Re-thinking the Enterprise Buying Experience

Creating a product vision that shifted procurement from channel-based workflows to intent-driven experiences

Role: Product Design Manager
Project: Product vision and strategy
Duration: 1 month (vision sprint)
Team: 2 product designers, 1 UX researcher

Overview

Employees purchasing everyday work supplies often encountered an enterprise buying experience that reflected internal organizational structures rather than their own goals.

Instead of simply telling the system what they needed, employees first had to determine which purchasing channel to use—each with different rules, search capabilities, interfaces, and workflows.

I identified an opportunity to rethink the experience from the ground up.

Rather than optimizing individual procurement channels, our team explored what it would look like to build a unified buying experience centered on user intent.

The Opportunity

The procurement organization had invested heavily in sophisticated purchasing tools for specialized buyers.

However, the vast majority of employees were occasional buyers purchasing relatively simple items like office supplies, accessories, or equipment.

These employees represented the highest volume of purchasing activity but received the least cohesive experience.

They faced several challenges:

• Search was fragmented across multiple systems.

• Users had to understand internal procurement processes before making a purchase.

• Similar products appeared in different channels with inconsistent experiences.

• Purchasing policies were difficult to discover.

• Switching between systems created unnecessary cognitive load.

The experience reflected how the organization was structured—not how employees naturally thought about buying.

My Role

I recognized the opportunity and built a small cross-functional team to explore it.

As Product Design Manager, I:

• Identified the product opportunity.

• Brought together design and research partners.

• Sponsored the vision sprint.

• Facilitated alignment across product, engineering, and procurement stakeholders.

• Coached the design team throughout exploration.

• Helped prepare strategic reviews for senior leadership.

• Built organizational support that ultimately led to roadmap prioritization.

This was less about delivering production-ready designs and more about influencing the long-term direction of an enterprise platform.

Our Approach

Instead of asking:

"Which procurement channel should we improve?"

We asked:

"How would employees buy something if the organizational complexity disappeared?"

That shift fundamentally changed the conversation.

Rather than designing around internal systems, we designed around user intent.

The Vision

The proposed experience followed the same mental model employees already understood from modern e-commerce.

Start with intent

Instead of asking employees which purchasing system to use, we asked a much simpler question:

"What do you need?"

Users could search globally or begin with common purchasing shortcuts.

Bring results together

Instead of forcing employees to search multiple catalogs independently, the experience surfaced relevant products from multiple approved sources in a single interface.

Results were grouped intelligently to reduce noise while highlighting preferred purchasing options.

Guide better decisions

Rather than treating policy as an afterthought, the experience surfaced purchasing guidance throughout the journey.

Employees could understand:

• preferred products

• purchasing restrictions

• shipping information

• product specifications

without leaving the buying flow.

Keep users in one experience

One of the largest friction points was navigating across multiple disconnected procurement systems.

The proposed experience maintained a consistent journey from discovery through purchase, reducing confusion while increasing confidence that employees were making compliant purchasing decisions.

Business Impact

Although this began as a design vision rather than an implementation project, the work generated strong organizational momentum.

Following the vision sprint, we:

• Established a shared long-term product direction.

• Earned support from cross-functional leadership.

• Secured executive buy-in.

• Influenced prioritization for the following year's product roadmap.

The project also reframed procurement conversations around customer experience instead of organizational boundaries—a perspective that continued influencing planning after the sprint concluded.

What I Learned

Enterprise products often inherit complexity from the organizations that build them.

The role of design leadership isn't simply improving individual workflows—it's helping organizations recognize when those workflows should disappear altogether.