IBM Emptoris Suite

A suite of six products that structure stronger, more profitable contracts, streamline the contracting process, and improve compliance

My role + Team

During my time at IBM Commerce, I led the visual design effort for IBM Emptoris. I worked closely with team members and leads from development, design research, and user experience design, using IBM Design Language guidelines and ensuring everything was WCAG compliant and scalable for translation into 20+ languages. Alongside our design researcher, I met with customers from Fortune 500 companies – each company managing an average of 100,000+ active contracts. Our design and development teams were global, with team members across cities in Canada, India, Czech Republic, Germany, and the United States.

ABOUT IBM EMPTORIS

IBM Emptoris is a leading provider of strategic supply, category spend, and contract management solutions. The suite of six products work separately or together to streamline workflows of organizations to manage the full lifecycle of a contract and beyond.

The Challenge

The most challenging part about redesigning IBM Emptoris was the fact that the product suite was compiled of six products that were acquired by IBM at different times. The code wasn't unified. The design was...well, there wasn't really any design going on at all. This release for the IBM Emptoris suite of products was focused on a redesign of Contract Management, Sourcing, and Supplier Lifecycle Management. The suite made it very difficult for users to complete their daily tasks quickly and efficiently, and this was mainly due to the fact that the user interface and interaction patterns had not been considered with the end user in mind.

We needed to redesign this suite for our customers. We needed to make the suite look like a unified, coherent product suite despite all of the challenges that six different code bases and user interfaces had presented. In addition, each product had to be able to be branded to look and feel like the company that uses IBM Emptoris.

We needed to consider branding, adaptability, and accessibility in all aspects of our design. It was a challenging task, but our dedicated and talented design and development teams were able to deliver measurable results.

Legacy version of Emptoris Contract Management Software

Approach + Design

It was very important to be efficient and diligent in our work, as the time differences allowed for very little overlap during our work days. We utilized agile and IBM Design Thinking in our approach to efficiently and effectively tackle challenges. We worked through complex design problems with tight deadlines and we delivered on time.

Paper prototypes

Framework

User Interface Components

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Outcomes

This release of IBM Emptoris was the largest redesign effort of the product. Our design direction and the visual design style that I directed was carried out throughout the entire suite of products. We presented our new designs at the Empower conference in 2015 and customers admired our designs and efforts. Not only did my branding guidelines set the foundation for all IBM Emptoris products that are to be branded, they are now used for every branded product and segment of IBM Commerce. This release of IBM Emptoris had the highest adoption rate of any release in the history of the product. Our efforts resulted in a +72% renewal rate, +$95M in revenue, and 78% completion rate. I am extremely proud to have been part of this redesign process.