Pay Today,

Grow Tomorrow

A case study on optimizing internal operations to streamline bill payments, enhancing efficiency and farmer engagement.

The project was designed to empower eFishery Financial Admins and Managers by enabling them to use the Order Management System (OMS), an internal Tool that streamlines vendor bill processing efficiently and clearly.

This solution ensures smooth financial operations while reducing risks, from creating, reviewing, and submitting bills within the same day to tracking payment progress.

Impact:

• Increased 70% of vendor bills completed on the same day.
• No bill takes longer than 3 days to process.
• 4x faster processing time for farmer payments.

My responsibilities included conducting in-depth research to understand User Job To Be Done, designing intuitive interactions, crafting compelling visual designs, and creating rapid prototypes for testing the design. All of them wrapped in 3 Weeks in 2024.

Context

eFishery is a startup leveraging cutting-edge technology to provide fisheries products as the primary source of animal protein, delivering nutrition and accessibility to people. It makes the role of a Farmer important in the eFishery cycle of the supply chain from upstream to downstream. Not only give support the cultivation, eFishery also absorbs farmers’ harvests to support the farmer’s business.

The Problem: Delayed Payments, Declining Trust

The need for fish stocks was in high demand, so eFishery needed to fulfill it by purchasing a lot of farmers and making sure the farmers kept supplying the eFishery demand.

However, in Q1–Q2 2024, eFishery struggled to fulfill the order due to the limited stock. This happened because some farmers did not want to sell their fish to eFishery, due to payment issues.

• The payment is longer than the average market: Farmers rely on timely payments to maintain cash flow and sustain their operations. However, eFishery’s payment process, which takes 3–10 days, is significantly longer than the market average.
• Delayed payments weaken trust and push farmers toward other buyers: Research shows that this delay puts financial strain on farmers, making it harder for them to reinvest in their businesses. As a result, frustration grows, trust erodes, and farmers begin seeking other buyers — jeopardizing long-term engagement with eFishery.

So, it’s the Urgent Need for Faster Farmer Payouts

It becomes matters both for eFishery and farmer:

• Farmer get ASAP capital to continue their cultivation cycle.
• Improve Farmer satisfaction and able to strengthen farmer’s engagement.

Things to think about

Before the project started, I thought of several keys that need to be taken into account as a guide to improving the payment process.

• Uncover the blocker: What is the blocker that makes the payment process delayed?
• Faster without losing the credibility: How we make sure the payment process is faster (become the same day) but still comply with eFishery regulations?
• Ensure users adopt the new way: How do we ensure the proposed business flow adopted by the user?

Key Stages

Project key stages

Beyond that crafting interaction screen by screen to strengthen eFishery’s Farmer Engagement

I interacted with users and did group discussions in several phases, both with the operational team and managers, and did desk research which then I poured into the Service Map to make it easier to understand the process and see the opportunity. As well as collaborate with the Product & Engineer Team to seek the possibilities approach.

Uncover the blocker

**“The Complex Process & Inaccurate Data Distribution

become the main issues that make the payment process need a loooooooooong time.”**

The Financial Admin was frustrated working to prepare the incomplete Bill data for the data source that didn’t meet the Requirement. They need to back and forth with the Field Team to collect & revisit the missing/invalid information.

Articulating the behavior into design guidance

After understanding the user's Job to Be Done and uncovering the process blockers. I can see the pattern & things that are important to be considered when we want to speed up the payment process These are the design principles guiding the exploration and crafting process as well as the key strategy to speed up the payment process.

• Ensure Data Reliability & Accuracy: (1) Assures users that the source of information is accurate at the time of access and complies with financial requirement (2) Ensure the information must be visible and up-to-date with the latest version. Tolerate delays to a certain degree for the sake of system performance, but it should be limited to a certain time.
• Verified Transaction: Only verified transactions can be processed. Make Sure the data has been reviewed and approved by the supervisor. Any process and revision should be recorded and able to be tracked.
• Efficient Process: Performing or functioning in the best possible manner with the least waste of time and effort Comply on the function of the engine than the cosmetic.

Design Strategies

(1) Revamp the business process, Making it simpler will trigger them to adopt the new flow & perform the job better

I see that the complexity of the business process is the root cause, instead of the tools. So I take time to discuss with the team to seek the best business process.

I realized that the proposal might not adopted by users easily. So, to make sure the changes were accepted, I used the Fogg Behavior Model — to map the user motivation and ability, to have visibility on what we should do to treat the users “hooked” by the changes.

Fog Behavioal Model: Financial Admin

The users are High Motivation with Low Ability The fear of losing farmer’s engagement makes Financial Admin willing to carry out a process that requires many steps that make them don’t have enough time to do the same-day payment. So, to make sure the user adopts the new process, I need to Facilitate them with the simpler payment process, such as optimizing one tool that covers all Financial admin jobs to be done.

Imagine, you are the Financial Admin. After eFishery purchased a fish from Farmer

• You will be informed which transaction that needs to be processed.
• You don’t need to stress about compiling the data — the system will do it for you. You just Create, Review, & Approve the payment in one tool.

After having the discussion we agreed that the new business process is supposed to optimize Order Management System (OMS) — Internal Tools to make sure the payment process is faster (become same day) and complies with eFishery regulations.

The platform should support the Financial Admin & Managers to:

• Create, review, and submit the Vendor Bill to Pay the Farmer within sthe ame day.
• Track the Vendor Bill movement progress. It’ll help them mitigate any finance issue as well as audit the payment process for internal use.

So, I proposed the new business process below after discussing with the Bussiness Team, Operation Team, and Product Manager.

(2) The data source should comply with eFishery regulations in the first place

To unlock the efficiency and perform or function in the best possible manner with the least waste of time and effort to accomplish the disbursement process, I proposed to improve the capability of the field team to compile and distribute the information that complies with the regulation.

I see that this is not one man's job, it’s an integrated system, so when from the beginning the data is wrong, then it will be snowball at the end.

The Design

eFishery already had a Design System called “One Fish” that provides UI Kit & interaction pattern that can speed up my design exploration without worrying about consistency and usability.

List of Vendor Bill

After the user login and opens the Menu “Pembayaran Vendor” users will see the list of Vendor Bills and All activity related to vendor bills will be centralized on this page with various schemes (submission, approval, revision) as well as enable to monitor the progress of each submission.

Vendor Bill Detail

After selecting and clicking Vendor Bill from the list before, the user will be directed to the Vendor Bill Detail page that functions as a form for VB Draft Submission and Approval as well as the place to get full information about the VB and the progress.

Heads up for Vendor Bill Activity Update

When the user already finished an activity on the vendor bill, To Improve the user’s awareness of the progress of each activity and have intense coordination and communication within the team as well as handy to monitor activity. Such as requests for approval, requests for revision,and disbursement progress.

The Impact: Positive results & have more to do

Even though the number hasn’t met our expectations, I see that it’s a positive signal to continue improving the project and is expected to trigger to increase in the Farmer engagement rate.

• Faster Lead time Vendor Bill Completion Rate An increase of 70% from the transaction can be created the same day & no more than 3 days for the rest.
• Improved Manpower Efficiency 4x Faster time to take to process the farmer bill.

Not getting tired, The team regularly evaluates the matrix not only as a number that must be achieved but also as a tool to evaluate the process. By that, we can continue to improve the service provided by eFishery to Vendors.

Not just positive numbers but positive service impact.

What I’ve learned

• When streamlining something, we sometimes want to quickly accelerate the process, but the reality is that it can only happen when the data is accurate. So, accurate data is crucial as a foundation when we want to speed up the process.
• Matrix is not only a Number, but also a window to learn the process.

Testimonies

“Really Good job for the design exploration + intuitive design. Thanks a lot for the collaboration” — Product Manager

“Mantab, more concise and not too many steps” — Financial Admin

Credit

Thank you to everyone that’s involved in this project for being wonderful to work with and also thank you to the ones who gave us helpful + insightful feedback.

Design: Internal Transaction Design Team (Alanuari Haryu, Erika Crisani, Bimo Viandito)

Product Manager: Muhammad Ocky

Engineers: OMS Engginer Team

Operation Teams, Bussiness Team, Finance Team