Danone Digital Transformation
A SaaS solution to streamline design collaboration
Helped the Team save 20% costs boost 2X efficiency in yearly design
TL;DR
📲 Product
Industry: FMCG E-commerce
Phase: 0-to-1 Product
Type: Web App
Status: In Operation since 2021
📽️ Project
Duration: 10 months
Type: Industrial
Team:
Project Manager
Design Team (😃Me Leading)
Reseacher (😃Me)
🏋🏻♀️ My Contribution
User Interviews
Prototyping
Analysis
Pitch to C-suite
Design Vendors Management
🎯 Goals
Project Goals:
Establish a digital asset library from the ground up for cross-functional design tasks
Achieve a minimum of 10% annual cost savings in e-commerce design
Design Goals:
Promote design thinking, UX, and visual design within a traditionally sales-focused workplace.
Enhance efficiency in routine design tasks by at least 20%.
🎉 Impacts
By treating design vendors as end-users (a seemingly unconventional approach), I transformed the collaboration dynamic between vendors and Danone, significantly boosting e-vendors' enthusiasm and the quality of their design delivery.
Achieved a 20% reduction in annual e-commerce design costs.
Gained active involvement from other departments, increasing the project's impact.
Leveraging UX know-how, I survived 3 rounds of curveballs from C-suites and finally got their investment on my project.
Background
A Huge Business
Danone Nutricia's e-commerce division has experienced substantial growth over three years, encompassing over forty products and more than ten online channels.
Managing e-commerce design has become increasingly complex, involving new creations, numerous repetitive adaptations, and urgent projects.
Cross-Functional Collaborations
We Design Team plays a vital role in coordinating design tasks and managing design agencies.
Some agencies have established solid long-term partnerships with Danone, making it better to manage rather than replace them.
Inside Danone, for historical reasons, the collaborations between departments seem sort of siloed. Each team covers design tasks based on their own understanding respectively, regardless of a unified design guide from the MKT team.
E-commerce visual deliverables are highly on-brand and structured under certain norms and rules of different channels. For example, a landing page is typically comprised of repetitive, fixed elements like
banner;
headings;
shelves
…
Challenges
When a company without design DNA wanted to master design…
Urgent e-commerce campaigns posed challenges for design agencies:
Workload VS Quality
Design vendors cannot afford the heavy workloads due to trivial but repetitive tasks;
To meet the deadline, vendors deliver low-quality designs and the visuals ended up mediocre.
Communication
Each internal team translates the Design guidelines from MKT differently;
Non-design background made internal team's requests to design vendors vague or elusive.
Design Files Management
Internal teams failed to provide reusable files so that vendors had to redesign from scratch.
Solutions & Process
At first, I was given a moonshot idea…
How might we make a mobile app to enable Auto pic-editing so that vendors and danoners can finish repetitive design anywhere at any time? 😱😱😱
My gut told me it might be wrong from every single aspect. Instead, I insisted we knowing our users first before we have any preassumptions about the solution.
My Process & Solution
See the final pitch deck (financial data parts trimmed due to non-disclosure issues) with end-to-end reasoning sections below:
User research (interviews, questionnaires)
Analysis (Journey map, scenarios, competitive analysis, Kano analysis, Better/Worse analysis, nsights)
Userflow (Before & After)
Wireframing & fast prototyping
Pitching
Round one 🌚
Frustrated with our stale work environment, I pitched a fresh concept: a Dropbox-style UI kit library to streamline design with details and excel-demo, hoping to reuse some design materials to boost design efficiency, with bunches of technically detailed flowcharts, graphs and pics.
results
The C-suites’ response? A swift “no” peppered with criticisms:
They didn’t grasp the product's depth.
Felt I over-explained.
Didn’t catch the design lingo (e.g., wireframe, flowchart, even though they looked great design-wise).
Round Two 🌞
Taking Round One on the chin, I deep-dived into data, crafting in-depth prototypes to resonate with the C-suite:
I ditched abstract charts for vivid before-and-after scenarios to make the product’s impact more explicit;
Prioritized clear answers and only delved into the “why” when necessary. This encouraged me to finish rounds of interviews & surveys to more than 60 designers from at least 3 design vendors to secure a qual. and quant. data pool ready to be asked.
Crafted journey maps and personas – areas the C-suite often overlooks.
^^^ Before & After Demonstration of DAMS for business scenarios
^^^ Journey Map
^^^ Better & Worse Analysis as a back-up demonstration
^^^ Bofore & After work flow of DAMS to real business
Results
what i learned
Finding out my idea seemed unoriginal stung. But it was a miscommunication -different apartments talked about similar concepts with similar jargons, which sounded same to C-suites.
The questions were business-focused, a positive shift. So:
I deep-dived into financials to map out potential revenue and ROI;
Scoped out competitor products and their financial outcomes.
Synced with other departments to ensure we weren’t doubling efforts.
Round Three 🎉
Armed with refined content, I made my case:
This isn’t just trendy; it's essential for brand enhancement in the long run.
Test with a small team first for agile evolution before scaling to many teams.
It could be a project standing on giant’s soldier - there are ready-developed tools to make it happen efficiently.
Results
Victory! 🎉🎉🎉 The C-suite was on board.
Outcomes
Key features of the SaaS solution
Management - Assets
All digital assets have been meticulously organized and integrated into the Danone Digital Asset System (DAMS), simplifying tasks like uploading, downloading, commenting, and file requests.
This eradicated the chaos previously caused by fragmented design assets scattered across isolated repositories.
Management - Users
Info Sharing & Compliance
Drawing inspiration from blockchain technology, design filesare to be traceable, recording each step taken by cross-functional stakeholders.
This feature will allow users to monitor compliance statuses and perform preliminary self-checks before submitting assets for approval.
AI Tech
DAMS boasts AI capabilities, including autonomous image resizing and automated labeling of tags for each asset.
Additionally, it offers advanced search functionalities such as fuzzy searching, in-file content-based search, and color palette search, though some features are still in development due to limited data samples.
Impacts📌
I left Danone when this project is still in process. As of Aug. 2022, it is reported that Design team reached the goal of reducing yearly cost by 23% during the first 12 months, and it’s still under iteration with existing modules provided by design vendors.
Also, with content pertaining to design being deposited, other teams are contributing their content into this library.
Mission accomplished!
discussion❓
Is Smart Tech Necessary?
Sounds cutting-edge though (especially before the meta year of AI), smart technology within DAMS, including AI features, was explored, but full adoption faced challenges due to financial constraints and limited data. The real users were not into it, either.
In terms of bottom-up projects, my learning is MONEY MATTERS, insteading of merely showing flashy tech pieces to WOW the decision makers.
Expediency? Content-based search
The current search method is to keyword-based with a certain level of fuzzy search. With the ever-growing number of text-based content (e.g., testimonials, word of mouth from customers, memorandum of design workshops, text-based design guides, etc.), a content-based search method would be more effective.
My learning is to have a roadmap mindset rather than fixing every single pieces before launch, and better the products upon real feedback.
My Learning 💡💡
The Agile Approach
In a sales-focused culture like Danone's, an innovative project requires agility over detailed planning. Providing dynamic prototypes proved more efficient in a cross-functional environment, where departments readily contributed to the prototype.
Financial Hurdles
Financial modeling and ROI calculations were initial challenges. Negotiating and persuading the C-suite with different models were crucial in securing investment.
Empathy in Communication
Effective cross-functional communication was vital. Communicating concisely and using relatable language with C-suites, showing respect and thoroughness with cross-functional teams, and treating design agencies as customers all improved collaboration and understanding. This approach transformed the traditionally dominant-submissive relationship between parties A and B.
Prioritization Matters
Designers often favor flashy but impractical functions. Prioritizing practicality over extravagance is crucial for real business impact.
