Carrying over the most used features amidst a platform acquisition
Role and Team
Jr. product designer (me), partnering with senior designer, product managers and engineering team
Project Duration
4 months
Provi is a B2B online marketplace that serves the entire three-tier system of alcohol distribution. Restaurants, bars, and retailers can order for their beverage program all in one place, distributors can manage their customers and orders, and suppliers can increase their brand presence.
In 2022, Provi acquired Sevenfifty, a New York-based company that helps alcohol producers, distributors, and retailers do business. The goal of the merge was to have a more robust and unified marketplace for the alcohol beverage industry. In doing so, the two retailer side of the platforms became one and retailers were automatically brought over to the Provi experience. Sevenfifty historically served a significant percentage of wine buyers, a market Provi did not have a strong presence in, therefore, the merge allows us to tap into a new market and better serve the industry as a whole. The work documented here was part of a larger effort to merge and integrate with Sevenfifty.
In order to continue to meet the needs of the Sevenfifty users as they transition to Provi, we had to implement the most used features from Sevenfifty onto the Provi platform. The priority of the features were largely determined by key stakeholders and long-term distributor partners. The biggest challenge here was that the newly migrated Sevenfifty users were missing a lot of the features they were used to and we needed to get them on Provi. Over the span of a few months, we solved for those needs by implementing and improving those highly requested and crucial features.
High impact features that needed to be implemented:
In order for a retailer to buy from a distributor, the retailer must have an account with the distributor. By law, a retailer must submit an application containing all required business information to each distributor the retailer wants to order from. Although this process is typically only done once, there are many distributors that retailers work with and the paper work can get messy. This makes it hard for distributors to get new accounts since retailers may not want to do all the paperwork if they are only interested in a couple of products. On the other hand, this process is also frustrating for retailers because the approval process can be long or the filled out information is illegible.
The solution that exists on Sevenfifty allows retailers to complete a generalized application that can go to distributors who opt into this feature. Additionally, retailers usually only need to fill it out once and can submit the information to any other distributor they wish to open an account with. This is a much more simplified and quick process for both retailers and distributors. Retailers save time by not having to repeated manually fill out forms and distributors can have an easier time processing the applications and generate leads. In the 12 months prior, more than 3,500 retailers submitted applications and more than 7,500 applications were submitted.
Without this application, distributors would miss out on potential new customers and retailers would have a harder time seeking out products and/or distributors.
Out of the multiple features to carry over, the account applications feature required the most effort as there was no similar concept that existed on Provi. Additionally, there was a big backend lift as the experience requires transferring of information from Provi to Sevenfifty. Referencing Sevenfifty, we identified the required fields to start building out the form and looked at similar experiences on other platforms to get inspiration for a streamlined experience.
Although we designed a more thorough experience, various constraints led to a simplified first release.
Discounts and pricing from alcohol distributors can get very complex and confusing. Pricing rules differ by state, can vary depending on the type of alcohol, but can also be determined by a buyers sales rep. While there are deals that are shown for selected SKUs, not all were present on Provi. This meant that buyers were not fully aware of the prices for products and potentially find out about price differences through other methods. The types of deals that existed on Provi are the following:
• Assortment/Mix and Match
• Quantity
Through the Sevenfifty acquisition, we were able to introduce a third type of discount available to buyers. This type of deal can apply if the buyer agrees to certain terms or meets the criteria that the discount requires.
Provi was missing current and future discounts for 10% of SKUs coming from the Sevenfifty integration and can impact up to 14,000 buyers. Without full pricing transparency, retailers may lose trust in Provi as an ordering platform. Therefore, it’s extremely important to include this additional information on Provi as well.
Additional discounts were present in at least 10% of the Sevenfifty SKUs and have the potential to affect up to 14,000 retailers. Price transparency is crucial and these discounts needed to be added.
The biggest difference between this deal type and the preexisting two is that we can’t be sure if it actually applies to the retailer or not. Since the deals often include conditions that are entered as free text by a distributor and can be something like “must serve by the glass”, there isn’t a way for us to determine a buyer’s eligibility. Therefore, we don’t make claims on whether it gets applied or not and don’t include these discounts in cart calculations. So, the information is largely informational and for reference. It’s crucial to set the expectation that the discount applies at the discretion of their rep on their final invoice from the distributor and not Provi.
Sales divisions in selected distributors are like smaller departments within a larger organization. There may be products and/or sales reps that are specific to a certain sales division so it’s helpful for buyers to know of the different divisions that exist. Through various interviews, we learned that the buyer-rep relationship plays a big role in how buyers order and knowing the sales divisions helps a buyer know who to contact. Additionally, buyers who have a good relationship with their rep would want to help their rep out by buying more products from that rep and their respective sales division. This information on Sevenfifty was highly valued so it was expected to be present on Provi as well.
Orders in Provi typically get sent to all the listed distributor reps on an account and cannot be sent to selected reps. Through feedback, we learned that there are retailers who want to ensure their orders go to a specific rep, and they would need to know the division in order to do so. We do not have the necessary data to support the routing of orders to specific reps but with the sales division information, we are starting to pave the path for that possibility in the future.
Due to the time constraints and planned future work, we implemented a solution that was lower in effort but still valuable to users.
While the team successfully implemented many of the Sevenfifty features onto Provi, the process overall felt extremely rushed. The work to integrate with Sevenfifty’s databases happened quickly and the expectation was to provide the same features on Provi over the course of a few months. This resulted in the team being in execution mode and making many sacrifices as opposed to taking the time to break down problem areas to validate the specific needs of users. The highly used features and information are available to users but not without its flaws. Following the initial release of these features, we documented ways for improvement and plan to iterate on them based on feedback from users.
The Distributor Account Application required the most effort as it was something that needed to be built from scratch. In addition to carrying over most of what existed on Sevenfifty, we also added to the experience by increasing feedback loops and communications to keep buyers up to date with applications; however, due to various constraints, a chunk of the improvement work eventually got cut and reprioritized. Compared to Sevenfifty, there was less adoption of the feature. One possible reason is that the feature is not apparent to newly migrated users on Provi. We focused on getting the feature into the platform so users could start sending applications to distributors as soon as possible, but the application itself may have been hard for users to find. Following the V1 release, 26% of retailers that submitted an application and got approved also submitted an order. The percentage is lower than what it was on Sevenfifty; however, we focused more on the application itself and not as much on closing the loop so there is a lot of room for improvement here. Distributors who relied a lot on this feature was happy to see it on Provi, since new applications also serve as leads to find new customers.
