Redesign the Information Architecture of the Contract Management System

I led design from 0-to-1 a B2B insurance financial contract data management system. This reduced contract managing time from 2 hours to 8 minutes, helping the company save on legal and accounting costs through streamlining the user workflow.

Problem

Frequent Rate Updates Cause Cash Flow Management Chaos at Arbol Company.

Arbol is a global climate risk insurance platform. Over 200 million contracts rely on an outdated management system and manual record-keeping. This lead to when currency rates fluctuate, contracts involving hundreds of stakeholders need to be recalculated and updated. For each contract, update all data will take hours.

Mapping of Contract Manually Managing Process:

For each contract, data needs to be recalculated and updated over 10 Apps 2-4 times per year.

For team members who need to track and update data, their everyday life would be like:

Copy & Paste & Verify & Copy & Paste & Verify & Copy & Paste & Verify & Copy & Paste & Verify & Copy & Paste & Verify & Copy & Paste & Verify & Copy & Paste & Verify & Copy & Paste & Verify & Copy & Paste & Verify & Copy & Paste & Verify & Copy & Paste & Verify & Copy & Paste & Verify & Copy

"Every time the data is updated, I have to verify it at least three times, which ends up wasting half of my time."

--Accounting team

🤦‍♀️

Research

Finding contracts is the most challenging part of insurance data management.

Initially, the leadership thought that the efficiency issues were due to missing data collection points and poor UI design. However, my research interviews revealed that the original information framework was logically disorganized and did not align with users' workflows. In the entire user process, locating contracts became the greatest difficulty: the old system required at least 5 jumps and take 5 mins to find the contract to be edited.

The inefficient processes made the company costs more than 3 times the usual amount for accounting and legal services.

Old System Interface

Research

The nature of insurance makes data management more challenging.

Additionally, since each insurance contract involves multiple stakeholders, there are at least four sub-contracts and countless sub-deadlines under each major contract. Therefore, it is not easy to locate the contract to be dealt with from a pile of data.

“We need to ask our legal and accounting teams to waste a whole afternoon sorting through a mess of data from different apps and tables, just to get it ready for our hedge fund partners to look at. It's really dumb."

--Charlie Kornberger (CFO)

Solution

An Automatic management system for tracking rates, contract and cash flow

Transform Table View Into To-Do Lists.

Redesign The Information Architecture: This table view redesign allows users from 4 teams to easily locate contracts and track deadlines.

Choose the Right Layout for Various Goals.

Considering the diversity of data types, I have chosen different layouts to meet the data processing needs of four various teams.

Impact

improve the company's profits and efficiency by over 300%

By streamlining the user workflow, I have increased the company’s profits by over 300%. This improvement is measured by the reduced time it now takes to locate the correct contract for editing.

Old System

At least 6 Click

Taking 2-5 mins

New System

3 Click

Taking 8 seconds

Impact

Enhanced trust with key partners

"Our partner banks and hedge funds can now easily review how our company operates. This makes it easier for us to show off our capabilities during negotiations."

Chief Revenue Officer / Deputy CFO

Charlie Kornberger

Process

How I Redesign the Information Architecture For 4 Types of Stakeholders?

Mapping the Insurance workflow and stakeholders.

The primary challenge in this project was balancing design with collaboration across our 4 departments, including accounting, legal, brokers and bank/ hedge funds. Coordinating and securing buy-in from these diverse teams was a complex task. To address these challenges, I created detailed documentation on insurance processing to clarify how data was managed across teams.

💬 Interviews and Insight

✅ Design decision

The user employs multiple applications to manage contracts. Different teams categorize these contracts by their stage in the process into an Excel spreadsheet.

Make the table view like a to-do list.

There is an overlap in tasks between different teams.

Categorize the to-do list based on task progress rather than team responsibilities.

Classify workflow by processing methods.

The top bar serves as navigation for 4 types of processing methods.

Decided the secondary-level information hierarchy

Iteration Version

❌ What Didn't Work:

Excessive number of groups, which can distract users.
If the groupings are effective, users typically don't need the search bar. Therefore, it shouldn't occupy a large area.

“

I don’t care about the category; I just want my job to be done.” -- Accounting Team User

”

Final Design

✅ What Worked:

Specify todo-list grouping logic, e.g., 'paid/unpaid' for payment tasks. In subgroups, identify 'paid/unpaid' parts.
Reduce the search bar area.

Decided the third-level information hierarchy

Iteration Version

❌ What Didn't Work:

Users don't care about the Name and ID fields.
The ranking of contracts appears to be random.

Final Design

✅ What Worked:

Prioritize contracts by upcoming due dates.
To accommodate task switching among different team members, each contract includes context. This includes 'Next Action' instructions and, when available, error warnings with reasons.

Teamwork

Delivering Responsive Page in Web Design

To address the complexity of interaction in responsive web design, I created a comprehensive guide for the Development team. This guide details how elements, groups, and entire pages interrelate and adapt across various screen sizes and layouts. Additionally, I established an interactive 'playground' for developers. This environment enables direct engagement with the design, facilitating a deeper understanding of its responsive characteristics.

Reflections & Improvement

Guiding the Team Do 'Right Thing'

In startups, striving for faster product delivery often leads to hasty decisions, resulting in short-term views and wasted resources.

In startups, striving for faster product delivery often leads to hasty decisions, resulting in short-term views and wasted resources. As the project's lead designer, my role isn't just to follow orders from leadership.

Instead, I take the initiative to do extra user research and interviews when time allows, and use quick MVP tests to collect user data and important insights. This way, I can recommend more effective plans to leadership, helping our company avoid risks in decision-making.

As the project's lead designer, my role isn't just to follow orders from leadership. Instead, I take the initiative to do extra user research and interviews, and use quick MVP tests to collect user data and important insights. This way, I can recommend more effective plans to leadership, helping our company avoid risks in decision-making.

What would I do differently? Auditing delivery

After Launch, I have found some deliver problems, but by then, the Development team had already moved on to other projects. Therefore, Next time before the official product launch, I will collaborate with the development team to audit the delivery quality. This will minimize the effect for asking the development team to squeeze extra time for fixing delivery issues.

What Colleague Says

“Yilun has repeatedly created innovative designs to handle large data. Whether it's a long list of input fields, or just a very technical calculation screen, she delivers strong accessible solutions that go far beyond the average designer.”

-- Rebecca Gemeinhardt (Design Manger from Arbol)

CONTACT ME

yilunarchi@gmail.com

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