April 3, 2025
|
Web Design
UX
UI
7 min read
Making Compliance Make Sense
Helping pharmacies avoid closure from agreements they didn't understand.
12 Weeks
1 Designer
2 Product Managers
4 Developers
2 QA Engineers
Project Overview
about
SureCost is the leading purchasing platform for pharmacies, processing millions in pharmaceutical transactions annually. For over ten years, we've helped customers save money through optimized procurement, rebate tracking, and vendor contract management. We turn purchasing decisions into a competitive advantage.
audio Story
Listen to an AI-narrated version of the story behind this project.
My Role
I'm the only product designer at SureCost, working across four development teams. Every design decision below I owned.
The Problem
Pharmacies were signing agreements they didn't understand, leading to lost rebates and closures.
Complex vendor agreements and shifting regulations were eroding pharmacy profits. Pharmacies lost money on rebates, breached compliance terms, and sometimes closed due to poor margin management. Different vendors used different terminology, forcing customers to rely on spreadsheets or guesswork. Some built their own dashboards outside SureCost using our data.
This was the biggest issue facing our customers, and I needed to solve it.
The Solution
A centralized dashboard that surfaces compliance before violations happen.
AI contract parsing was on the table early. But after talking with the CS team and customers directly, it was clear the trust wasn't there yet. More importantly, training models on vendor-specific pricing could violate agreements and put SureCost's vendor relationships at risk. The CS team pushed to own the input process themselves. Sometimes the right call is knowing when not to automate.
Through user interviews and testing, I discovered that each region, pharmacy, and department needed to see its own compliance ratios. I built a dashboard that scopes to each location's purchasing. Through Maze testing, I learned that 100% of users preferred seeing the current metric value with overage as secondary info, rather than showing only the overage amount. This insight shaped the card design.
Progressive Disclosure
Enterprise corporations manage multiple contracts and need to scan compliance metrics quickly, then drill into details when something's wrong. Drawers were an opportunity to show which locations are doing well and which need help, with plain text showing where they stand on each metric.
Challenges
Working under a tight timeline, the PM and I met twice weekly to iterate quickly—whiteboarding concepts, exploring visualizations, and prototyping the Agreement Dashboard. Research showed users didn't understand agreement terms, so the team decided Customer Support would input contract details. We explored AI contract parsing but found customers wouldn't trust it yet.
Midway through, the original PM left. I maintained project momentum, onboarded the new PM, and navigated significant scope changes (full dashboard in V1, chart style pivots, nomenclature updates). Design only reached mid-fidelity before moving to development, so I worked closely with engineers to fill gaps in the Figma specs. We cut best/worst performer indicators, animations, and micro-interactions in the final delivery to meet the deadline.
Impact
Outcomes
Launched in May 2024 as Phase 1 of the Purchase Manager vision, setting the foundation for "SureCost Autopilot" (a future where SureCost manages the business side of pharmacy operations so customers can focus on patient care).
Customer feedback was overwhelmingly positive:
This is exactly what we've been trying to do. Right now we're pulling reports, building spreadsheets, and manually figuring this out—having it all surfaced here would be huge.
Chief Operating Officer, Customer
That would be amazing. Right now, we only find issues after the month closes, and by then, it's too late. This would let us stay ahead of it.
Director of Purchasing, Customer
This work gave pharmacies the visibility they needed to avoid costly mistakes and positioned SureCost as a strategic partner, not just a purchasing tool.
Retrospective
Navigating a mid-project PM transition taught me the importance of clear documentation and adaptability. I learned that sometimes shipping at mid-fidelity is the right call when the core functionality solves a critical problem.
If I could revisit this, I'd push harder for a phased rollout that prioritized the most impactful metrics first, rather than trying to solve everything in V1. I'd also advocate for post-launch usability testing to validate our assumptions once customers had real data in the system.
What I'd Measure
Due to resource constraints, we didn't integrate analytics to track KPI's. However, here's what I'd measure to validate the design decisions:
01
Early violation detection
How many compliance violations are users catching before their deadline versus discovering after penalties are triggered?
proof
Higher early detection rates would prove the proactive alerts solved the "by then it's too late" pain point.
02
Drawer engagement balance
Are users clicking into compliance drawers when they need detail, or are they ignoring them? Is the interaction buried?
proof
Balanced engagement would validate that progressive disclosure works.
03
Self-service comprehension
Are users understanding compliance metrics without support tickets?
proof
Low help requests would prove the plain language translations and visual indicators eliminated confusion surrounding metrics.