Redesigning Woolworths’ PartnerHub platform to allow suppliers to get their products in front of millions of customers.
The Challenge
Woolworths has one of the largest active supplier bases in Australia. In 2019 they developed PartnerHub to test if a platform could replace the existing manual processes to facilitate distribution and sales.
Although successful in digitizing the process between Woolworths and suppliers, the proposed MVP became the first release and faced issues. Utilising a ‘tech first’ approach resulted in a poor user experience and was met with a lot of complaints, bugs and other connection issues.
Woolworths had three objectives to achieve when revamping the platform:
1) Increasing supplier satisfaction
2) Reducing the time taken for suppliers to submit products into store
3) Reducing tickets (issues) being raised during the submission process
The Solution
For PatnerHub 2.0, it was essential to place the core users – both suppliers and internal commercial teams – at the centre of the solution.
Customers were engaged so the customer journey and pain points could be accurately mapped. Following the research, a series of rapid design sprints were run focusing on three areas that would shape the next iteration of the platform.
1) Improving acceptance of new products
2) Feedback and support processes
3) Developing a product aligned with other market platforms
Ensuring all parties remained aligned was vital considering the size of the organisation and multiple departments. To do so, the design process included continual communication and touch points to align, agree and refine on next steps.
The Team
Digital Village led an augmented four person team alongside Mav3rik to define and deliver the solution.
The End Result
Woolworths were extremely happy with the design sprints and solution that will streamline processes and remove issues with the current platform. Utilising Figma and Miro, a completely new process was designed for customers to submit their products for review into the Woolworths portfolio. The designs for PartnerHub2.0 of included:
1) A new submission flow including intelligent and dynamic form completion.
2) Redefining how customers manage, report and advocate products within their business accounts.
3) Communication solutions and live support process.
4) Reshaping and automating how customers manage their data and information.
5) Batch editing and uploading on products to streamline how larger suppliers manage their new product lines.
The designs were then prototyped, and developed utilising Salesforce tech stack to replace the current PartnerHub solution. The design sprint process is now being integrated across divisions within Woolworth to further shape and design other services and products.
