Vendor Onboarding: Enhancing usability and scalability

Procol is a B2B SaaS platform for procurement management. Procurement is how a company buys the goods and services it needs from its vendors, and managing those vendors is one of its most important parts.

A typical vendor onboarding flow looks like this:

1. 1
   Pre-requisiteCreating onboarding form
2. 2
   Step 1Initiating onboarding
3. 3
   Step 2Filling the form
4. 4
   Step 3Reviewing response & initiating approvals
5. ✓
   DoneVendor Onboarded

Existing clients kept raising the same problem, in user interviews and in support tickets: vendors were hard to manage on the platform, and onboarding one took too long.

Our goal was to cut that time, so we set out to redesign vendor onboarding.

• 

  Procurement Manager (Buyer)

  Goals / Jobs

  • Onboard vendors who meet company requirements & compliances
  • Monitor vendor performance and manage the relationship

  Motivation

  • Cost Saving
  • Risk Mitigation

  Pain points

  • Time-consuming verification process
  • Managing inaccurate or outdated information
  • Low visibility in the vendor performance
• 

  Vendor (Supplier)

  Goals / Jobs

  • Submit all the accurate info & documents required for onboarding
  • Keep information and documents up-to-date after onboarding

  Motivation

  • Business growth
  • Long-term collaboration

  Pain points

  • Complicated onboarding process
  • Lack of transparency in onboarding status
  • Unable to update info post-onboarding

Before onboarding starts, the buyer builds a form to collect vendor details and compliance documents.

GST, PAN and MSME numbers are checked against 3rd-party APIs, and linked answers fill themselves in.

The buyer invites vendors to fill out the onboarding form.

Changing the existing event flow would have touched every feature on the platform, so vendor management became the new starting point.

An “Onboarding in Progress” tab shows every vendor's status. Deadlines and reviews happen on the vendor's profile, without touching anyone else's onboarding.

Vendors get an email and fill the form on the vendor portal.

In the previous experience, vendors often struggled to track their form completion progress, leading to frustration and uncertainty. Additionally, the vendor experience had to make room for new features like auto-verification, question groups, and dynamic forms.

The buyer reviews the response and starts an approval chain with other stakeholders.

Key actions stay pinned to the bottom, and auto-verified fields are flagged so there's less to check by hand.

Vendors couldn't update their details once onboarded, so data went stale. Now they can, through a business partner profile.

• 🚦

  Phased rollout

  Released in phases, tested with clients through UATs at each step.

• 👍

  Positive feedback

  Clients liked the usability; their suggestions shaped the final release.

• 🤖

  Next up

  Machine learning to automate vendor selection and risk profiling.

• 🤝

  Cross-functional collaboration

  Working with Eng, CS and Sales kept feasibility, client needs and business goals aligned.

• 💡

  Anticipating breakpoints

  Planning for where the design could break made the system sturdier.

• 🔄

  Iterate and explain

  Sharing the rationale with each iteration built consensus faster.

I’m open to full-time product design roles and love building side projects just for the fun of it. I’m especially drawn to early B2B products, messy workflows, and ideas I can design, build, and ship myself.