Virtual Card Module for AP Automation Software
Looking to expand the capabilities of the AP automation platform and continue to reach our goal of creating a singular source of truth for company spend, Accrualify created the Corporate Card module.
The goal of this project was to allow users to connect their virtual card accounts to the Accrualify platform in order to take advantage of existing tools and processes to better manage credit card spending. Key requirements included the ability to generate a virtual card for employees directly from approved purchase order, pay vendors and supplier via virtual cards directly from approved invoices, automatically code GL accounts to incoming transactions and push to the customer's ERP system, and reconcile statement data to then push to an ERP system as well.
I managed this project fully from end-to-end, conducting the research, customer interviews, prototyping, design, user testing, and project management through the development stage.
Research and Discovery
Before starting anything, I and my discovery team interviewed existing customers about their current payment policies, as well as what they saw as the future of payments.
After the customer interviews, I began mapping the user journey. We covered both the technical and emotional workflow of existing journies.
Here, we made order of the emotional and technical impacts of daily payment tasks for our customers.
Grouping statements and sentients from the interviews into common themes.
Converting the common themes into "How might we..." statements to put customer/user pain points in context to our platform.
Define Core Users
To help define who we were designing this product for and why, I developed user personas based on customer and user interviews, ethnographic research, and short surveys sent to likely prospects.
Defining Requirements
After creating a better understanding of who are target users were and creating a better understanding about their needs, wants, and expectations around a virtual card management product, I worked with the CTO and CEO directly to create the official requirements document.
Design Iteration
After creating an approved requirements document, I began creating low-fidelity wireframes to optimize the user journey through our application for virtual card related functions.
After testing the low-fidelity wireframes with internal stakeholders, I consolidated feedback. I then applied this feedback to high-fidelity wireframes to test internally once more.
Usability Testing
After an additional round of testing and feedback from internal stakeholders, I made changes to the high-fidelity wireframes. From there, I then developed the user test plan for testing the wireframes with prospective customer users.
I then conducted the user tests in a dedicated user testing facility with a group of observers taking notes behind a two-way mirror.
Design and Prototype
After consolidating feedback from the user testing sessions, changes were made to the task flows in the wireframes. From there, I then applied the Accrualify UI design system to skin the wireframes.
Lastly, once all UI screens were designed, I loaded them into InVision for rapid prototyping and additional testing with internal stakeholders and external users.
