#effort

Designing for busy people that have better things to do.

I need you to help me to help you… That’s what our experience looked like at Sastrify, a leading Saas management software that helps customers keep track of their subscriptions, renew on time, negotiate better deals and overall build a better tech stack. It relied on the diligence and effort of our customers, who had to make sure their data was updated often, provided repeatedly and actioned promptly in order for us to generate savings, negotiate deals and send timely reminders. Except providing all that data was no small feat and often felt a lot like effort that our customers really, REALLY did not want to do. And why should they? They have their actual day jobs to do and we exist to do this for them.

Context

Our customers are businesses that generally own between 100 and 200 SaaS tools. For each of these tools, they are required to manually upload the latest contract then review that contract and update subscription data with its value, licence types, plans, renewal dates, renewal conditions and other important contractual information. This takes time. A lot of time. Additionally, they need to manage their subscription renewals, ensure they are getting the right deal at the right time or cancelling before the cancellation period. They manage all of this in their subscription dashboard which can be extremely overwhelming and time-consuming to work with.

The Problem?

Only about 10% of subscriptions in our product had an attached contract. Customers simply did not see it worth their time to add this. This means additional back and forth every time a renegotiation or change is required.

Many subscriptions with or without a contract were missing renewal information. This means we were not able to inform our customers about an upcoming renewal early enough to be able to cancel or negotiate a better deal.

There was no link between the details customers added and other features like benchmarks and support requests, meaning every time a customer needed support or information on an existing subscription they had to add the details, all over again

Research

Ask the Users

We interviewed several users to understand their point of view. We wanted to understand what they are currently lacking in the platform, how they manage renewals, contracts and documents in general and what would motivate them to add more information into the platform. They confirmed that adding all of the information was extremely time consuming. We also learnt that they found subscription details overwhelming and confusing, often missed renewal dates and weren’t quite sure how to action upcoming renewals. By the time they found out what to do, they were often too close to renewal date to negotiate a good deal or find an alternative. They wished to keep track of all of their documents within Sastrify but it was simply complicated to do. They also asked for more prominent renewal reminders and clear direction on their options.

That's supposed to also flag us when a contract is about to expire to be like, hey, the contract is about to expire. Do you want to renew? Do not want to renew or, you know, set up if it's auto renewal, like we wanna make sure that we have enough time to either cancel or continue.

if I log into a customer account to review a Sastrify contract end date & notice period, for me how auto-renewal / renewal is portrayed is confusing and counter-intuitive.

Gather Internal Feedback

We met with sales, customer managers and onboarding team to understand how they currently see the problem and what they are hearing from customers. The main takeaway from this meeting was that in addition to contract value it was important to also show purchased licences, and licence price. This would enable customers to better understand cost increases or potential savings. We also learnt that customers rarely finish adding information to all of their contracts because it is very time consuming to do so.

Consult the Experts

We spoke with our procurement team to understand which contractual information is crucial for further negotiation and how their clients (our customers) wish to see the contract breakdown.

We learnt that:

It’s important to review contract dates and ensure shown contract is the latest document and highlight the length of the contract
If contract automatically renews, highlighting notice period is crucial
If there is a discount applied, this should be shown. Discounts can be specific to one item, one period or full contract.

Review Competitors

We reviewed our competitors to see what they offer and what could set us apart. Our area of focus was the level of information extracted from the contract.

Goals

We had a clear set of goals, supported by our research.

Efficiency

Automate the manual input of contract details to save time for our customers and ensure more subscriptions would be populated with accurate data

Data Accuracy

Enhance data accuracy and reduce risk of errors. Ensure our customer's data is reliable and always up to date.

Enhanced User Experience

connect some of the dots and ensure any data added to a subscription could be pulled into any other relevant processes, so that customers never have to go searching.

Transparency

provide a better breakdown of data so that our customers have a clear understanding of their financial commitments, how they coincide with their budget and where there is room for new requests.

To a user, this should look like this:

It was dead easy to add all the details, I simply needed to drop in my contract
I fully understand the lifecycle of my subscription.
I am confident that if I need to do something, this will be highlighted to me and I will know exactly what I want to do
I have a good understanding of costs, current spend and budgets
I can easily check if I am getting the best price, since all my information is connected to benchmarking.
If I need a different deal, the procurement team will be able to react on it fast, since all the required information is already at their disposal.

Concepts

Having a clear goal in mind, we set to work. I worked on designs while the engineering team did research on an OCR AI Tool

Design

Provide an experience of uploading, reviewing and approving extracted information
Enhance current details page with new information in a clear and digestible way
Introduce new relevant actions that help users do the right thing, at the right time
Improve information hierarchy so that it is always clear what needs to be done

Together we defined information required to extract and handle all scenarios (successful extract, unsuccessful extract, missing information, information that requires review)

Engineering

Evaluate OCR tools available and review accuracy, speed, language support and scalability
Ensure the selected OCR tool supports PDF format and can extract information accurately from contractual documents.
Verify the integration capabilities of the OCR tool with existing systems and platforms.

Technical Challenges

Contract models and offers are very different and follow no standard, which makes OCR readers difficult to accurately read for similarities to make it easy to recognise

After several rounds of testing we decided to replace our existing Nanonets solution with ChatGPT, which was 60% more accurate (Nanonets demonstrated only 30% accuracy whereas chatGPT was correct in 90% of cases)

Design Challenges

Account for scenarios where users did not have a contract at hand - this information should still be easy to review

I created a wizard that is quick and simple to interact with to help users add additional information

A lot of phases and scenarios throughout subscription lifecycle

I created a dynamic renewal modal that adapts based on user choices and subscription information

A lot of phases and scenarios throughout subscription lifecycle

I created a new component that combined a document viewing area and an edit drawer with several tabs.

Proposed Designs

Cleaner header with focus on ownership, department and cost center

Contract cost, spend and duration summary

Breakdown of contract line items including discounts and durations.

Dynamic colour coded renewal component that provides actions based on subscription status.

Edit, update and review information.

Renewal, cancellation and other important notices when they are relevant

Testing

I created a prototype of the solution to present to some of our customers.

Users loved

The new layout was intuitive
They liked the information that was shown
They liked renewal alerts and actions
They liked the breakdown of contract line items
The automatic extraction would make it more likely for them to upload contracts

Things to add

Sum of contract line items to be split into yearly chunks for multi year contracts
They wanted to have a view of all changes to the subscription and expected high accuracy.
They needed a way to highlight when a contract is still active but an agreement has been made to cancel it.

Iteration

I added a yearly filter which shows only items and values relevant for the selected year. This helped users budget for their financial years

I added a change log to contract information that indicates all changes, when they were done and who by. Users can revert these changes at any point, giving them full control of subscription updates.

I added a new "terminating" status which signifies subscription is still active but a decision has been made not to renew.

Implementation

Since this was a big piece of work that would drastically change how users interact with the product, we decided to release it in phases, monitor feedback and introduce changes and fixes as neccessary.

Phase 1: Introduce the new layout, renewal reminders, renewal actions and contractual data including yearly filters.

Phase 2: Add smart contract upload, automatic extraction, data review and change log

Phase 3: Add bulk contracts import, automatic extraction and data review where necessary

Phase 4: Use the same OCR tech to detect data from invoices and other documents and automatically add to relevant subscriptions. Highlight any changes.

Implementation Challenges

Complex logic and calculations made implementation difficult and time consuming.

I worked closely with the developers to find solutions that combined a smooth user experience and were feasible within our timeline.

A lot of complex changes to an already complex page. Developers were struggling to implement all of the logic correctly

I provided additional material with screenshots of existing product and required changes, as well as user flows supported all scenarios. I tested the work regularly to ensure everything worked correctly.

Unfortunately the challenges above extended our timeline. As a team, we made a decision to postpone the release which ultimately enabled us to deliver a well working and tested feature.

Prior to each release I worked alongside the product manager to provide our education team with a knowledge base article that explains the new functionalities. I also provided video walkthroughs, visuals and prototypes to support the material.