Turning User Pain into Product Power
iTradeNetwork Platform
Order Maestro (OM)
Skills
Product design
User research & testing
Stakeholder management
Interactive prototyping
Nov 2020 – Present
Amir Rashidifar, Kristi Allen, Nicole Wilson.
Sr. UX/UI Designer
About
iTradeNetwork is the technology engine driving the food supply chain throughout North America.
iTradeNetwork unites the world’s leading retailers, distributors, and suppliers on a single, intelligent platform that seamlessly integrates order management, procurement, logistics, and traceability. In an industry where freshness, speed, and precision are mission-critical, we empower our partners to minimize waste, reduce costs, and act with data driven clarity faster than ever.
If you’ve eaten today, chances are iTradeNetwork played a role in making it happen.
The problem
Stuck in the Past, Losing the Future
OrderMaestro is currently the second-largest product offering within iTradeNetwork’s portfolio, and it has successfully secured three out of the five largest food service operators in the industry, a testament to its foundational value and market relevance. However, despite this strong foothold, the product has struggled to attract new customers, onboarding only two new accounts in the past three years.
The core issues stem from a significantly outdated user experience and legacy technology infrastructure that limit the platform’s adaptability and scalability. These limitations have resulted in clunky, inefficient workflows that hinder productivity and frustrate users. Moreover, OrderMaestro’s current restriction to desktop access is fundamentally misaligned with the operational realities of our target users, 75% of whom spend the majority of their workday on the move, visiting sites, managing vendor relationships, or overseeing logistics in the field.
As a result, the platform not only fails to meet modern usability expectations but also creates friction in mission-critical tasks that should be seamless and intuitive. This mismatch between user needs and platform capabilities is stalling growth, diminishing customer satisfaction, and putting OrderMaestro at risk of losing relevance in an increasingly competitive and mobile-first market.
Order Visibility
Users don’t know what happens with their orders
Outdated UI
It’s hard to close sales with old UI patterns
Machine Learning
No predictions of the future orders
The problem solution
Freedom to Work from Anywhere
To reverse stagnating growth, improve customer satisfaction, and reclaim our competitive edge, we are reimagining OrderMaestro as a fully modernized, mobile-first B2B e-commerce platform tailored to the real-world needs of food service professionals. This transformation includes launching OrderMaestro on mobile devices and tablets, empowering users to manage orders and streamline procurement from anywhere, whether they are in the field, in transit, or off-site.
This enhanced version of OrderMaestro will feature a completely updated user interface and a vastly improved user experience that minimizes friction and reduces the time spent on routine ordering tasks. By aligning the platform with how our customers truly work on the go, we not only improve efficiency and transparency across the food service supply chain but also enable our users to use OrderMaestro as a selling point for winning new business.
To ensure we meet user expectations, we will conduct comprehensive user interviews, analyze competitor solutions, and run usability studies to gather actionable insights. Feedback loops will be integrated into the design and development process, enabling continuous iteration and refinement throughout the process. The inclusion of machine learning capabilities will further enhance the experience by streamlining operations, anticipating needs, and improving overall decision-making.
This renewed OrderMaestro will be more than a too. It will be a competitive advantage. With this modernization, we aim to reduce customer churn by at least 10%, empower our sales teams with a more compelling product, and accelerate our market penetration.
User-validated insights
Personas
The team crafted and validated 12 personas over 6 products, which served to guide the teams design decisions that ensure they met the needs of specific user types
Journey Maps
Understanding user motivations, needs,
and pain points allowed designers to
identify areas for improvement and create more seamless and satisfying customer experiences
Empathy Maps
Designers socialized with product and engineering teams to help them move beyond assumptions and get closer to truly understanding their users
Comparative Analyses
Designers were required to perform market research including feature-specific comparisons to understand market fit and demand
The design solution
Creating a first-in-class SaaS Experience
We began reimagining the iTradeNetwork platform, based on our research findings, and involved several major clients along the way for validation.
We didn’t stop there. With AI on the horizon, the team moved quickly to provide additional value across our platform. A period of innovation began that continues to this day.
Ensuring visual and functional consistency
After performing heuristic evaluations and user feedback sessions, product designers created a unified library of reusable components, styles, and patterns for use across the platform. We partnered with our marketing team to ensure color palettes, typography, and imagery were supporting our newly redesigned branding.
This transformation not only to improved accessibility and user experience, but also to expedite design and development exponentially for the organization.
Watch the transformation
The outcome
The new OrderMaestro boosted task completion by 93%, cut time-on-task by over half, and improved user satisfaction.
The redesign and mobile/tablet integration of OrderMaestro significantly enhanced usability, speed, and satisfaction validating the modernization efforts and setting the foundation for reduced churn and increased adoption.