processes, and executes IBM contracts.
The initiative team had participants from Sweden, Italy, Denmark, France, Mexico, and the U.S. We used virtual collaboration methods to keep everyone on the same page. Iterations were managed through Jira, Mural was used for Design activities, Sketch files were hosted on a cloud server for de-synchronized prototyping, and Invision was used for stakeholder reviews and feedback.
Stage one : Run a Design Sprint to demonstrate the art-of-the-possible and generate buy in from sponsors.
Stage two : Iterate on the initial prototype with Sponsor Users and Subject Matter Experts. Create a mid-fidelity prototype of the desired MVP.
Stage three : Develop a design system to scale to the entire platform, apply it to the prototype, and iterate with guidance of the development squad.
Discover
During our design sprint, we worked side by side with the Audit Support team and individuals from Finance & Operation’s Quote to Cash. Outside of these Sponsor Users, we used interviews and playbacks to get feedback from our extended stakeholder network.
Once a full initiative was mobilized, we utilized this same network to dive deeper into the desktop-level processes that the teams were using to answer audits. We performed contextual walkthroughs of existing processes, reviewed Audit and Audit Support team documentation, and crafted interview questions about best and worst case audits.
Define
Audits are a tool to investigate and assess the legal and financial credibility of contracts formed by IBM.
The process involved three groups. An Audit Team or Auditor who sends inquiries to the Audit Support Team. This team acts as a buffer and organizer for the audit process. They create and manage a workflow for the Quote to Cash teams who need to provide responses to the inquiries.
The process is time-sensitive and iterative. Audits contain tight deadlines and involve several stages of inquiries and responses.
The audit process begins with an announcement, cycles through several question and response phases, and then ends with an action plan.
Documenting the process allowed us to create a shared understanding of what the audit process was like for each of the three users involved.
However, our organization’s scope narrowed our users to just Audit Support and Quote to Cash. We increased the detail our Quote to Cash user group to specify the Squad focals and the Squad members of Quote to Cash.
There is a repeated flow inside of that question and response pattern. Audit Support focals receive “questions” from Audit, they disperse this to Quote to cash squad leaders, and those leaders convert the “questions” into tasks for their squad members. The squad member responses flows back “upstream” to Audit Support for review before submission to the Audit focal.
The workflow was manual and spread across several tools. It changed the straightforward process into a complex, tiresome experience.
Audit Support struggled to create and manage workflows for the various stages and requests of each audit. Quote to Cash teams struggled to communicate responsibilities to squad members, gather documentation to support responses, and then collaborate on those responses and responsibilities.
Each group had valid struggles; but by focusing on the response creation, we were able to address the biggest point of frustration amongst all of our user groups : collaboration.
We believe that the Audit Support Team feels overwhelmed by the hundreds of e-mails used to manage and review the audit workflow.
We believe that the Quote to Cash squad focals feel frustrated by the multiple sources of tasks and task management that they need to monitor.
We believe that the Quote to Cash squad members feel worn out by the multiple manual steps they must complete for each response.
Design
Audit requests, workflow tasks, and response collaboration are all held in a single platform.
This transforms the audit from an “event” into an “object” that each user can work on.
This allowed Audit Support teams to more easily share information and workflows. It allowed the Q2C squad focals to organize their teams and track progress. It also allowed Q2C squad members to visualize the work to be done.
We created a clear information hierarchy.
Collaborators can easily create and view tasks to support the audit responses.
User's don't need to switch between tools to check in on what needs to be done.
We made tasks easy to create and manage.
We brought information, data, and responses into a shared space.
Users can interpret, share, and create all in the same window. This has transformed how much time they spend responding to audit questions
We prioritized collaboration.
We met the needs of the users through a digitized process flow and a clear architecture.
The new process streamlines communication by making the ASApp the focal point for collaboration. It offers e-mail and in-app notifications to keep users informed of tasks and changes. It securely stores data and makes it easy to re-use evidence. It “bubbles-up” responses, effortlessly flowing each piece of the response from one collaborator to another. It is a one-stop shop.
This transformation is made possible by an architecture based on the sharing of information. Each Audit, Request, Response, and Task is built on a library of shared components that offer real-time clarity. Users can drill down, or “bubble-up” to get the context they need.
The ASApp launched as a cloud native tool, and held 50% of the quarterly engagements within its first year. It has brought in an estimated 11,000 hours of savings at the global scale.
