Streamlining operations for Inventory Management
What products to buy, how much to buy, where to place them etc.,
are some of the crucial decisions required in running a large eCommerce business. This is inventory planning in it’s essence.
For the scale at which Flipkart operates (to the tune of $1M+), inventory planning needs to be systematised. It wasn’t!
" My work helped Operation teams at Flipkart to efficiently process tens of thousands of dollars of inventory in less time.
Duration
April - June, 2018
Responsibilities
User resarch, Interaction Design, Usability Testing
Impact
Improvements in Operational Efficiency and product NPS
Streamlining operations for Inventory Management
What products to buy, how much to buy, where to place them etc.,
are some of the crucial decisions required in running a large eCommerce business. This is inventory planning in it’s essence.
For the scale at which Flipkart operates (to the tune of $1M+), inventory planning needs to be systematised. It wasn’t!
" My work helped Operation teams at Flipkart to efficiently process tens of thousands of dollars of inventory in less time.
Duration
April - June, 2018
Responsibilities
User resarch, Interaction Design, Usability Testing
Impact
Improvements in Operational Efficiency and product NPS
Streamlining operations for Inventory Management
What products to buy, how much to buy, where to place them etc.,
are some of the crucial decisions required in running a large eCommerce business. This is inventory planning in it’s essence.
For the scale at which Flipkart operates (to the tune of $1M+), inventory planning needs to be systematised. It wasn’t!
" My work helped Operation teams at Flipkart to efficiently process tens of thousands of dollars of inventory in less time.
Duration
April - June, 2018
Responsibilities
User resarch, Interaction Design, Usability Testing
Impact
Improvements in Operational Efficiency and product NPS
Background context
Inventory Planner is a system that is used by multiple stakeholders to raise purchase orders, to return inventory and to set policies in terms of how the replenishment of goods should happen. This is critical for the effective functioning of an ecommerce business.
Essentially, what to buy, how much to buy and where to place these goods is decided by the Inventory Planning system.
The product team approached the design team with the following brief: “Though there is a system in place, not many users are using it fully. We think it is because of the system’s usability issues and we want you to fix it.” However, later during the course of research, I realised that there are more problems lurking within.
My Role
I was the lead designer on the project. My manager was a part of the user research sessions, initially. I was also responsible for redesigning the IA, Interaction flows and Visual Design.
Background context
Inventory Planner is a system that is used by multiple stakeholders to raise purchase orders, to return inventory and to set policies in terms of how the replenishment of goods should happen. This is critical for the effective functioning of an ecommerce business.
Essentially, what to buy, how much to buy and where to place these goods is decided by the Inventory Planning system.
The product team approached the design team with the following brief: “Though there is a system in place, not many users are using it fully. We think it is because of the system’s usability issues and we want you to fix it.” However, later during the course of research, I realised that there are more problems lurking within.
My Role
I was the lead designer on the project. My manager was a part of the user research sessions, initially. I was also responsible for redesigning the IA, Interaction flows and Visual Design.
The old Inventory Planner tool
The old Inventory Planner tool
Understanding the Complexity
Understanding the Complexity
Who are our Users?
Rather, we should say who are the people part of the Inventory Planning process.
Primary Users
Inventory Planners — responsible for the placement of the procured inventory and maintaining the in-stock quantity in each of the Flipkart warehouses across India.
Key Account Managers — They decide on what products to procure. Responsible for business development with Vendors.
Category Operations — responsible for execution of operations to help Flipkart procure goods from Vendors.
Secondary Users
Business Finance — responsible for certain approvals for large monetary orders.
Planning Directors — review warehouse capacity, in-stock and other approvals.
Immersing in User Research
Activity
15 one-on-one User Interviews with primary & secondary users.
My Allies 🧑🏽🚀
My manager - His presence in the initial interviews helped me gain confidence as I was new to the system.
Product Managers helped in reaching out to users of the platform and introduced us to them.
Obstacles ⚔️
I was struggling to understand what our users were saying.
Too much jargon to process
Supply-chain is a very complex domain.
I was doubting myself if I I was slow in understanding!
How did I overcome? 💪🏽
Persistently listening to the audio recordings again & again. Long traffic jams in Bengaluru helped ;)
Ruthlessly simplified everything that was said into simple language.
Who are our Users?
Rather, we should say who are the people part of the Inventory Planning process.
Primary Users
Inventory Planners — responsible for the placement of the procured inventory and maintaining the in-stock quantity in each of the Flipkart warehouses across India.
Key Account Managers — They decide on what products to procure. Responsible for business development with Vendors.
Category Operations — responsible for execution of operations to help Flipkart procure goods from Vendors.
Secondary Users
Business Finance — responsible for certain approvals for large monetary orders.
Planning Directors — review warehouse capacity, in-stock and other approvals.
Immersing in User Research
Activity
15 one-on-one User Interviews with primary & secondary users.
My Allies 🧑🏽🚀
My manager - His presence in the initial interviews helped me gain confidence as I was new to the system.
Product Managers helped in reaching out to users of the platform and introduced us to them.
Obstacles ⚔️
I was struggling to understand what our users were saying.
Too much jargon to process
Supply-chain is a very complex domain.
I was doubting myself if I I was slow in understanding!
How did I overcome? 💪🏽
Persistently listening to the audio recordings again & again. Long traffic jams in Bengaluru helped ;)
Ruthlessly simplified everything that was said into simple language.
Why weren't people using the existing system?
Why weren't people using the existing system?
Tagging research using Trello boards
Research synthesis
Synthesizing the research data gave rise to the following pain-points.
Lack of trust in the system due to incorrect data.
No view of the system status reg. when the data is generated and how long is it valid.
Lot of time spent in resolving errors that are ambiguous.
Their workflow hasn’t really changed due to the product.
Tagging research using Trello boards
Research synthesis
Synthesizing the research data gave rise to the following pain-points.
Lack of trust in the system due to incorrect data.
No view of the system status reg. when the data is generated and how long is it valid.
Lot of time spent in resolving errors that are ambiguous.
Their workflow hasn’t really changed due to the product.
Key Observations
People relied on excel-based workflow because of their old habits.
“I download the data from the product, open it in Excel and verify.”
“I start my day by downloading the .xls file and look at the in-stock.”
“It becomes too cumbersome to manage our portfolio of products on .xls”.
“I like Excel because it is great in slicing & dicing the data”
“The GUI is an enforcement to us than improving our workflow”!
Key Observations
People relied on excel-based workflow because of their old habits.
“I download the data from the product, open it in Excel and verify.”
“I start my day by downloading the .xls file and look at the in-stock.”
“It becomes too cumbersome to manage our portfolio of products on .xls”.
“I like Excel because it is great in slicing & dicing the data”
“The GUI is an enforcement to us than improving our workflow”!
Design
Design
Understanding the pain-points of the users along with their preferences helped me frame the following design principles in order for the platform to be trusted and adopted.
Understanding the pain-points of the users along with their preferences helped me frame the following design principles in order for the platform to be trusted and adopted.
Translating Design principles to features in the UI.
Translating Design principles to features in the UI.
The revamped UI for Inventory Planner
The revamped UI for Inventory Planner
Co-creating with users
Co-creating with users
I did a co-creation activity by inviting a few users we had spoken to, during user research.
I did a co-creation activity by inviting a few users we had spoken to, during user research.
I learnt about a key moment in the user journey..
“Every week we have a review meeting with our Directors. We rely on a lot of excel sheets to pull data to present in this meeting, in terms of how each of our portfolios are doing. If the system could present this data for us, it will save us a lot of pain."
I have arrived at the below dashboard design based on the learnings from the co-creation exercise.
I learnt about a key moment in the user journey..
“Every week we have a review meeting with our Directors. We rely on a lot of excel sheets to pull data to present in this meeting, in terms of how each of our portfolios are doing. If the system could present this data for us, it will save us a lot of pain."
I have arrived at the below dashboard design based on the learnings from the co-creation exercise.
With regular check-ins with my stakeholders, I have socialised the point-of-view of design and painted the picture of how the system should evolve.
I’ve created designs for all the screens of Inventory Planner and Returns planner systems. The dashboard view has not been implemented yet, because of the lack of backend data. Backend engineering is working to incorporate all these signals present on the dashboard so that the UI could render it.
With regular check-ins with my stakeholders, I have socialised the point-of-view of design and painted the picture of how the system should evolve.
I’ve created designs for all the screens of Inventory Planner and Returns planner systems. The dashboard view has not been implemented yet, because of the lack of backend data. Backend engineering is working to incorporate all these signals present on the dashboard so that the UI could render it.
Impact
Impact
Operational efficiency improved from 2.25 days to 1.37 days. 34 point increase in NPS. New score at 86.
The success of this project brought immense value for design in the Org.
By involving all our users in research, co-creation exercises and having constant sync-ups with them about the progress - we were able to estsablish a great level of trust and understanding with the design and the product team.
By leading with the vision of how the Inventory system could evolve to deliver business outcomes, I was able to influence and establish the power of design and what it could bring to the table.
Learnings for the future
Looking back, I wish I socialised the user research findings even more. Having a repository of knowledge documented in a Trello board and going back to it is invaluable for a product team. (Modern tools like Dovetail solve for this really well.)
I also learnt that it is okay to not understand everything during a user research interview. It is important to be present and listen.
Operational efficiency improved from 2.25 days to 1.37 days. 34 point increase in NPS. New score at 86.
The success of this project brought immense value for design in the Org.
By involving all our users in research, co-creation exercises and having constant sync-ups with them about the progress - we were able to estsablish a great level of trust and understanding with the design and the product team.
By leading with the vision of how the Inventory system could evolve to deliver business outcomes, I was able to influence and establish the power of design and what it could bring to the table.
Learnings for the future
Looking back, I wish I socialised the user research findings even more. Having a repository of knowledge documented in a Trello board and going back to it is invaluable for a product team. (Modern tools like Dovetail solve for this really well.)
I also learnt that it is okay to not understand everything during a user research interview. It is important to be present and listen.
Other case studies
© VINAY CHILUKURI,
2025
Illustrations from Lukaszadam, Undraw.co
© VINAY CHILUKURI,
2025
Illustrations from Lukaszadam, Undraw.co
© VINAY CHILUKURI,
2025
This case study is not optimised for viewing on a smaller viewport!
Please visit from a desktop browser.
This case study is not optimised for viewing on a smaller viewport!
Please visit from a desktop browser.