Customer service
Needed key order details such as delivery date, order status and whether the order had passed credit checks.
Flagship project
Synthomer Sales Order Platform
Improving visibility across a complex global sales order process.
Workflow diagram[Workflow map placeholder]
- Role
- UX Consultant
- Client
- Synthomer
- Platform
- SAP / internal enterprise application
- Areas
- Enterprise UX, workflow mapping, operational UX, SAP Fiori, user research
- Teams
- Customer service, credit control, logistics, planning
- Focus
- Order visibility, prioritisation, collaboration, process efficiency
Overview
Synthomer is a multinational chemical supply company with teams across customer service, credit control, logistics and planning. The business was struggling with On Time In Full performance because order information, actions and dependencies were spread across SAP systems, email workflows, spreadsheets and regional processes.
My role was to help understand the end-to-end sales order process, identify where teams were getting blocked, and design a clearer internal tool that gave each team the information they needed to manage orders more effectively.
The challenge
- 01Different teams were all trying to manage the same sales order process, but each team had different needs and slightly different ways of working.
- 02SAP was difficult from a process point of view, especially when information was spread across different areas.
- 03Customer service could not always see whether orders had passed credit checks.
- 04Planning could not organise work unless orders had been confirmed by customer service.
- 05Logistics and planning needed better visibility of delivery dates, haulage options and loading constraints.
- 06Many teams relied on Excel, email inboxes and local workarounds to manage their part of the process.
- 07This made it hard to get a clear bird's-eye view of what was happening with orders.
Why the work mattered
- 01The business was trying to improve On Time In Full performance.
- 02Delays in one team affected other teams downstream.
- 03Lack of visibility created bottlenecks, duplicated effort and hidden dependencies.
- 04The goal was not just to make SAP easier to use, but to improve how teams coordinated around orders.
- 05A smaller earlier improvement had reduced one task from around 20 minutes to around 2 minutes by making a form easier to submit, which helped build trust and led to the broader sales order platform work.
Understanding the workflow
The useful work started before the interface. We needed to understand how orders actually moved across teams, systems and regions.
- 01Ran multiple customer journey and workflow workshops with teams across different regions.
- 02Worked with customer service, credit control, logistics and planning teams.
- 03Mapped how each team handled orders, where they relied on SAP, where they used email and where Excel workarounds existed.
- 04Identified pain points, bottlenecks and useful improvements that were not always obvious from the system alone.
- 05Found that different regions often worked differently, even when trying to achieve the same outcome.
- 06Many blockers came from one team waiting for actions or updates from another team.
[Workshop / workflow mapping placeholder]
The core insight
The issue was not simply that users found SAP difficult. The bigger problem was that teams did not have shared visibility of the sales order process. Information lived in different systems, inboxes and spreadsheets, which meant teams were often working from different versions of the truth.
The product needed to create shared operational visibility while still giving each team the specific information they needed to make decisions.
Designing role-based views
The aim was to avoid one overloaded screen for everyone and instead show the right information for the right job.
Credit control
Needed credit-specific information, including available credit and outstanding credit, without searching through unrelated order details.
Logistics
Needed delivery dates, haulage options and dispatch-related information to understand what could realistically happen next.
Planning
Needed warehouse and loading information, available hauliers and constraints that affected how work could be organised.
[Role-based view comparison placeholder]
The order dashboard and detail view
The design needed to support both quick prioritisation and deeper order-level investigation.
The solution was centred around a dashboard showing a list of orders.
Users could scan, prioritise and understand order status from one place.
Clicking into an order showed more detailed information and actions for that order.
This reduced the need to jump between multiple SAP areas just to understand what was happening.
The design supported both overview and detail: a bird's-eye view for prioritisation and deeper order-level information when needed.
[Order dashboard screenshot placeholder]
[Order detail screen placeholder]
Improving collaboration inside the workflow
Notes on orders
Users could leave comments on an order that were visible to other teams, reducing reliance on hidden email threads and private inboxes.
Follow functionality
Users could follow orders and receive notifications when key statuses changed, rather than manually checking multiple systems.
Shared context
Communication around orders became more visible, shared and connected to the order itself.
[Notes and follow functionality placeholder]
Iteration, regional differences and change management
- 01Teams across regions had different ways of working, so the design needed to support common process needs without ignoring regional differences.
- 02Adoption was strong in the Far East and good in the US.
- 03Europe was more challenging because some teams were more attached to existing ways of working.
- 04This highlighted that enterprise UX is not just about the interface. It also involves change management, trust and helping teams adapt to new workflows.
Image and artefact placeholders
Workflow diagram[Workflow map placeholder]
Interface screenshot[Order dashboard screenshot placeholder]
Case study media[Role-based view placeholder]
Case study media[Order detail screen placeholder]
Case study media[Notes/follow functionality placeholder]
Case study media[Before/after process placeholder]
Process artefact[Workshop artefact placeholder]
Outcome
- The platform helped create a clearer view of the sales order process.
- Teams could see more of what was happening without relying as heavily on Excel, emails or separate SAP areas.
- The work improved visibility, collaboration and prioritisation across the sales order lifecycle.
- The project built on an earlier successful improvement that reduced a specific SAP task from around 20 minutes to around 2 minutes.
- Adoption was particularly strong in the Far East, with good usage in the US, while Europe presented more change management challenges.
Reflection
This project is a good example of the kind of enterprise UX work I enjoy: taking a messy process, understanding how different teams actually work, and designing something that makes the day-to-day job easier.
The challenge was not just simplifying SAP screens. It was helping teams see the same order picture, understand what needed attention, and reduce the amount of hidden work happening in spreadsheets and email.