Vendease RMS Back Office

Project Overview

The consolidation of our standalone services into a single app enables our clients to track the movement of food and sales throughout the value chain; From ordering to the point of sale, to automatically reordering food items when required, to costing menus based on ingredients in stock, to advising low stock levels, to displaying menu items with price in the point of sale module and analyzing reporting data.

Problem Statement

Restaurants, cafes, and other food service businesses face inefficiencies due to time-consuming manual operations, which hinder productivity and profitability. There's a need for an automated solution to streamline both front and back-office processes. The Vendease Super App aims to solve this by automating up to 75% of tasks, improving operational efficiency and business quality for not just restaurants, but also retail stores, warehouses, food suppliers, and delivery aggregators.

Discover Phase

In this phase of the project, we carried out a couple of Interviews with customers we already had using our previous platform which we wanted to transition into RMS, our major aim was to find out what would make the process smooth for the transition and how we can also educate them on the major changes we were making.

User Interviews

We focused mainly on user interviews that were carried out mostly by the Project manager alongside the Design Team and other key stakeholders, I conducted about 20-30 interviews from the client base we had at the moment, And based on the responses here are the key insights presented below

• The interview confirmed that customers were willing to use an application that allows restaurants to carry out all-in-one operations.

• Most of the users of the software weren’t as tech-savvy meaning we would have to build this as simply as possible

• A majority of users were willing to pay a reasonable price to get the value for what our product was going to provide

• 15- 20 restaurants have struggled with keeping proper stock and managing day-to-day activities

• Already existing customers on the platform were okay with transitioning to our new software provided we could support the process

We continued to carry out Interviews and Focus groups were also conducted at 3 months intervals of building to test features as we built throughout the process of the project

One user during our interviews had this to say:

I like what you guys are doing here and honestly if you launch with all these features in the application it will take away me having to use different softwares to manage my restaurant

User Personas

Based on the interviews we conducted we were able to group our user types into four different categories

Persona 1

Persona 2

Persona 3

Persona 4

Competitor Analysis

To gain a proper understanding of how to approach the design for the Vendease product and also improve on places where we would. Our major case studies are Square and Lightspeed this what was we discovered from them

Design Phase

For the design phase, we drafted out a design system and worked on High-Fidelity wireframes immediately testing and iterating as we went forward so we could

For the design phase, we developed a system based on existing products and worked on high-fidelity wireframes and prototypes. We prioritized immediate testing and iteration as we progressed, ensuring that the designs effectively met user needs.

Wireframes and Prototyping

We worked to outline the majority of the features guided by a Product Requirement Document (PRD). I have placed screenshots of some of the designs worked on attached are prototype links for further exploration also a link to the live view if you’d love to use our product.

Onboarding

Get started

Dashboard

Configuration

Inventory Management

Products

Money Manager

Shift Management

Payroll

Collaboration

I collaborated with product managers, developers, and three other product designers, totaling about 10-15 team members.

Challenges Faced

We encountered several challenges similar to those faced in the Vendease Back Office project:

• User Tech Savviness: Many users needed to be more comfortable with technology, necessitating an intuitive design approach.

• Complexity of Operations: Streamlining multiple functionalities in a single app while maintaining ease of use was a significant challenge.

Testing and Iteration

We conducted focus groups and user interviews to test various features. Users were asked to describe what they thought they were looking at, explore the prototypes, and provide feedback. This iterative process allowed us to refine features based on real user interactions and insights.

Results

These were the results gotten from the front office project

• Time to Completion: Users typically complete core tasks in about 10-20 minutes.

• Adoption Rate: The adoption rate from our existing client base reached 45%.

• User Completion Rate: Approximately 75% of users were able to complete tasks smoothly during testing.

  
  

Takeaways

✅ Building enterprise software is a continuous process that rarely ends, and it is quite exciting. I encountered several obstacles while figuring out features such as table management and printer integration, which I overcame by researching existing applications.

✅ I see potential for this project to expand into the hospitality industry, including hotels. My primary improvement suggestion would be to incorporate more colors in the UI, as we focused on maintaining uniformity across all existing products.