CASE STUDY
Infor Next-Gen Enterprise Report Platform
Replacing over 200 canned reports with a scalable, customizable, next-gen report-building solution.
TL;DR
ROLE
Initiator,
Sole Product Designer
TEAM
1 Product Manager, 1 Lead Developer, Various Dev Teams
SKILLS
End-to-End Design. Workshop Facilitation. Executive Buy-In.
PROBLEM
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User problem: Restaurant managers at all levels rely on reports for data-driven decisions but struggle to find the data in our maze-like drill-down reports. This leads to hours spent manually creating Excel reports.
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Business problem: The strategic shift to large enterprise customers has revealed that our reports can't scale, leading to higher maintenance costs, more support calls, and the risk of losing major customers.
SOLUTION
Propose a platform-wide overhaul using the design thinking process, incorporating data-informed, collaborative, and iterative approaches.
OUTCOME🚀
Delivered a scalable next-gen enterprise reporting platform that:
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Achieved a 66% increase in user satisfaction.
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Retained major customers with future-proof reporting capabilities.
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Eliminated tech debt by rebuilding the tech stack for scalability and innovation.
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Established a visionary 2-year roadmap to drive long-term innovation.
FINAL DESIGN✨
A completely rebuilt, fully customizable report platform for slicing & dicing data, with added features like bookmarking, scheduling, and data visualization.
🎬STORY BEGINS
The Legacy Infor Hospitality Enterprise Manager Reporting
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The back-of-house reporting tool for Infor's cloud-based restaurant POS system.
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Used by users at all levels (unit, district, headquarters) to generate reports on sales and operations.
The Problem
Built in the early 2000s
The reporting was originally designed for small mom-and-pop restaurants:
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1~2 locations
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One-level org hierarchy
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Basic data set
Things changed...
Over the years, we gradually shifted to serving big food service management enterprises:
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1,000+ locations
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Multiple levels (unit, district, corporate)
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Comprehensive data set
... but reporting couldn't keep up
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Poor reporting was the top complaint from our users and the main driver of customer churn.
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Unfortunately, the executives labeled them as “performance issues” and invested in workarounds (purchasing more data processing cubes, and writing custom data scripts for each customer request.)
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Despite these costly maintenance efforts, customer churn continued.
Due to significant tech debt, major design changes were never prioritized.
So, I wanted to prove we were focusing on the wrong problem (performance) and propose a complete redesign.
First, get the PM onboard with a redesign
I started with some desk research on my own to build the case:
Support Tickets
Finding: Many users couldn't find specific data OR needed data in groupings that weren’t available in the canned reports.
Findings from 500+ support tickets
Content Audit
Finding: Current reports were overly complex, with some sub-reports buried 5 levels deep, making discovery difficult.
Drilldown maps of all sub-reports
Data Points Analysis
Finding: Many reports contained the SAME data points, but in different groupings.
Giant matrix of all the data points
Competitive Analysis
Finding: Competitors offered customizable reports and advanced analytical features.
Screenshots of competitors
Google Analytics
Finding: Most reports were rarely visited, especially the sub-reports hidden under multiple levels of drilldowns.
Pageviews of a year
Next, start the redesign with the trio using the Design Thinking Process
With the PM onboard, I started the redesign with a PM and dev lead following the design thinking process.
1. Empathy
I invited the trio to sit in the interviews and shared all the findings with them to build a shared understanding of the problem space.
User Interviews
I put notes of user interviews in one table for everyone to view
Needs summary of each user groups
Different user groups have very different needs
Journey maps
Journey map for district level managers
Desirability keyword questionnaire
Undertand what qualities users want in an ideal product
2. Define
I invited the trio to write down needs statements based on my research notes, such as:
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As a Unit Manager, I need a way to run reports with the least amount of steps or complexity, so that I can get my data faster.
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As a Unit Manager, I need to see the same reports daily without taking a long time to manually generate each one of them so that I can focus on my operational tasks.
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As a District Manager, I need to compare average sales over many years to see how my stores are doing,
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As a Data Analyst, I need to analyze profit margins, trends (compare year over year) so that I could know if we should increase prices or not.
Then, we grouped them into categories, such as:
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Quickly set or run with default parameters for reports
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Automated Availability of Reports or Reports Data
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Reporting Data for Analysis
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...etc
Whiteboard discussion on the Needs statements
Next, I asked the trio to rate each from 3 perspectives:
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UX Severity
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Business Impact
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Dev Effort
The combined score set the priority.
Needs statements for the team to rate on
3. Ideate
I led a brainstorming session with the trio to come up with ideas for each need.
We wrote/drew ideas on paper and share them on the whiteboard to discuss. We tried to think outside the box and build on each other's ideas, it was fun!
In the end, we narrowed down 1-2 ideas for each need.
Brainstorm session with the team
4. Prototype
Based on the ideas, I quickly drafted some wireframes and iterated based on feedback from the team until we think they are ready to be validated with the real users.
Mid fidelity wireframe prototype
5. Test
I did multiple rounds of usability and idea testing using the interactive prototype and synthesized the findings.
How we obtained executive funding for a 2-year development plan🚀
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Walk them through the surprising findings (customer insights, data analysis)
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Align the product vision with business outcomes (customer retention, cost savings)
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Be persistent! Bring this up whenever a related issue arises.
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Find alliances in sales, professional service, and support teams to champion our vision.
Presentation slides of the usability testing results
Outcome🚀: The redesign achieved a 66% rise in user satisfaction, retained major customers, and established a robust foundation for future innovation.
Final thoughts
This initiative was entirely UX-led, and I spearheaded it from inception to execution. I thoroughly enjoyed the entire journey, from challenging the status quo by sharing current issues with the product manager and engineer, to forming a secret alliance and going through the design thinking process together, to iterating and validating our shared vision with real users, and finally presenting it to the executive team and receiving approval. This is why I love being a product designer so much.
What could I have done better?
Getting executive approval for this major initiative on the roadmap was quite challenging. Next time, I'll use storytelling to engage them better and close the gap, rather than relying solely on data insights.
💌THE END
NEXT
🚀The modernized UX/UI achieved an 80% adoption rate and led to the acquisition by Infor.