Case study6 min read
Designing for Enterprise Confidence
Earning enterprise credibility after being laughed out of sales rooms.
Outcome
Starting an order
2 clicks
Down from 5+
From 5 or more clicks down to 2.
Results: read the proof for starting an orderGetting back to work
<5s
Down from 2.5 min
From up to 2.5 minutes down to under 5 seconds.
Results: read the proof for getting back to workCustomer pull
200
C-suite demo
A 200-location pharmacy system asked for a C-suite demo.
Results: read the proof for customer pull
The 60-second version
About a minute to read- The problem
- Sales demos kept stalling. The product looked dated next to enterprise tools, with 2000+ pages and 5+ clicks for any task.
- What I did
- Designed role-based dashboards. People pick their role at onboarding and land on a home page built for their work.
- How I tested it
- Pharmacist interviews, monitored sessions, and 363 documented iterations of a Figma Make prototype.
- What happened
- I showed it at the SureCost Insights conference. A 200-location pharmacy system asked me to present it to their C-suite.
Overview
ContextAbout SureCost
SureCost is the leading purchasing platform for pharmacies, processing millions in pharmaceutical transactions every year. For more than ten years it has helped customers save money through smarter procurement, rebate tracking and vendor contract management.
Working closely with the Director of Product Management and the CPO, I helped lead the strategic vision for enterprise expansion. I translated customer pain points into a product strategy that secured leadership buy-in for future investment.
We overwhelmed users with data instead of curating what mattered, costing enterprise deals.
I had already proven we could modernize. As we moved the product from Struts to React, I rebuilt 60% of our core pages with live data. Old and new pages lived side by side, so I built a design system from scratch that made them feel like one product and cut new pages from 3 sprints to 1. I also designed the tools that kept a nationwide online pharmacy’s automations running through the change. But when sales took the product into enterprise demos, we were getting laughed out of the room.
We didn’t look like we belonged at the enterprise table. The same story kept coming up in business updates and team meetings. Incremental fixes weren’t going to solve it fast enough, so I stepped back and asked what SureCost could be if we designed for enterprise from the start.
Months
of onboarding
2000+
pages
5+ clicks
to complete any task
My role
I was the only designer on this project. Everything below I owned from start to finish.
End-to-end product design
- Research to delivery
- Solo designer
- Defined project scope
Research and UX auditing
- Pharmacist interviews
- Monitored sessions
- Enterprise CS collaboration
Interactive prototyping
- Built in Figma Make
- 363 documented iterations
- Task-based UX audit
Stakeholder alignment
- C-suite and VP 1:1 sessions
- Cross-functional feedback loops
- Executive presentation design
Design program leadership
- Full-company design sessions
- SureCost Insights conference
- Enterprise customer demo
Visual and interaction design
- Role-based dashboards
- Power user workflows
- Distraction-free workflows
- C-suite and VP leadership across Product, Sales, Finance and Marketing
- Engineering, Customer Success and Acute teams
- External enterprise customer leadership
Role-based dashboards that surface the right information for each person.
My first instinct was a single unified dashboard to keep the technical lift low. I wireframed it and brought it to stakeholders, and the feedback was immediate. We would be recreating the same noise we were trying to remove. User interviews backed that up. As organizations grow, roles specialize, and people want to open the product and start working.
The breakthrough was simple. Ask people their role at onboarding and serve them a home page built for it, one they would look forward to opening every day. I designed system patterns that scale to any workflow.
Built for how enterprise teams work.
Data showed 30% of current users had monitors narrower than 1200px, so every layout had to hold up on small screens. The side navigation collapses to give the work more room, and I added keyboard shortcuts for enterprise users who value speed over clicking around.
Try this in the prototypeInterviews showed pop-up fatigue was breaking pharmacist workflows. Do Not Disturb mode hides non-critical alerts and keeps only what matters, so people can finish the task in front of them.
Try this in the prototypeMulti-site managers kept drilling down and climbing back up to compare sites. Now they can slice by region, pharmacy or department. Pick from the dropdown or click the chart and the whole page responds.
Try this in the prototype
Bringing the whole company along.
Buy-in was the hardest part of our last redesign. This time I ran feedback sessions with every department and the executive team, so people felt ownership before anything shipped.
“This looks like something I think we can all hold our heads up and say, ‘Hey, this is a great application that feels ready for the modern world.’”
David WagnerChief Executive Officer, SureCost“So this is perfect. Like in my brain, my linear brain’s brain, this is exactly what I would want to see.”
Janine K., PharmDSr. Enterprise Implementation Specialist
What changed.
| Number | Measure | Result | The story |
|---|---|---|---|
| Starting an order | From 5 or more clicks down to 2. | In the old product, starting an order meant working through menus. The role-based home page puts it 2 clicks away from signing in. | |
| Getting back to work | From up to 2.5 minutes down to under 5 seconds. | After signing in, purchasers could spend up to 2.5 minutes getting back to the order they were working on, or finding the problem with one. Now it’s on the home page the moment they sign in. | |
| Customer pull | A 200-location pharmacy system asked for a C-suite demo. | I showed the new design at the SureCost Insights conference. Afterward, a pharmacy system with 200 locations asked me to present it to their executives. |
Sometimes it takes stepping back from what you’ve created, giving it an honest critique, and building something more beautiful because of it.
Challenges
- The first challenge was access. We were moving from our typical “mom and pop” customer base to enterprise users, so I had to find the right people to interview. The second was capacity. This work had to happen ahead of enterprise requests while I kept leading other product work. I ran interviews and synthesized insights in small batches as time allowed, so the research stayed thorough despite the limits.
Retrospective
- Dreaming up what SureCost could be with UX at the core reconnected me to why I do this work, to create something meaningful.
- I showed it at our SureCost Insights conference, and people saw right away how much time it could save.
- Next, I’d explore progressive disclosure to make sure we simplify workflows instead of only hiding complexity.
How I’d keep measuring it.
| Number | Measure | Question | Proof |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sales effectiveness | Are role-based dashboards moving prospects through the funnel faster, or are deals still stalling at the demo? | Better conversion would confirm the redesign restored credibility in the sales room. | |
| Feature discoverability | Are people finding the features built for their role without training or support tickets? | High organic adoption would show the interface is intuitive, not just good looking. | |
| Task completion | Are people finishing critical workflows faster than they did in the old interface? | Higher completion rates would show we fixed the 5+ clicks problem. |