Advanced Reporting Tools
Lightspeed, 2023
Overarching goal
Research and discovery
To understand the specific pain points, my product manager and I conducted:
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User interviews with retailers who frequently generate reports to understand their workflows.
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Survey to assess how often users accessed the same reports and which configurations they found most critical.
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Competitive analysis of similar reporting tools our existing merchants are currently using to identify patterns, gaps, and opportunities.
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Scheduled reports
About the project
A feature that enabled merchants to automate the generation and distribution of scheduled reports. This feature allowed users to define specific times for reports to be sent, eliminating the need for manual setup each time. By automating this process, our solution reduced repetitive tasks and saved merchants significant time.
Problem Statement
Merchants need to regularly distribute data insights, inventory updates, and sales performance metrics to internal stakeholders. Before this feature, they had to generate these reports manually each time, which was time-consuming and increased the likelihood of errors. Our goal was to create a simple, reliable, and automated process for report scheduling.
Solution
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Intuitive setup wizard: A step-by-step process for quick scheduling with minimal steps and clear labeling.
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Customisation options: Flexibility in curating any report configuration, scheduling frequency, and recipients.
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Preview and confirmation: The user will be able to preview what the report looks like before creating the schedule, while a summary screen allows them to review and edit settings before finalising.
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Scheduled reports dashboard: I included a centralised place where users could view all active scheduled reports, edit them, or delete them as needed.
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Error handling: Notifications if reports failed to send, with a clear message why.
2
Saved reports
About the project
A feature that enabled merchants to save their frequently accessed reports with customised configurations, so they could access critical data insights instantly without repetitive setup. This feature streamlined report retrieval, improving user efficiency and enhancing data-driven decision-making.
Problem Statement
Merchants rely on specific data insights to track performance, manage inventory, and drive sales. However, configuring reports every time was tedious and time-consuming, often leading to inconsistencies. The goal was to allow merchants to save commonly accessed reports with preset filters and settings, providing a one-click solution to access these reports on demand.
Solution
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Save report feature: Merchants that have unique workflows can customise their own reports and save all configured filters and parameters. This also allowed managers to setup pre-configured reports for their staff to use.
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Persistent configurations: Saved settings remained consistent across sessions and devices, ensuring that merchants accessed their reports exactly as configured without redoing any setup.
3
Pre-prepared reports
About the project
We created 5 pre-prepared reports that are tailored to merchants’ needs, offering clear, actionable insights and eliminating the need for them to manually sift through raw data. The goal is to help merchants make data-driven decisions with ease and gain insights without requiring advanced data analysis skills
Problem Statement
Merchants are faced with an overwhelming amount of data from different sources—sales, customer behavior, inventory, etc. However, many merchants are not equipped with the necessary tools or knowledge to make sense of this data. The core challenge is the high learning curve associated with understanding which metrics are most important, how to combine data sets, and how to derive actionable insights.
As a result, merchants struggle to leverage available data, leading to suboptimal decision-making and missed business opportunities.
Impact
The combined impact of these features was significant, resulting in both time savings and enhanced business value:
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Increased Efficiency: By automating repetitive tasks, merchants saved approximately 11 hours per month, freeing up valuable time to focus on strategic activities that directly contributed to business growth.
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Enhanced Marketability: These sophisticated features enabled the product to meet the demands of mid-market merchants with large-scale, complex needs, strengthening its appeal in a competitive market. Sales teams leveraged these improvements to better position the product as a robust solution for high-demand environments, leading to an increase in Average Revenue Per User (ARPU).
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Together, these outcomes supported the dual goals of streamlining merchant operations and elevating the product’s value proposition to appeal to a broader market segment.