Albertsons Finance & Merchandising · Shipped 2025 - 2026

From Excel to forecast planning in real time

38%

More forecast adjustments tracked, with a recorded reason

75%

Adoption rate among merchants and financial analysts

Q1_FY2025_category_forecast_v7_FINAL.xlsx

	A	B	C	D	E
1	Department	Projection	Last year	Actual	Var
2	Total Grocery	2,043,800	1,610,400	1,884,220	1.94%
3	Total Bakery	512,600	708,100	604,905	-2.11%
4	Total Produce	1,498,250	1,206,700	1,377,040	3.02%
5	Total Seafood	1,802,900	1,114,500	1,559,330	0.88%
6	Total Alcohol	2,915,000	2,480,900	2,703,610	-0.47%
7	Coffee Kiosk	2,604,100	2,118,300	2,330,775	1.26%
8	Floral & Gift	903,400	335,200	771,960	4.10%

Allocatr Insights: a performance summary table for Q1 FY2025, two divisions expanded down to shared desks, with projection, last year, actual and variance columns against line 1 sales and book gross profit.

The Q1 2025 adjustment worksheet: forecast to projection by quarter, period and week, with the current week expanded to show projection, DS forecast, merchant forecast, actual to date and last year actual.

Role

Senior Product Designer, UX strategy

Timeline

12 months

Team

Global engineering, product & business partners

UX Strategy
Data & Dashboard Design
Design Systems
AI-Assisted Prototyping
Design Workshop

Overview

Allocatr is an AI-assisted forecasting platform that replaced the Excel workflows Albertsons’ merchant and finance teams used to plan category budgets. I led the UX strategy with the global engineering team and US-based business and product partners.

Initial research

Category Managers and Finance teams at Albertsons set and adjust the forecasts that drive category budgets. They used to run everything on printed reports and emailed spreadsheets, manually fixing discrepancies every single week. After talking to users, I found this workflow failed to meet their needs.

Without corporate finance direction, their intuition-led projections and edits triggered version chaos across teams.

Design workshop

I led a cross-functional workshop to map the planning cycle and discovered key stakeholder pain points and opportunities.

The Allocatr workshop board: a forecast adjustment activity tracing reports from SMIC level up to the twenty-one department roll-up and the Monday finance meeting, above a journey map laying each role's deliverables across the annual, quarterly and weekly planning cycle.

How might we let Category Managers and Finance teams use reporting and business intelligence directly for category growth, instead of rebuilding it by hand in Excel?

Opportunities

Based on the workshop, I guided my team to develop the core MVP features.

One editable interface for every role I split roles into a view-only leadership dashboard and an editable, audited sheet for operators.
A modern data dashboard with Excel-like conventions To overcome Excel resistance, I used the grid UI from Albertsons’ UDS Design System, combining familiarity with modern design.
AI-assisted features I explored AI automation to tackle repetitive tasks and give the team a fresh analysis tool.

The solution

Early design exploration

I started by creating the foundational tables for the adjustment worksheet, adding audit trails and approval flows as core functions for Category Managers and the finance team.

PMs advocated for a data visualization concept

I prototyped PM-requested heatmaps and bar charts, but ultimately pushed back against them for two key reasons.

The National Forecast Projection Tool with a deviation heatmap: divisions down the side, grocery categories across the top, each cell shaded by how far actuals ran from projection.

The data visualization masked the data and distracted users from their intended task (forecast adjustment).

Workshops showed that users’ mental models favored Excel layouts over new designs, so adoption was low.

I moved ahead by defining core features: an adjustment drawer for line-item edits and multi-line adjustments with full audit trails.

Audit trail

Recording every divisional change gave departments clear visibility into affected versus untouched desks through side drawers on the adjustment table.

Before and after: the first audit history panel beside the final one, which adds period tabs, the department and desk it applies to, and a difference column.

The initial design: before and after adjustment changes captured for each line, with the reason shown only on hover.

The final design: department, category, the differential amount and the reason all shown outright, split by period.

Dashboard

In parallel, I built a read-only dashboard with Quarter-to-Desk drill-downs, timestamps, and custom filters for individual stakeholders.

Initial state

Color coding - blue totals and light-green period data created a clear visual hierarchy that passed user testing.

Final state

Cascading rows and complementary colors enabled weekly drill-downs across complex data segments.

Action bar

I moved utility tools into a sidebar action bar, cutting main-frame clutter and boosting visual focus.

AI-assisted aggregator

I positioned AI as a suggestion layer rather than full automation, prioritizing user trust over quick ROI.

Impact

75% adoption rate in Q3 2025

A top priority for Albertsons’ finance team in FY25–26, the rollout gained swift traction across 600+ merchants and analysts.

38% of changes tracked, Q3 25

Capturing budget changes with clear rationales gave teams far greater accountability during financial planning meetings.

Reflection

Prototypes are tools for objective alignment

Using rapid prototyping allowed me to reveal and mitigate user bias across various use cases, anchoring difficult conversations to drive objective decision-making.

Adopting new technology requires patient change management

Introducing AI meant pairing design with user education. I had to guide users carefully through these unfamiliar benefits, which reinforced that successful change management requires time.

Thank you for reading!

Check out more of my work ↓

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