Enterprise B2B Platform · 2024–2025

Item Management

Empowering 600+ vendors to seamlessly onboard products into Albertsons Partner Portal - reducing setup time from 6 days to 4 while mitigating $2.5B in legal risk through streamlined compliance and data validation.

Item Management — cover showing the enterprise item onboarding interface
Timeline
July 2024 – April 2025
Role
Senior Product Designer
Impact
250M+ SKUs · 21 hrs/week saved
Business Challenge

Legacy tools creating operational bottlenecks

Salsify and Syndigo tools became cumbersome, causing a 46.5% drop in user engagement and 62.8% increase in vendor disputes with potential legal implications.

The Core Question

How might we help vendors, merchants, and distributors maintain transparent, high-quality item data while seamlessly collaborating across business units?

6 days
Item setup time vs. 4 for competitors
8
Approvals causing communication bottlenecks
4.5 hrs
Daily merchant review time
28%
Asset data requiring workarounds
1
Fragmented legacy systems prevented scalability for growing business needs
2
Inaccurate item attributes and asset collection led to $2.5B legal risk exposure
3
Operational inefficiency from manual workarounds disrupted merchant and vendor workflows
User Research

Understanding the complex approval ecosystem

Mapped the intricate workflow between vendors and internal merchants to identify friction points and design opportunities across multiple approval layers.

1
Vendor Draft
Vendors create item proposals with product attributes for business approval
2
DM / NM Review
Divisional & National Merchants approve, deny, or request revisions
3
Final Validation
MDS/RA/SC performs final approval for supply chain distribution
Key Insight
MDS teams possess override authority to bypass DM/NM approval, creating multiple approval paths that required flexible, intelligent design solutions.
Fragmented User Groups
Vendors, Divisional Merchants, National Merchants, and MDS teams — each with distinct workflows and decision-making powers.
Navigation-Centric Legacy
The old tools primarily helped users navigate systems rather than efficiently manage item data and approvals.
Data Mismatch
28.4% information mismatch due to edge case handling failures across vendor-submitted item attributes.
Long Creation Flow
Multiple approval steps with no clear starting point led to high drop-off rates and communication bottlenecks.
Item Management research artifact — workflow mapping
Item Management research artifact — user insights
Design Strategy

Core principles guiding the solution

Established strategic principles to address complexity while maintaining clarity and accountability throughout the 250+ million SKU management system.

Evaluation
Validation through forms enables successful item setup with merchant oversight
Organization
Frictionless data management between vendors and merchants for optimal item health
Accountability
Data segmented by supply chain, compliance, and digital attributes for clarity

Six-Phase Item Creation Structure

Overview
Logistic specifications
Hierarchy
Pallet / Case / Pack structure
Compliance
Safety standards
Selling Attributes
Digital assets
Category
Item-specific data
Distribution
Warehouse / DSD channels
Solution Overview

Strategic improvements across the platform

Targeted solutions addressing temperature handling, real-time validation, compliance restructuring, and asset management.

Attribute Formatting
Formatted the Attribute list
More than 160+ unique attributes were spread across platform without a standard format
Impact: Merchant and Vendor community saved half the time to set up the item
Real-time Validation
Data Catalog Integration
28.4% information mismatch due to edge case handling failures across attributes.
Impact: 10 of 11 attributes validated in real-time with data science team support
Compliance
Mitigated $2.5B Legal Risk
Step-by-step compliance created friction; unstructured attributes caused confusion.
Impact: Strengthened safety standards, draft previews improved accuracy
Asset Management
Streamlined Digital Asset Library
Unscalable asset management needed a new approach for hierarchy structures.
Impact: Table format via A/B testing, easily scalable for hierarchy structures
Item Management solution screen — streamlined onboarding interface

Hierarchy Maintenance for maintaining Item Supply Chain

Digital asset management workflow for product image attributes

Impact

Measurable outcomes delivered

Quantifiable improvements across vendor engagement, merchant productivity, and operational efficiency while building scalable design systems.

$2.5B
Potential savings through compliance redesign
21 hrs
Weekly time saved per merchant
60%
Component library growth
80%
Albertsons SKUs covered
60%
More time-efficient setup
72%
Vendor acceptance rate
Design System Impact
Scaled UDS (Universal Design System) reducing design debt through reusable components. Partner and cost pods leveraged components due to development feasibility.
Process Efficiency
Merchant dashboard mirrored vendor interface, reducing learning curves by 27% and improving override efficiency by 14% through collaboration.

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