QBert 2.0
About HPE Qbert 2.0
HPE is a business-focused organization with two divisions: Enterprise Group, which works in servers, storage, networking, consulting and support, and Financial Services.
QBert (Quotation Based Evaluation Reporting Tool) is used by HPE Server, Storage, and Networking suppliers and HPE owners for quotation to have a systematic evaluation and validation on product/component cost and quantity. QBert 2.0 will be the next-generation quotation tool as part of the business transformation, specifically on the manufacturing deployment change which in turn changes the quotation reviewing process and QBert system structure. QBert 2.0 will be extracting data source from other systems for cost and BOM(Bill Of Material) quantity and will be submitting final approved quote to SAP. QBert 2.0 also serves as an application for finance to utilize all approved quotes with certain information from cost system and ERP for rebate.
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Problem Statement
HPE is, itself an Original Design Manufacturer, and their SKUs(Stock Keeping Units) are made up of Materials from multiple ODM's(Original Design Manufacturers) (Intel, NVidia, etc.), that can be Supplied by any number of different Factories (Foxconn, Inventec, etc.) and/or resale Distributors.
Awareness:
1. Old systems are being retired and will no longer be supported.
2. Old servers are being shut down.
3. Old systems didn't use master data, so led to multiple silos of conflicting information.
4. Old systems were extremely slow.
Desire:
1. Single source of the truth
2. Consolidated systems so there will be fewer places to go to complete tasks and fewer conflicting data
3. New possibilities for dashboards, reports, and aggregation
4. Far greater performance - potential to quickly take care of what is needed within the application instead of exporting and re-importing spreadsheets
Knowledge:
In general, we are respecting as much of the old process we can while moving them to a new platform that has consistent UX/UI. Where we can, processes will be similar to the previous to make the change easier for users.
Where we aren't keeping the old UX/UI, we are improving upon it where we can.
Requirement
There are Qbert (for BU and program quotes) and Qbert-CPM(for BuySell/GTK quotes), with different UI but similar functionality and feature below
1. The system serves as a centralized interface for all quotes and all commodity prices from suppliers for all BUs
2. The system provides records quotes of all parts identified (BuySell parts, GTK parts, and ODM managed parts)
3. The system provides quotation variance comparison for both parties (supplier & HPE) for any price differences
4. The system provides feed to downstream system when final quotes are approved
5. The system provide various reporting functions
Design Challenge
How might we merge all HPE supply chain legacy applications and features, so that users benefit by its high performance, accurate data and efficiency?
Scope & Focus
Scope for this project was to design and develop desktop application for supply chain quotation management system.
Research
Since it was redesigning of existing system with new look and feel and consolidation, our team directly focused on primary research. We selected all type of our audiences and conducted user observation sessions.
Persona
User observations were consolidated and in order to get the idea about our target users we came up with user Personas. This process gave better room to understand the target users, their day to day activities and the features they use the most.
Establishing Project Goals
By now, since we had a chance to talk to Business as well as users, we considered user requirement with business value and established the project goal.
Ideate
Feature List
After establishing the Project goals, we started out listing the features for QBert 2.0. Some of the listed features are as below.
User Flow
From the legacy application features, users and business requirements Qwinix team created user flows. The process of creating user flow also gave an exposure to how exactly the user is using the system and area for improvement.
Information Architecture
This time for creating the blueprint of our design, we decided to try out new tool. So, we selected to create our IA using Workflowy. Below are some of the pictures from our Workflowy:
Use Case Scenarios
For the user flows created, we came up with the the use cases and stories.
Design
Wireframes
Our team has created low fidelity wireframes using sketch. Since the system and its screen designs were too huge, client came back saying they would like to save some time by going into high fidelity designs. Below are few of the low fidelity screen design files.
Branding
HPE uses personalized Grommet as its design system. Grommet (Story Book) is a react-based framework that provides accessibility, modularity, responsiveness, and theming in a tidy package. So from branding perspective we haven't put much effort apart from creating our own symbol library for the design.
High Fidelity Design
We did high fidelity prototype using Sketch. From low fidelity design to high fidelity design there was so many feedbacks/changes, we have incorporated into our design.
Prototype
We created prototype of this project using Invision. It had three different types of user flow namely, Admin, SPM and Suppliers.
Usability & Final Hand offs
Our team conducted usability for several scenarios and tested on users. Development for this project is completed by Qwinix team and live with the HPE users now.
