NCR Voyix Cash Manager
Role Product Designer, October 2022 - Present
Background
Aloha Smart Manager (ASM) is NCR Voyix’s next generation restaurant operations management solution that includes administrative, inventory, labor, and sales tools to help a restaurant increase revenue and efficiency while reducing costs. I currently work in building the sales and dashboard experience for ASM that includes sales data and analytics tools that include reports and predictive analysis, general accounts management, and cash management to give our customers the ability to use industry-leading insights to make data-based decisions.
NCR Voyix Cash Manager is an app designed to keep a full and comprehensive account of all transactions in the restaurant and also provides advanced cash-flow analysis—enabling restaurant managers to predict future financial positions based on analysis of past data.
In 2023, NCR Voyix announced its intention to merge the two lines of businesses, retail and restaurants together. As the cash management systems were the most similar products in both lines of businesses, a decision to start the process of merging the two began.
This case study explores the challenges of merging two products that had just as many differences as there were similarities.
Identifying the Problem & Finding a Solution
The retail and restaurant teams met for months to discuss the backend code and to review the requirements for both products and identify any gaps.
While retail’s designer was a constant resource for me, I was the solo designer on this project and I have to admit this was one of the more challenging projects I’ve worked on due to navigating the delicate political nature of the merge. I had to study hundreds of pages of designs, and documentation and discovered some major challenges and differences.
Using the same design system does not mean products will look the same! Even though both products used the same design system (NCR Voyix’s Design System that is based off of Google’s Material Design), the usage of components, patterns, and colors were very, very different.
For example, below are button groups. But one button group uses the “MM/DD/YY” format for dates, and one uses the vernacular with the ability to manually select a specific date by clicking on the calendar icon.
Redesigning one would mean possible disruption in services to existing customers for the other. As retail’s product was already launched and being used by customers, there was much hesitation in redesigning it in order to find a middle ground between the two products.
Adopting retail’s designs = abruption to the restaurant app’s experience. The “look and feel” of both products are very different, so using retail’s designs would not be a consistent experience for restaurant customers.
Gaps in the product requirements and terminology differences. In addition to the differences in nomenclature, I identified numerous gaps in the product requirements between retail and restaurants. For example, the concept of server banking does not exist in the retail space. Server banking is when the waitstaff at a restaurant carries their own cash bank during their shift and makes them responsible for their own cash transactions. Having differences such as server banking meant that the two products would have…
…Different user flows = different architecture. While the business goals and product requirements were very similar for both products, the user flows were vastly different, and in areas where we still had gaps, there was an added challenge of figuring out where to fit certain capabilities/features within retail’s architecture
Results & Takeaways
This project was one where there was a tremendous amount of effort put forth moving in one direction, but in the end, the project ended up moving in a totally different one (we ended up adopting retail’s designs). As I do with all my projects, I try to reflect and think back on all the things I learned:
Merging products take time and shouldn’t be rushed. While the retail and restaurant products were similar in concept, in reality, the timeline, money, and politics involved made it far more difficult to merge. If I could go back and do things differently, I would have insisted on having a product designer at the beginning of the conversation and work together with the retail designer to do a total revamp of both products and plan a strategy to slowly transition into becoming one experience. We ended up leveraging all of retail designs, but it came at the expense of having this one part of the experience so different than the rest of the app.
Have confidence in your design decisions and be prepared to explain why you did what you did. Sometimes people ask questions because they are simply curious or they want to know more about your thought process.
Have patience. At a large companies, decisions need to come down the ladder and then back up again—and this happens repeatedly.
You will not always love every design that’s pushed out or agree with why. And that’s okay. Sometimes the product teams need to make a decision that is based solely on time and money and nothing else. Everyone wants to build a product that is beautiful and functional, but sometimes it just doesn’t happen. And that’s okay.