Turning a complex purchasing system into an intuitive experience

Concept7 & Corlido Group

Corlido Group COPS e-procurement tool Concept7

Corlido Group supports and unburdens large organizations in getting the most out of their procurement process. This allows their clients to reduce the number of suppliers and save significant costs. All of this is made possible with COPS: a single system for purchasing goods and services. But how do you make such a comprehensive system as user-friendly as possible?

The customer Corlido Group
Cases
Gebruikersonderzoek Visual design UX design
Results corlido.cops.nl/

What we did for Corlido Group

Different types of user research

Translation into UX and visual design

See how we’ve helped other companies achieve digital success

COPS: Corlido Online Procurement System

COPS is an e-procurement tool developed by Corlido Group. It enables the online purchasing of goods and services, a process that’s becoming increasingly important for organizations. After all, they want to handle procurement quickly, easily, and digitally. COPS supports organizations throughout the entire procurement process: from strategy, tendering, and contracting, to ordering, easy payment, and invoicing.

The challenge

With the old COPS platform, Corlido Group faced several technical limitations. The goal with COPS 3.0 is to gain more technical control and make a significant leap in innovation. At the same time, it presents the perfect opportunity to improve both the visual design and user-friendliness.

The system can be quite complex for new users. Sometimes I spend half an hour on the phone just explaining how it works.

Medewerker Corlido

Simplifying a technical system starts with user research

Together with various team members and subject matter experts from Corlido, we explored the services, the different target groups, their needs, and the complexity of the offering during a series of workshops. Step by step, we familiarized ourselves with the ins and outs of COPS and the world of e-procurement.

Our approach: human-centered design

Why do we work so closely with the target audience? Because human-centered design is at the core of everything we do. It’s a design approach that places the end user at the center. This way of working is embedded in every step of the project. For the Corlido Group assignment, we applied it to improve usability, in other words, to make the platform easier and more intuitive to use.

The 4 different purchasing options

During the session, we took a closer look at COPS together with the team. It became clear that the complexity of COPS stems from several factors—one of them being that COPS customers can manage their purchasing in no fewer than four different ways.

You can order products from a predefined assortment

You can enter a purchase order.

You can submit a request for quotation

You can submit invoices to be paid through COPS (making it easy to pay external suppliers)

These are different order flows, each with their own characteristics. On top of that, COPS was originally developed from a technical perspective, which meant that user-friendliness (read: you, the user) was sometimes overlooked.

Translating insights into design

Because different departments within Corlido Group participated in the initial customer journey session, it provided the design team with valuable insights and knowledge. The following optimizations can now be found within the COPS environment.

The four different ordering options and the ordering process have been simplified and made more user-friendly. In doing so, the user’s expectations now align with the conceptual model—that is, how the application actually works.

The dashboard environment has been optimized. It’s now easier for COPS customers to gain both insight and overview.

We improved overarching functionalities—such as logging in, adding and managing favorites, ordering from external webshops, adjusting settings, and switching between roles.

The prototype

Based on the identified optimizations, we designed a prototype with a clear focus on simplicity and reducing complexity. We then developed the prototype into a visual design, giving the application a modern look and feel that aligns with Corlido Group’s ambition and brand identity.