The Trade Desk
The Trade Desk
Ninjacart'23 - A Communication based commerce platform with built-in ERP capabilities
CONTENTS
My Role
My Role
Sole Designer - Strategy, Research, Interaction
Design, Visual Design, Prototyping
Timeline
Timeline
2 Months, Sunsets
Overview
Overview
The TradeDesk is a full fledged trade and ERP
platform that is built to seamlessly integrate and
manage the entire trade business of Ninjacart.
I owned and led the entire design strategy of
TradeDesk which is now acting as the back
engine Ninjacart's entire trade business.
The product has been highly praised by the
customers and stake holders for its efficiency
since the time of its launch and is one the most
successful projects in the company.
HIGHLIGHTS
A whole new way of handling business — a communication
based commerce system handling every touch points
track and manage your entire lead inventory in one place
a central chat based trade system with custom built in functionalities
built in with powerful ERP capabilities
manage everything trade at one place with efficient task module
A new central trade network.
CONTEXT
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Timeline
Getting into the details of the different flows
RESEARCH SUMMARY
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Timeline
An open scalable system that can be plugged
into any usecase
THE PHILOSOPHY
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Timeline
Breaking the trade and building it again
THE MODULE APPROACH
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Timeline
Getting in the supplies and demand
MODULE 1 - THE PRE TRADE
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Timeline
The first piece of any trade is having a supply and demand. We needed to create a system to capture
the supply and demand that are being shared by the customers. But wait, where do these customers
share these supplies and demands?
As discovered before, WhatsApp is being used as the primary source for sharing these supplies and
demands and the reason being it's very easy and convenient to use. After much user research and
understanding, we started off by creating a chat system with custom built in functionalities that lets
a user share their supplies and demands.
THE PROBLEM SPACE
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Timeline
The process inefficiencies were holding back
the business scalabilty.
In Q2 of 2023, Ninja Global - The Global business vertical of Ninjacart
decided to build a single trade system that could seamlessly handle every
single touchpoint of a trade starting from generating a lead to closing the
deal and payments. This was a strategic move made by the company
keeping in mind the sheer scale and efficiency the product could bring in,
if built properly.
The initial brief was given to me by the GPM stating that the company wants
to build and launch the TradeDesk swiftly and efficiently. This was followed
by few subsequent meetings with the Co-Founders and Business Heads,
stating the need and the potential impact of the product on the business.
Being the sole designer, I knew the responsibilities and the impact my
designs could bring into the business if executed with precision. So then
the fun and sleepless nights began.
The Trade Desk .
Messed up WhatsApp groups and Excel sheets tracking the trades
Familiarity over novelty - A Whatsapp like design for easier adaptability
Flow, Design and Product discussion
A web responsive design as well for the internal team
The supply details page
share and track the supplies with just a few clicks
Defining status to individual supplies
Makes payments with ease
In - app payments
We have an end to end in app payment module that can be used to make the payments
for the trades and loans the user might have
Buyer registering the payments
Seller accepting/rejecting the payments
Outside payments
There are a few scenarios like incase of imports, exports and few payments whose value
are too high, the uses can also make a payment through an external process and make
an entry in-app
Giving consent to start the trade
Live trade informations
Order acceptance by customers
Maintained in the internal system
Platform Model Trade
Bill to Ship to Model Trade
So, how's the trade happening now?
— Buyer
— Ninjacart
— Seller
Almost 85% of the communication between Buyers-Sellers and Ninjacart
happens through unorganized WhatsApp groups. Almost every part of a
trade right from demand and supply collection, matching a buyer and seller,
negotiation, trade tracking and every other part of the trade happens via
unorganized WhatsApp groups.
Buyer | Seller | Ninjacart
The internal teams of Ninjacart mostly uses Excel to manage and
track all their businesses, dues, payments and everything else. They
sometimes use Zoho Books to make use of its ERP capabilities for
keeping a track and generating bills.
Ninjacart Internal
Current systems in use for the trade
Aligning with a vision of enabling trades, there comes in
3 main personas : Buyer | Seller | Broker(Ninjacart)
Buyer | Seller: With just the value of a trade, a customer does
with Ninjacart, having a proper and efficient way to handle and
manage those trades became crucial for the customers as they
too had to use their own sheets to track the trade.
Ninjacart: With the sheer volume of trades happening in the
organization, having a central network turned out to be
crucial.
Before TradeDesk, the organization was handling the entire business
manually through WhatsApp groups, Excel, Spreadsheets, etc.
This was an extremely inefficient way of handling the business because a
single trade has multiple touchpoints and different products were used for
each of these touchpoints making the flow extremely complicated for the
team to work on and scale.
This was negatively impacting the customer experience as there is no
single system for the trades that they were doing with Ninjacart and has to
track things manually. This snowballed into other effects on business by
losing out on trades, money, etc., by missing out on important dates, details and
much more due to the inefficiency of the flow.
So what was happening?
Breaking down the trade into stages and solving for each single part helps
building an independent and robust system.
This exercise was extremely crucial because we are building a full fledged
0 to 1 product that is set to handle every touchpoints of a trade. Getting into the
details of each point is a no brainer in such projects.
Solving for each part
What it leads to — the North
Star Metrics:
Design Principles
What are the users feeling?
Having a familiar system would really help for easier adaption and usage
of the system which would also very important for scalability.
Having a centralized approach involving touchpoints would be of a great
impact for all the parties involved in a trade.
The use of a non standard methods of comms and trades impacts the
efficiency of the trade which directly reflects in the revenue and profit
made by the customers and stakeholders involved in the trade.
Managing the supplies
The supply gets captured via the chat system and is converted into a new supply in the system. The UI is custom
built to let the users see the necessary info about the available supplies
Accepting a supply and starting a trade
Once a particular supply has been shown interest by a buyer, the negotiations are done
and the supply's status is updated.
Seamless role based Doc collections
The completion of a trade is a very complex process. Depending upon multiple factors, different types
of documents and details and bills will be required before the completion. It is no straight forward
process, so after multiple iterations and AB testings, we narrowed it down to the current approach.
The Buyer SIde
Sharing the supplies - The created supply is then shared with
potential buyers by the Ninjacart agent who sees these supplies
on their mobile app and responds to them.
The Trade Chat
Not your normal WhatsApp — Once the trade has been confirmed,
all the stakeholders are added into a chat interface which acts as
the source place where all the trade related activities are tracked.
The chat is built in with custom features for each personas present
and is used to properly manage and track everything related to the
particular trade.
Buyer / Seller
Helping the user remember — As one of the main part of any
trade is the multiple information and documents passing, the UI
is designed in a way to constantly make the user remember about
the task at hand and to easily do it
Ninjacart Agent
Assign tasks to individual parties — The Agent has the ability
to ask for certain documents or informations in the form of
tasks to specific members in the chat.
This helps everyone involved in the trade a proper tag of the
documents as each task is defined with a tag
The Sales and Purchase Orders
As discussed earlier there are 2 potential flows that might happen in a trade with Ninjacart. One might
be a Platform trade and one might be a B2S2 trade.
In case of a Platform trade, once the trade has been accepted a Purchase Order is auto generated with
all the necessary details and all the parties involved has to just go through it and accept the document.
In the case of an B2S2 trade, a Purchase order is created between the seller and Ninjacart and a Sales
Order has been created between between Ninjacart and the buyer.
The Trade Chat — Constant communication
cause a lot is at stake
MODULE 2 - THE TRADE
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Timeline
Typically, once the SOs and POs are accepted, the trade starts. A typical trade can last anytime
between 7 days to 3 months depending upon the type. The stakeholders are constantly involved
in the trade during these times by staying in touch through mails, WhatsApps, calls and so on.
Everyone involved in the trade wants to know the updates happening in the trade because a lot
is at stake during every single trade.
Settling up the cashes
MODULE 3 - THE POST TRADE
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Timeline
After the arrival of the shipment at the buyers place the logistics part of the trade is done. Now
it all comes down to the payments and reconciliations. This is the part where the team was
primarily using the Zoho Books for.
Bringing it into our own system is a big move as it allows for a eco system creation while being able
to use The Trade Desk for everything business in Ninjacart. This also allows for the system to be
connected with the Trade Desk chat through which the Bills, Invoices, Credit and Debit notes can
be managed seamlessly.
It has been a lot till now,
how about splitting the works?
THE DASHBOARD
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Timeline
As discussed there are a lot of personas involved in completing a trade and that involves a lot
of teams inside Ninjacart as well. Each team inside the organization has a separate task to do
and it gets confusing if a team member has to navigate around and find his responsibility. To
solve that, we introduced a Task Dashboard, that shows in a clean way the tasks assigned for
a particular individual based on roles
Entire business of Ninjacart has now
shifted to The Trade Desk
THE IMPACT
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Timeline
The TradeDesk went live with its first version on September 23'. The Pilot was tested by the Global team and
after multiple iterations and enhancements, as of July 24', the entire business of Ninjacart has moved to the
TradeDesk dropping the use of old methods and the product is now acting as the backengine of
Ninjacart's business.
Dealing with the Credits and Debits
The team now has to deal with some credit and debit notes due to some quality mismatch, late delivery,
different products and much more. This usually happens in most trades which is of volume and the team has
to handle the payments and give out credit and debit notes.
The system has been designed to handle out these tasks as well making it a full fledged ERP which is now
handling trades worth crores of volumes
track, manage and apply credits
manage your team and your own tasks all at one place
a full fledged section to onboard, track and maintain the entire customer data
something to look and smile at
Back
Sample email thread inside Tasks
Email Integration - The task system has also been integrated
with the official Gmail id of the business team, thereby letting
all the users to entirely handle the business without even
having to use the mail.
This also allows for better monitoring and performance
enhancements which impacts the customer experience as
well as the business performance
The Businesses 360°
The Organization deals with multiple businesses and as said earlier the complete data was being
tracked by Excel sheets. We decided to design a full fledged section that acts as a single source to
track all the business and their data with Ninjacart
Comparing it with —
the North start principles :
I gained a lot …
THE RETROSPECTIVE
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Timeline
I gained the first hand experience of collaborating and working with talented people from around the
country in the shape of PMs, Engineering Managers, Devs, Business and Sales folks.
I gained the first hand experience of designing for multiple personas starting from foreign exporters
to our home grown traders, farmers and importers.
I gained the first hand experience of working in a full fledged trade and ERP platform.
This is one of the first projects i took up after joining the company and being able to design for the
business at scale was a great experience personally. Being the sole designer of the product, I had
a lot of responsibilities as well as fun.
