Project Dollar

Client: Momentium

The Challenge

Momentium is wanting to optimize the way the project teams and finance teams communicate with each other digitally and in particular, when it comes to their invoicing process. Currently, there is no one system in place to oversee projects and its associated costs which makes it time consuming for both teams.

Goal:

Improve capabilities
Automate manual processes
Reduce time for current process

Problem

Momentium needs an efficient way to generate project invoices so that they can accurately track their finances.

How did we get here?

Looking at the feedback from Momentium and their users, I went into which parts of the process were digital and manual. The main three factors I gathered from this feedback are:

Users take a lot of time getting information from one another and thus takes time completing tasks
Some sort of automation needs to occur since a lot of invoice creation and cost checking are manual
Due to the manual nature of processing projects and their costs, means that a lot of items are manually created which allows room for error

The entire project itself is quite large so breaking dow the project into three sections helped me recognise what needs to be worked on.

Project Creation
Milestone Reached
Project Billing + Payout

Task Analysis

For each section, I listed all the required tasks from initiation all the way to completion. This gives me a gauge into which tasks can be looked into to be automated.

Journey Map

For the general process of project initiation all the way to project payout, it was important to be able to depict what stages to focus on. The main issues are generally around billing and payout. Finance needs to be able to update their records however there is no direct way for them to know any additional costs associated with a project without explicitly being told by the projects team in person.

User Flows

For each section of the project, I created two user flows each to depict the processes for both projects and finance teams. The way I got this down was to map the ‘happiest’ path from the start to finish. We were able to iterate on these processes a number of times when presented to Momentium because although these are the easiest paths, the system itself is quite complex.

Screen Shot 2020-09-30 at 5.19.32 pm.png

Screen Shot 2020-09-30 at 5.18.02 pm.png

Screen Shot 2020-09-30 at 5.19.20 pm.png

Wireframing

Testing results:

Needed search bar
Project tab was redundant
No details of dates - crucial to track
Some title changes
Data sets required
Hard to see how these would transition

Screen Shot 2020-10-05 at 1.58.25 pm.png

Hi Fidelity Prototype

Both finance and project teams can view this screen of the project overview.
This allows for both teams to view project progress but most importantly, all costs associated.
Having this system in places means that teams no longer need to waste time going back and forth with one another on general project/finance info.
All items that require ID such as, invoice IDs, Milestone IDs, etc. are automatically generated. Once information is saved, finance teams are notified which allows for them to update their finance records.
- Since IDs are created through the system, this significantly reduces any human error

Screen Shot 2020-10-14 at 11.35.27 am.png

The next important thing to focus on was the invoicing
- The business followed the model of providing packages to their clients which is referred to as an ‘order’.
- This makes invoicing pretty simple since the system will process all existing orders associated with their respective projects.
- At the moment, all invoices follow a template which populates the invoice items from the order section. Any additional costs will be manually added as required.