Finance & operations enhancements for the shipping industry — MIND

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UX Lead
Port & marine management
Back-office software
Financial operations
2023-4

Transforming finance & operations for a global port management company.

I lead UX design and research on a digital transformation programme, improving cashflow visibility, streamlining workflows, and embedding UX thinking as a strategic function.

Led foundational UX for an internal platform transformation across finance and operations

Focused on system-level design, data relationships, and mental models

Worked cross-functionally to frame and align on problems lacking clear ownership

Worked in a highly regulated, domain-heavy environment with significant organisational and technical constraints

Context & Challenges

Inchcape is a 170-year-old maritime services provider with global reach, but its internal workflows were outdated, fragmented, and deeply manual. Processes differed by region, finance and operations weren’t in sync, and systems relied heavily on spreadsheets, inboxes, and siloed knowledge.

Brought in as UX Lead during a major digital transformation programme, I was tasked with shaping the UX strategy, managing a cross-functional team, and helping Inchcape transition from reactive workflows to scalable, user-centred systems.

Legacy manual workflows

Coordination between agents, vessels, and shore teams relied on sprawling, manually updated Excel files, full of duplicated effort, inconsistent structure, and invisible dependencies.

Research and discovery

Transforming a global company with hubs across 60 countries presents the challenge of ensuring engagement with all stakeholders. To address this, I established regular weekly calls with both senior stakeholders and on-ground agents, which allowed me to embed myself in their day-to-day workflows.

Visiting Inchcape port operators on-site was crucial for understanding their operations, enabling me to design tools that genuinely meet their needs. The insights gained were synthesised during team workshops and discovery sessions, allowing the wider team to analyse the findings, achieve clarity, and align on our opportunities and strategic design goals.

Strategic approach

The thematic discovery surfaced patterns across departments. Based on thying I identified four key areas for UX intervention:

Cash allocation and reconciliation
Billing lifecycle management
Customer query resolution
Operational dashboarding

We approached each not as isolated tools, but as opportunities to shift how responsibility, visibility, and decision-making flowed across Inchcape.

Cash allocation tool

Problem
Finance staff were manually reconciling payments across dozens of global bank accounts, a time-consuming, error-prone process.

Solution
We built a unified interface that aggregates bank data, syncs with the billing database, and supports complex reconciliations (e.g., split payments).

Outcome

~10 hours/week saved
Reduced risk of misallocations
Greater cashflow transparency across 40+ regions

Billing & accounts workflow

Problem
Completed services weren’t triggering billing — operations and finance were out of sync, resulting in delayed invoices and revenue.

Solution
We built a live dashboard that connects operational data with finance workflows, allowing teams to track job progress, assign billing tasks, and invoice more efficiently.

Eliminated billing lag
Boosted team accountability
Reduced delayed payments

Customer query management

Problem
Customer queries came in from multiple channels, were untracked, and often unresolved, damaging relationships and delaying payments.

Solution
We proposed a lightweight collaboration layer within the billing system, enabling tagging, threaded comments, and resolution tracking per service line.

Outcome
Though partially implemented due to technical constraints, the concept was adopted by the VP of Technology as a model for future systems.

Operational dashboards for agents on the ground

Problem
Shipping agents operate under tight time constraints and lack real-time operational visibility, especially across multiple ports.

Solution
We designed a flexible dashboard architecture:

Role-based custom views
Live data for job tracking and port logistics
Mobile-accessible for agents in the field

Outcome
Faster decision-making, improved port management, and easier onboarding across diverse contexts.

Dashboard evolution

We tested various concepts and layouts to determine the most usable version for on-site agents. Agents prioritised urgent tasks and actions, like arriving vessels and overdue payments. The task panel performed well in usability tests, so we included it in all iterations. The final layout features a modular design with vessel cards and customisable widgets.

Building a universal design ecosystem

My team and I collaborated closely with the Head of UI and his team to develop a shared library of UX atoms and patterns. Given that Inchcape is a large global company with many teams requiring different tools and interfaces, we recognised that maintaining consistency would be a massive challenge.

Our objective was to create an adaptable system by identifying key taxonomies and ensuring we use shared atoms across products. We built this system from the ground up, implementing a shared taxonomy and logic to embed consistency into everything we create.

Organisational and platform-level impact

I embedded UX into Inchcape’s decision-making culture.

Rationalised fragmented workflows and data relationships across legacy systems
Led company-wide design walkthroughs and 1:1 stakeholder sessions to align leadership
Reduced organisational risk by clarifying system behaviour before implementation

Created UX foundations that enabled subsequent delivery phases to proceed with confidence

UX Lead: Yarden Gur
UX Designers: Tunc Karadag, Amar Wandere
UI Lead: Josh Butcher
UI Designers: Vlad Neuman, James Hardwick
Service Designer: Sujeban Susilakanthan
BA: Martin Williams