Prachi Bakshi

Order Management

Empowering teams with clearer trade visibility and control.

AbsoluteUI/UX Designer2022

An order management system for trade operations. It brings trade updates, conversations and tasks into one place.

The Order Management home screen: a greeting, five summary tiles, and panels for tasks and trades.
The OMS home screen.
Role
UI/UX Designer. I led the project.
Year
2022
Team
Team of 2: me and a senior designer, who gave critique and feedback on the designs.
Built for
Supply Chain · Sales · Finance
First MVP
8 weeks

The problem

It's Friday afternoon.

A supply chain manager gets urgent instructions: dispatch a large shipment to Vietnam by Monday.

But details are missing, and the documents are scattered across email chains and chat apps. He spends hours on calls, chasing updates and approvals.

Without reliable status updates, teams face delays, miscommunication and stress.

Who it affects

One missing status update

  • Supply Chain“I need to dispatch tomorrow, but I can't get a status update.”
  • Sales“Clients keep asking for delivery dates. I have nothing concrete to tell them.”
  • Finance“Without status info, I can't finalise the budget and payments on time.”
Three roles from the project's scenario.

A missing update doesn't stay in one department.

Sales can't promise, finance can't budget, and operations stalls. The whole team waits.

The design question

How might we

…create a solution that enhances transparency, streamlines the trade process, and fosters collaboration across teams?

What we were designing for

Three goals. Each one became a part of the product.

  • Transparency

    At-a-glance visibility into trade activity.

    Status

  • Efficiency

    Communication inside the trade workflow.

    Chat

  • Reliability

    A consistent, task-based trade process.

    Timeline

Status

A quick overview of trade activity, so teams stay aligned and can act in time.

Status

The Status dashboard with summary tiles, a task list, ongoing trades, frequently contacted people and a history of recent actions.
  1. 01A snapshot of tasks and trades before opening anything.
  2. 02Ongoing trades, each with its stage and status.
  3. 03Tasks to act on now, without waiting.
  4. 04The people you message most.
  5. 05A history of what you've already done.
The trades panel on the Status dashboard.

Stage and status sit side by side, so a delayed trade stands out.

The dashboard gives teams a quick view of what is happening and where action is needed.

Chat

Trade-related discussions, with both group and private messaging.

Chat

A trade open on its Chat tab, with the list of trades on the left and the conversation on the right.
  1. 01Chat sits inside the trade, beside its timeline and documents.
  2. 02Every trade has its own conversation.
  3. 03Requests addressed to you are marked “For you”.
  4. 04Teams can be mentioned directly.
  5. 05Documents open straight from the message.
The message composer, with a control that reads “Everyone can see”.
  1. 01Choose who can see a message before sending it.
The message composer.
Trade conversations stay with the trade, instead of being scattered across email and chat apps.

Timeline

A unified task timeline, so everyone follows a consistent trade flow.

Timeline

A trade open on its Timeline tab: a list of tasks, each with a responsible person, a date and an action.
  1. 01Approvals are recorded on the task.
  2. 02Upcoming tasks are visible, but muted.
  3. 03Every task has an owner and a due date.
  4. 04The next action sits on the task.
A single task, “Upload phyto doc”, with its owner, due date and an Upload link.
  1. 01Owner, due date and action on one line.
One task, up close.
All stakeholders know what's next.

What changed

OMS helped scale operations.

BeforeAfter
Trades executed450+1000+
Trade value$600M$1700M
Countries1218
Commodities130160
Reported operational scale before and after the OMS.

What it took

8 weeks
to develop the first MVP
40
hours of feedback sessions
20+
one-on-one sessions with archetype users
2
product design variations
The Figma workspace with three labelled bands: Desktop with the Home and Trades chat frames, Tablet with the RFQ panel, and Mobile with the chat and RFQ frames.
The same trade on desktop, tablet and mobile, side by side in the Figma workspace.
  • A zoomed-out view of the Figma file for the first design variation, with dozens of screens laid out in rows.

    Variation one

  • A zoomed-out view of the Figma file for the second design variation, with flows labelled RFQ, PI/PO, document bundle and GRN.

    Variation two

The working files, zoomed out. Every row is a flow: RFQ, approvals, invoices, document uploads.
  • Key challengesGetting everyone aligned on trade processes.
  • Designing mobile-friendly solutions for field users.
  • Unifying diverse stakeholders on one platform.

Reflection

The hardest part wasn't adding more information, it was making the right information visible at the right moment.

Working on OMS made me think less about individual screens and more about how status, communication and tasks come together across a trade. That shift shaped how I approached the product.