JAN-DEC 2022

Factoring

Product vision: TruckSmarter aspires to be the one-stop shop for truck drivers, a mobile platform where they can grow and scale their businesses.

Design impact: Factoring generates ~80% of TruckSmarter's revenue. In < 1 quarter, the product generated $50M+ annualized invoices. On the user-facing side, Factoring has helped 100k+ drivers get paid faster for their loads and save money.

Contributions: As First Designer, I led the end-to-end design process, overseeing everything from research,  interaction design, visual design and design QA. I collaborated with Leadership and XFN teams: Eng, Ops, Brand and Marketing.

Product roadmap

As a hybrid Product Manager, I set design themes based on quarterly business goals to prioritize projects based on their business impact.

The themes informed design sprint goals.

Audience

Summary: 80% of our user base consisted of owner operators, people who have 1 driver and 1 truck. Some of them came from a family of truckers, people like Kristin and Jorge of Pure Muscle Transport.

Needs: Truckers prioritized freedom, convenience, and connection. I was most touched to learn how much they value their personal lives. It wasn't uncommon to see pets accompany them.

Financial behaviors: They monitor their finances daily, weekly and monthly. Their largest expenditure is on fuel followed by salaries.

"The margins are brutal."

—LUIS CLAUDIO, OWNER OPERATOR

Their Pain Points

High rates: Paying 2-3% per load to existing factoring companies was pretty common for truckers. Most found it too high. 

Poor cash flow: Truck drivers wait anywhere between 30-90 days to receive payment for their loads. This prevented them from running their businesses smoothly.

Overwhelming information: Users found it use other platforms because of the different documents required.

Design Features

Submitting an invoice

Users can submit invoices so they can get paid on the same day. 80% of invoices were submitted in the app.

Transfering money

Users can send money to their external bank accounts so they can pay their drivers.

Seeing rewards

Users can see the rewards they've earned. This helps them build trust with our brand.

Reflections

This was a project that was very fulfilling. I would figure out how to continuously deliver value to users while innovating on the product. Creating a culture of design excellence was also difficult in a startup that valued speed. To me, finding that balance between delivering what is tangibly implementable whilst giving stakeholders a longer-term vision of what the product could look like is something I'll continue to grapple with.

It was also very gratifying to receive feedback from our users who enjoyed connecting with each other during the Discord chats we held.