As the Lead for Maersk's invoicing, payment, and checkout experience, my primary goal was to enable the team to build a seamless, transparent, and user-friendly financial management system that addressed the complex needs of our global shipping customers. This project involved setting up design principles, developing a robust information architecture, gathering actionable insights and enhancing user flows to create a more intuitive and efficient platform. The solution allowed customers to manage invoicing, make payments, resolve disputes, and streamline financial operations through self-service capabilities—all within Maersk's MyFinance portal.
Enable our small & medium size customers to do self-service finance with MyFinance. Given there are sufficient customers in the long trail, they can make up-to or exceed the revenue generated by the superstar customers combined together.
Therefore we will focus on 80-90% of the use cases. This included regulatory compliance for different countries, Migration from old SAP invoicing solution, Improving the self service capabilities such as refunds, disputes etc.
At the heart of this design were five guiding principles that shaped every design decision while making the Maersk core values actionable in the product strategy:
When we began redesigning the invoicing, payment, and checkout experience for Maersk.com, we faced a fundamental challenge—we had no clear understanding of who our users were. Instead of making assumptions, we took a data-driven approach, combining three key methods to uncover user behaviours and needs.
Clickstream Analysis: By analysing user interactions on our internal clickstream dashboard, we identified navigation patterns, pain points, and frequently used features.
User Questionnaires: We directly asked users about their roles, challenges, and expectations, helping us validate patterns seen in the data.
Referral Pathway Analysis: Using Google Analytics, we examined which sections of Maersk.com users arrived from, giving us contextual insight into their intent and primary objectives.
Leveraging strong datasets from Medallia, internal clickstream dashboards, and Google Analytics, we distilled our users into broad personas such as accountants, freight forwarders, and logistics coordinators. This segmentation provided clarity on their Jobs to Be Done (JTBD)—whether they were focused on reconciling invoices, managing shipments, or handling disputes.With this foundation, we were able to design experiences that aligned with real user behaviors, ensuring our solutions addressed their specific needs and workflows.
CSAT 80%
- Ensure smooth customs clearance process for clients' shipments
-Handle proof-of-payment documentation efficiently and accurately
- Minimise delays and errors in the payment verification process
CSAT 83%
- Ensure seamless payment handling to avoid delays in shipping processes
- Streamline payment procedures to save time and effort
- Maintain clear communication channels with the finance team for prompt issue resolution
- Access a user-friendly online payment system that simplifies the payment submission process
CSAT 74%
- Streamline Payment Processes- Ensure prompt reconciliation of payments
- Maintain transparent communication with payment system provider
- Utilize a user-friendly interface for team navigation
- Ensure responsive customer support
CSAT 70%
- Streamline the payment process to save time and effort
- Ensure accurate and timely submission of payment proofs
- Receive prompt confirmation and acknowledgment of payments
- Easily access and manage invoices and outstanding balances
- Seek responsive customer service for any payment-related queries
CSAT 66%
- Streamline payment processes to ensure timely and accurate transactions
- Maintain clear records of all financial transactions for auditing purposes
- Improve efficiency by reducing manual efforts in payment handling
- Enhance communication with the account team to resolve payment
related issues promptly
CSAT 75%
- Ensure timely and accurate processing of payments for shipments
- Simplify the payment verification process to minimize delays
- Have direct access to the OOG department for urgent queries
- Receive prompt responses from Maersk regarding inquiries or issues
The first challenge was to create an information architecture that echoed how our customers interact with their invoices and payments. By conducting extensive research, including customer interviews and task analysis, we mapped out the mental models of users working in complex financial ecosystems. This enabled us to group tasks logically, ensuring that high-priority actions, like paying an invoice or checking payment status, were easily accessible.The new architecture prioritised bulk actions, allowing users to process multiple invoices at once through features like a sticky panel for batch selections and nested accordions to manage detailed information.
To meet the diverse needs of global customers, with very different ways of working across the globe, we developed a unified approach to payments under the concept of Payment as a Service. This introduced flexible, self-service capabilities across multiple touchpoints. There-by putting in foundational blocks for integrated payments across Maersk product and brand catalogue.
We introduced an itemised dispute feature that allowed customers to select individual charges from an invoice and flag them for dispute, reducing friction and improving trust in the process. The design was closely tied to our transparency principle, showing how charges were calculated and providing clear justifications.
All participants identified a need for manual disputing capabilities, in case the auto-resolution is not sufficient enough. Further, most participants could not find the "Manual dispute" button
.svg){kind=small}
A need for more complex communication on the UI to support the manual dispute handling process
The users' expectations – they expect a wide variety of disputing challenges, thus if not covered by the auto-resolution solution, they expect to maintain a manual control over a dispute
Most participants had to be assisted in submitting a dispute case. General confusion between what to press: generate dispute or update invoice
A need for more prominent indication on the UI to support the sequencing of invoice editing vs. dispute case submission
All the participants felt that showing the invoice breakup is
quite useful and would help them save time in calculating
the disputable charges.
• It’s helpful to see all the charges, brings transparency.
• It will reduce back and forth with the dispute agents.
Agents have different pricing than promised on the customer contracts.
The invoice was charged according to an old contract.
One of the more complex aspects of the project was creating an intuitive handover flow for third-party payments and introducing robust access management features. This allowed for better control over who could approve or reject payments, which streamlined internal workflows and reduced potential errors. This feature allowed multiple roles within a company to engage in the invoicing process while maintaining clear accountability and control over approvals.
To increase visibility into real-time charges, we introduced the concept of a live invoice, providing users with continuous updates as charges were applied or resolved. This was crucial for enhancing transparency and building trust, ensuring customers could see the latest cost calculations and adjustments at all times.
The game construct is similar to a quiz, where each question has three answers the users need to choose the correct answer in the shortest time possible!!. The products in the game were set on a random mode and the user could see any combination of ten products from a library of over 50 products. The game runs in-app environment.
