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Untangling Field Procurement & Logistics in a Tobacco Supply Chain

Led the design of a field-ready procurement system that transformed fragmented manual processes into a scalable digital workflow, accelerating approvals, improving data reliability, and enabling cross-team efficiency across the enterprise.

Domain

ERP,  Supply chain,

Procurement,

Field Operations.

My Role

Lead Product Designer

Duration

~75 Days

Client

ITC INDIVISION LTD (IIVL)

Team Structure

Product Manager,

Business Analyst,

Frontend Backend Developers,

IIVL field team.

20 Second Impact Overview

4× faster procurement cycle, Reduced from 4 days to 1.

100% manual paperwork eliminated across buying, approval, & dispatch workflows.

3× operational scalability, supporting growth from 850MT to 2500MT.

Higher data accuracy, lower operational risk

Offline-first field operations,
Uninterrupted purchasing in low-connectivity rural areas.

Reduced training and supervision dependency

This case study is structured using the 7C – Concerns of Innovation framework, taught as part of the Design & Innovation program at IIT Bombay by Prof. B. K. Chakravarthy.

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01

Cause

Why this innovation was necessary

IIVL’s field procurement and logistics operations were entirely manual and paper-driven, involving :

  • Physical purchase slips

  • Handwritten UBC tracking

  • Manual approvals

  • Physical TLPV documents

  • Spreadsheet-based reconciliation

  • Phone calls between field agents, buyers, and warehouses

As procurement volumes grew, the system began to fail:

  • Purchase cycles took 4+ days

  • Paperwork was frequently misplaced or delayed

  • Errors surfaced only at dispatch or warehouse stages

  • Scaling operations meant scaling people and supervision, not efficiency

  • Zero real-time visibility for buyers and warehouses

  • Complete breakdowns in low-connectivity rural areas

  • Multi-day delays between purchase and approval

Digitisation was not a UX upgrade but an operational necessity to sustain growth.

02

Context

The reality we were designing for

Before proposing any solution, it was critical to understand the real operational environment, constraints, and stakeholders involved in field procurement and logistics.

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Key constraints identified through requirement gathering and stakeholder interviews:

  • Remote rural procurement with poor or no internet connectivity

  • Entire workflows dependent on manual paperwork and Excel sheets

  • SAP handling inventory and payments, but disconnected from field operations

  • Multiple handoffs across field agents, buyers, logistics, and warehouses

  • Scaling procurement from 850 MT to 2500 MT with the same manual setup

Context mapping revealed a critical insight:

Any digital system that depended on constant connectivity or memory-based training would fail in practice.

The design needed to absorb complexity, not expose it.

As-Is procurement and approval flow highlighting manual dependencies, informal coordination, and late discovery of errors.

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03

Comprehension

Understanding the real problem

Focus was on understanding how work actually moved across people and stages.

Through user research and on-ground walkthroughs, it became clear that paperwork was not the core issue.

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The deeper problems were not about missing features, but missing system intelligence:

  • Field agents rarely knew what state a task was in

  • The system provided no feedback or guidance

  • Errors were discovered late, often during approval or reconciliation

  • Training depended on tribal knowledge and constant supervision

  • Progress relied more on people than on the process itself

Most steps worked not because of the system, but because of informal coordination:​

  • “Agent knows how this works”

  • “Call the buyer to confirm”

  • “We’ll fix it during reconciliation”

Core Insight

The real opportunity was not just digitisation, but to design a system that:

Guides the field agent, enforces correctness, and makes progress visible at every step — even offline.

A single primary persona anchored the problem space

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04

Check

Validating feasibility and risk

Before designing interfaces, it was essential to validate whether the proposed system would actually survive real-world conditions.

Early walkthroughs of the end-to-end flow—from purchase creation to approval, dispatch, and reconciliation—were used to pressure-test assumptions about how work was expected to happen versus how it actually happened.

These walkthroughs surfaced critical risks like:

  • Decisions were happening earlier than expected, often at the point of submission

  • Field actions needed to work reliably without connectivity

  • Uncertainty led users to retry actions, causing duplicates

  • Ownership of progress relied on people instead of the system

  • Lack of feedback caused hesitation and workarounds

Proposed User–System Interaction Flow Diagram

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Instead of relying on people to remember steps, confirm progress, or avoid mistakes, the system was designed to take ownership of correctness and sequence. It defined when users could proceed, when actions were final, and when the system needed to step in.

Responsibility was clearly owned by the system.

05

Conception

The core innovation idea

With a clear understanding of field constraints and failure points, the focus shifted from digitising existing steps to rethinking how procurement should fundamentally work.

The intent at this stage was divergence, to challenge legacy assumptions before committing to any structure or screens.

To do this, I used structured ideation techniques to deliberately break the manual mental model:

SCAMPER - to systematically rethink each part of the workflow

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Worst Possible Idea — to surface hidden risks by imagining what would fail hardest in the field

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Key directions that emerged

Across both exercises, a few strong directions consistently surfaced:

  • Replace free-text entry with QR scans, controlled inputs, and pre-filled data

  • Combine fragmented steps (scanning, receipt entry, validation) into single, guided flows

  • Shift error handling earlier in the process through inline validation

  • Reverse approval dynamics, enable correction over rejection

  • Design for offline-first execution, not as an edge case

  • Remove technical jargon to reduce training dependency

Outcome of this phase

This phase produced a clear set of system principles and constraints that guided all subsequent flow design and validation logic, before any screens were designed.

06

Crafting

Designing the system

With the core directions defined, the next step was to turn them into workflows and interfaces that people could reliably execute in the field.

The priority was designing a system that:

  • Enforces correctness

  • Reduces cognitive load

  • Works reliably in field conditions

Clarifying needs with user stories

To align stakeholders on outcomes and constraints before designing interfaces, core requirements were captured using user stories.

These stories defined what the system had to support before designing flows.

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Structuring the process with user flows

Based on the stories, role-based flows were created to define

  • The order of actions

  • When responsibility shifts between roles

  • Where decisions happen

  • Which steps are final

Four primary flows covered purchase, approval, shipment, and receipt.

Field Agent (Rajesh)

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Buyer (Kartik)

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Outbound Delivery Flow

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Warehouse Reconciliation flow

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Translating flows into screens

Flows were translated into screens and prototypes with a strong emphasis on:

  • State visibility and guided progression

  • Offline-first behavior with clear feedback

  • Reduced input through scanning and pre-filled data

  • Simple, field-friendly language to lower training dependency

Lightweight walkthroughs were used to confirm clarity during execution.

Final Product - System in use

Wireframes

Low-Fi Screens

High-Fi Screens

High fi screens

Outcome of Crafting

This phase produced a cohesive, state-driven system that could be executed reliably in field conditions and adopted with minimal training.

07

Connection

Validation, Impact & Learnings

Validation in real field conditions

To ensure the solution worked in real field conditions, the prototype was tested in realistic field environments.

It was used outdoors in bright sunlight to verify visibility and contrast, and walkthroughs were conducted with colleagues and stakeholders simulating real procurement tasks end-to-end.

User Testing

What testing revealed

  • Generic or unclear action labels created hesitation

  • Users were sometimes unsure what would happen next

  • The transition between UBC scanning and buying details felt slightly disjointed.

How the flows were refined

  • Replaced generic CTAs with clear, action-specific labels like “Submit for Approval” and “Upload Signed TLPV”.

  • Simplified navigation between scanning, data entry, and submission.

  • Reduced total steps and clicks by removing redundancy and clarifying system feedback.

Measurable operational impact

The final system delivered tangible improvements across procurement, approvals, and logistics:

  • 4× faster procurement cycle
    Reduced end-to-end turnaround from 4 days to 1 day.

  • 100% manual paperwork eliminated
    Buying, approval, and dispatch digitised end-to-end

  • 3× operational scalability
    Enabled procurement growth from 850 MT → 2500 MT without proportional headcount increase.

  • Higher data accuracy, lower operational risk
    QR-based validation reduced late-stage mismatches and corrections.

  • Offline-first field operations
    Reliable execution in low-connectivity rural areas

  • Reduced training & supervision dependency
    Simple, guided flows replaced tribal knowledge and constant oversight.

Key Learnings

This project reinforced that design is a system problem, not a screen problem.

  • Extreme context design matters
    Connectivity, sunlight, dust, and operational scale must shape UI decisions from day one.

  • Structured creativity scales better than intuition
    Methods like SCAMPER and Worst Possible Idea helped convert constraints into strong, field-ready solutions.

  • Clients explain the “what,” users reveal the “why”
    Real insights came from observing workflows, not reading requirement documents.

  • K.I.S.S. wins in the field
    Simple language, large tap targets, and jargon-free UI significantly reduced errors and training effort.

  • Iteration is not optional
    Early validation and feedback loops prevented costly fixes later in the lifecycle.

Closing Note

By grounding decisions in real workflows and validating them early, the system evolved from a digital replacement of paperwork into a reliable procurement and logistics platform.

"If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses"

"Aditya understood our goals, spoke with stakeholders, & turned everything into nice & easy flows. His designs made digitization possible."

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Naveen

Product Manager

"Earlier I write all in paper, carry so many sheets....Now its just scan in mobile and done. Work is much fast, less efforts."

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Ramesh Reddy

Field Agent

That’s a Wrap

From farms to Figma—thanks for sticking around!​

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