The Catalog Enrichment Platform empowers Walgreens vendors to deliver rich, detailed product descriptions effortlessly, enhancing the overall customer experience and driving business growth.
Problem
The process for vendors to set up products on Walgreens.com and the app was a significant bottleneck. Hundreds of vendors faced a time-consuming, error-prone, and highly manual onboarding process. Getting items onto the digital catalog required numerous steps across disconnected channels: Manual submission and approval of images, product descriptions, and metadata; Shipping and review of physical samples; Managing revisions and approvals via email, spreadsheets, and multiple legacy systems.
This inefficiency resulted in a slow speed-to-market, dramatically extending the time required to get new products available for purchase.
Solution
We designed and built a new in-house, web-based product catalog management platform specifically for our vendors. This solution focused on speed, efficiency, and collaboration:
Accelerated Submission: The platform streamlines the submission and approval of product images and essential metadata.
Automation: We automated repetitive and manual tasks, replacing legacy system reliance with a modern workflow.
Collaboration: The tool enables quick, direct collaboration between vendors and internal Walgreens item setup specialists, replacing cumbersome email chains.
Outcomes
The implementation of the new platform delivered significant, measurable results:
90% Reduction in Time-to-Market: The time required for product vendors to get their items live on our site was reduced from up to six months down to six weeks.
Resource Efficiency: Automation of repetitive tasks drastically decreased the internal resources and effort required by Walgreens specialists.
Improved Catalog Quality: By facilitating the submission of rich, high-quality product metadata, we significantly improved the findability and discoverability of items in our catalog, directly enhancing the overall customer shopping experience.
The Design Process
My team conducted extensive user research with internal stakeholders and multiple vendor representatives from prominent brands like Unilever and Procter & Gamble. This thorough investigation identified existing process challenges, and we meticulously outlined pain points and potential efficiency gains through detailed task flows.
We developed rapid prototypes for user testing and iterated continuously, incorporating feedback from our internal business and technical stakeholders, as well as key vendor representatives. Upon completion of the design process, we delivered multiple sets of wireframes with detailed instructional annotations. Additionally, we created high-fidelity design comps to guide front-end developers in building the HTML pages.
The launch and adoption of CEP have fundamentally improved the efficiency and accuracy of product management, underscoring our commitment to enhancing both vendor and customer experiences.
Sample Screen Designs
Sample Wireframes
This wireframe details the UI for product type assignment, illustrating how we build the metadata foundation that powers superior search and discovery. This crucial step is key to helping shoppers quickly navigate a catalog of tens of thousands of items:
This wireframe illustrates the process of downloading an item import spreadsheet, enabling Walgreens vendors to batch upload metadata for many products at a time:
This wireframe demonstrates how we guided the user through the critical task of categorization, ensuring data accuracy by presenting the most relevant product types and providing a clear path to create a new one when necessary:
