Sarah Pickerill
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BAYER - LAUNCH EXCELLENCE (LEX)

LAUNCH EXCELLENCE (LEx)

INTERNAL APPLICATION FOR BAYER

  • Goal: the project aims to address challenges in launching new varieties, missing deadlines costing the business significant financial loss

    My Role: continuous discovery, workflow design, wire-framing, prototypes, and user testing

    Identified pain points: standardization, visibility, lack of process

    Proposed solutions: build the application to create and follow plans for products, implement dashboards for visualization, incorporate automation

    Project outcomes: positive feedback from business and validation sessions; artifacts and documents describing problems, solutions, and iterative processes; working directly with devs to build out the application for users; millions of dollars in saved revenue for Bayer as result of application development

Problem Statement

The establishment of a well-defined, end-to-end, consistent framework for launching new varieties is crucial. Presently, the absence of transparency impedes the speed to market and restricts the return on investment. Consequently, prioritizing the integration of transparency throughout the entire process becomes imperative to overcome these challenges.

Overview

The objective of this project is to standardize and streamline the launch process, ensuring efficient and effective product launches. This involves promoting alignment among all Launch Team members to foster collaboration and enhance communication. Additionally, within the product plan, it is essential to identify significant milestones and expose relevant data through a dashboard, allowing for easy access and visibility. By implementing a "Plan feeding the data" approach, the project aims to track progress and ensure timely execution. Furthermore, the project seeks to create an actionable dashboard that can identify problem areas throughout the launch process, enabling prompt resolution. Collecting data on key metrics will facilitate continuous improvement efforts. To address business needs, the project will focus on making the dashboard user-friendly and easy to operate, ensuring a seamless experience for all users. Additionally, opportunities for automation will be explored to streamline processes and increase efficiency.

USERS
Seed Breeder, Global Segment Leads, Market Devs, Marketing, Operations, and individuals responsible for guiding products from ideation to market at Bayer

TEAM
Developers
Project Manager
UX Designer
Researcher
Strategist
Agile Coach

MY INVOLVEMENT
Led and managed a high-performing UX team to develop an application for tracking crop product progress.

Created an intuitive user interface and user-centric design approach, resulting in significant cost savings and increased revenue for the organization.

Oversaw the end-to-end UX design process, including user research, information architecture, wireframing, prototyping, and user testing.

Collaborated closely with stakeholders, developers, and product managers to align design strategies with business objectives.

YEARS
2022, 2023

the initial Experiment 

Experiment Objective
Accelerate our understanding of the shape of the final solution by creating a UI workflow based on our current knowledge.

Experiment Findings
If we are to streamline and standardize the process, 2 characteristics of a solution emerge:

  1. Need the ability to capture initial, overall parameters for the launch

  2. Need flexibility to adapt the plan depending on findings (e.g. change field trial countries)

  3. Need visibility of overall progress and details

  4. Need for certain components to be standardized and maintained in a single repository for all plans

 

Review of process workflow

 

The Discovered Challenge

The Vegetable Business faced a challenge due to the absence of a well-defined and repeatable process, resulting in the failure to meet critical deadlines for operational tasks like Crop Lock, Forecasting, Production Seed, Naming, and more. This issue created a significant setback as the inability to have new products ready by a specific time meant having to wait an entire year before being able to sell them.

 

Discovered Pain Points from Business Objective

(Drive Greater Success in Launching Our New Varieties in a Consistent Manner)

Lack of standardizations

  • Information regarding producibility needs alignment and automation 

  • KPIs not standard and can be changed during the Launch – A moving target 

  • Several tools, databases are used during the process leading to inconsistency  

Lack of visibility

  • Lack of communication with other regions when dropping a material 

  • Launch Plans are not shared in a common and accessible place 

  • There is no process enabler or tracking tool 

  • Many areas involved with subprocesses with low visibility 

  • Role clarity is not in place at some stages 

Lack of Process

  • Process is complex and long 

  • Process is focus on pre-commercial phases and not so much Post-Launch 

  • Lack of process for setting and tracking of KPIs 

  • Too much manual work and templates 

  • Automation is needed but not yet in place 

  • Limited time for reaction and/or flexibility due to lack of forecasted lead times 

 

Partial Workflow Design

 

Proposed solutions FOR BUSINESS OBJECTIVE

(Drive Greater Success in Launching Our New Varieties in a Consistent Manner)

Lack of Standardization - User Pain Point

Create Commercial Plans - Solution

Enable Activity Planning in P&T for phase 5 and beyond 

Plans will be launch country-specific potentially resulting in multiple Activity Plans for each variety.  

Each activity plan includes Launch Strategy and other standard tasks/activities 

Look for process improvements throughout activity plan(s). Incorporate when able. 

Lack of Visibility - User Pain Point

Create Dashboards - Solution

Enable ‘Workflow’ dashboard to visualize tasks at the assignee's perspective to provide clarity of scope, timing, dependencies, and status  

Enable ‘Portfolio’ dashboard to visualize at portfolio, crop, MCT, PMC, country, task/activity 

End to End (phase 30 to Exit) for complete transparency and visibility 

Automation - Solution

Automated alerts to assignees for start of task/activity lead time 

Automated alerts for dropped varieties 

Automated alerts for at risk varieties 

Teams channel option collective task/activity  

Lack of Process - User Pain Points

Automation - Solution

Precommercial planning automates creation of country level plans by utilizing GSBT designations 

Map task/activity dependencies and automate proper lead times 

Use country/role/activity matrix to default to correct activity plan, lead times, person assignment  

Automated hard stops for both advancements and drops 

 

UI Design

UI DETAILS

Feedback

Business Response
"I think we might have been able to deliver an acceptable solution for LEx, but the solution provided to LEx having the benefit of working worth the Design Team is an exponentially better solution."

Validation Session Responses
"The best part of the design was the visual tracking and flow that are concentrated to the same picture [dashboard]."

"It is very visual, one can clearly see where they are and who needs to do what. It is convenient and makes life easier." 

"[The dashboard] is efficiency driven." 

 

OUTCOMES

The overall outcomes of the project include the design and creation of artifacts and documents such as executive summaries, interviews, user acceptance testing (UAT), feasibility studies, and other materials that accurately describe the problem, proposed solutions, and iterative processes. These artifacts are preserved for future use and reflection. The ultimate solution provided to the business goes beyond the capabilities of the project management and development teams alone, resulting in an exponentially better outcome. Instead of implementing temporary fixes, the project aims to deliver a holistic solution that truly addresses the challenges faced by the business, eliminating the need for additional workarounds. The solution is thoroughly vetted, tested, and proven to ensure its effectiveness. By deeply understanding the business needs and wants, the project aims to transform them into tangible tools that users can leverage to perform their work more easily, efficiently, and effectively, and ultimately realize the desired business value. To achieve comprehensive coverage, the project team has engaged with dozens of users in various capacities, allowing for a sense of ownership and ensuring a solution that caters to diverse user requirements.