I was the first product designer hired by GPS Capital Markets and had the immediate task of modernizing their web application across two platforms (one customer facing and an internal use application). I also designed new product offerings and acted as product manager in most cases. One particular project that helped the business drastically was the updating of Contract Batch Uploads.
Project overview
-Contract batch upload was one of the first projects I was tasked with understanding and re-designing. It is part of the booking offering and helps to alleviate tedious individual booking processes.
-A “batch” consists of multiple currency pairs > contracts > Instructions within a file uploaded from the client
Roles:
-My Role: Lead on research and design.
-Team Roles: Dev manager with domain knowledge, account execs with clients who use/have used the feature, developers who are tasked with the project.
The old
As we spoke to several traders and users, we found the following themes:
-The all-or-nothing system is frustrating. If Peter Payroll uploads a 100+ record spreadsheet and 5 items have errors, the entire batch is rejected. User would need to correct issues in their spreadsheet and start the process over.
-No ability to edit said bad records once uploaded. Nor ability to edit items after the fact. User would have to review each item for the error, fix, then re-upload.
-(Findings after testing) No ability to hold a batch from accidental approvals. I.e.. Peter uploads a batch and goes to lunch. Pam comes along and sees a pending batch and approves it before it was ready.
In with the new...
I sat out to create a new offering that would surprise and delight our users with:
-The ability to proceed with all green-lit records vs total rejection and restarting
-The ability to view the bad records and edit them to get them submitted
-Hold feature to stop unwanted bookings before the batch is ready
For designs, I re-thought the whole layout:
-Simple and to the point
-Clear choice to manually create or to upload a pre-made batch
-Easy to find template for new users to the system
A redesigned submit batch page allowed for all correct "green-lit" files to be processed, ability to view any failed records and correct them within the experience and see clearly defined information. These changes solved for the users most pressing issues.
I also took the experience further with the ability to modify batches before they were finalized, offering more flexibility to the user. This opened up the
-ability to edit settlement, value date and purpose of payment
-ability to place a hold on the batch in the event more changes need to be made before secondary approvals.
These two features drastically increased usage of the tool and user confidence in processing large amounts of financial contracts in one go.
This process was complex, challenging and quite the process given I had to take on all research, design, validation and technical discussions by myself. It certainly helped me learn quickly and gain new appreciation for a strong product manager. I also learned that traders, CPAs and financial professionals dealing with complex FTX trades DO NOT like things changed much and love their spreadsheet/bank statement look.