License Procurement
Workflow (SOP) Design
My Role
UX Design Service Manager (Individual Contributor)
Timeline
January~March, 2024
Contributors
IT, Finance,
Invested Studios, etc.
Deliverables
End-to-End Delivery
Design centralized license procurement management with benefits-accountability mechanism to boost negotiation power, cost-saving, workload reduction, and efficiency of multi-lateral workflow collaboration.
The State:
Will Be Shipped
(Current: Partially Shipped)
Main Focus
Service Design;
Workflow Architecture;
Strategy Design


The Context
When I was doing stakeholder research for computer imaging and license management workflow design, I heard many complaints from frontline IT-Ops that license procurement is time-consuming and complicated, which is also outside their job duties. However, they have to work on it since license procurement is related to license management, and there's no procurement team.
After discussing with the director, we turned the license procurement workflow design into a separate project.


The Research
Understanding the Complexity and the Stakeholders
My research spans the entire design process. For each synthesis analysis, I weighted potential impacts, raised targeted questions, employed the best possible approach for each question, and continuously reflected with critical thinking on how to boost value and workload reduction effectively.
The Methods:
01, Stakeholder Interviews
02, Co-Sketch of Current Flow State
03, Negotiation Observation
04, Problem Breaking Down
05, Impact Leveraging
06, Sample Statistics & Analysis
07, White-Boarding Brainstorming
08, What-If Analysis
09, Why Why Analysis


The Problem
Within the American Region, I conducted several rounds of research through 1 on 1 interview. Each round of interviews went through staged analysis to deeply explore the causes of key blind spots or pain points.
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I talked with all frontline IT-Ops to understand their challenges with license procurement and management, validated the detailed procedures with financial staff, engaged with some studio heads on pain points that license problems bring to daily operations, and discussed with the director for the key limitations.
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I considered the correlation with the other two projects (computer imaging and license management workflow design), which will be highly impacted by license procurement, utilized holistic thinking, broke down and analyzed the main pain points of the current state, and summarized below:






How might we ensure sufficient license to satisfy different users' needs for daily operations while liberate the frontline IT-Ops from the complicated and lengthy license procurement process?
Centralized | Transparent | Multilateral
The Solution
In addressing the challenges in license procurement, it's crucial to thoroughly understand the root cause and the logic behind the license procurement with its dimensions, significance, potential of value creation, scalability, etc.
Meanwhile, maintaining focus on the ultimate purpose of license procurement, that is effectively satisfy the end users' needs with flexible approaches to address varying situations is equally important.
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So, I established two license procurement SOPs to streamline a trackable, accountable, transferable license procurement process with the mechanism and entry of multilateral workflow collaboration embedded to ensure benefits & accountabilities in place and facilitate overall IT operation efficiency.
Centralized License Procurement (Company Level)
Individual License Procurement (Studio/Team Level Level)



Core Strategy
The final solution (SOP + Policy) is the outcome of the integration of business strategy and design strategies. Constantly weighing business strategy & design strategies to have them mutually impact each other in each design stage is crucial for maximizing cost-saving and working efficiency.


Expected Impact


The Process
Strategy 01: Solve People Problem
Trigger Incentives w/ Significant Benefits

Establish strong performance possibilities, inspire employees with responsibility.
The Empathy Analysis
After I broke down the pain points into a deeper level (please see "The Problem" section), I realized that all problems can be attributed to people and workflow challenges.
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So I reviewed and re-take some the stakeholder interviews, re-summarized with the empathy map to figure out their deep needs. This is one of the empathy mapping examples.


The Root Cause
Together with all levels' empathy analysis, after deep critical thinking, I found that the root cause lies in structural conflicts between investment and return, whether monetary or not. That's why all stakeholders see it as a burden.


Rethinking:
The Value of Procurement
When faced with stakeholders' unwillingness to take care of license procurement and a lack of funds for a procurement team, I utilized holistic thinking with the perspective of the company's overall interests, and adopted reverse thinking to actively consider how to maximize the value of license procurement.
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After studying three negotiations, I discovered the business logic & power dynamics within the license procurement game relation.


The Decision
As a result, Centralized license procurement emerged as a crucial focal point, serving as a guiding principle alongside other decisions to resolve the issue.
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Centralized license procurement for increasing negotiation power.
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Accumulate procurement channels.
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Keep license procurement within IT for now.
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Design transferability for the future possible transition of accountability.

The Benefits & Motivation
I present how it benefits on different levels (the company, IT team, and the other two projects).
Then, I got the director’s confirmation and established the project.


Strategy 02: Solve Resource Allocation Problem
Multi-Dimensional Centralization

Boost negotiation power in license procurement, streamline processes, and save cost.
Labor Resource Comparison
I compared potential labor resources based on perspectives such as personnel cost, time differences, cross-regional communication, cultural fit, efficiency of coping with complexity, multilateral collaboration, and future accountability transformation, etc. regarding centralized procurement.
Then I chose the third option: the IT regional central office, and weighted the concerns to ensure they can be solved through workflow design.


Reflection &
Multi-Level Centralization
As mentioned in IT regional central office option, centralizing all teams' and studios' license procurement under a single regional office may not effectively resolve issues and could overload the central IT office.
The complexity of license procurement results from scattered documentation and inadequate statistics, as well as the nature of procurement process and compliance.
Therefore, centralizing licenses from different dimensions can effectively solve the concerns, especially it significantly reduced the repeated procurement process and increase license management efficiency with clear data.


Sample Statistics

To further determine the license procurement workload, I leveraged insights from a related project: computer imaging, where studios employ a wide variety of software. Subsequently, I selected one large studio and two smaller ones, using their software as a sample. The statistics revealed Over 90 different software types, leading to the following conclusions which prove centralized license management can significantly reduce workload:

Superposition Effects
After evaluated from the sample statistics, I further confirmed that multi-dimension centralization together with policy design (will illustrated in strategy 3), will achieve superposition effects through boosting time-saving (workload reduction), cost-saving (increased negotiation power with larger license pool), and regional data accuracy (transparency binding with benefits & accountability mechanism that will be explained in strategy 3).


Define the Scope
At this time, the direction and benefits are evident, with the assessment of the centralized license procurement workload falling within an acceptable range. I defined the scope of implementation for all overseas offices:
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Pilot Optimization:
The design covers all overseas regions (America, EU, APAC). It will be piloted in the American region first and iterated before being promoted to the other two regions.
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Regional Central Office:
For each region, a central IT procurement office will be selected for centralized license procurement. Selection criteria will balance factors like labor costs, time zone differences, procurement environments, and the needs of multilateral collaborative.

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Adaptable to Local Situation:
Each central office will adjust the Pilot SOP based on the local situation and synchronize the adaptable SOP to HQ with the differences indicated.
Key Stakeholders & Transferability
Beyond “things to do”, I add “what they care” in the stakeholder map to facilitate the value alignment, cross-functional collaboration, and possible future accountability transfer (switching license procurement from IT to the procurement team).


BEFORE having a procurement team
AFTER having a procurement team
Centralized Procurement Workflow Design
This Centralized Procurement SOP is the final version, iterated and refined alongside the Studio/Team Level Individual License Procurement SOP (explained in strategy 03 below).


Strategy 03: Solve Workflow Problem
Flexibility with Mechanism

Cope with varying situations by satisfying end-users’ needs while maintaining statistical centralization & multilateral collaboration.
Evaluation & Analysis
For centralized license procurement, after deducing potential scenarios by what if analysis, I identified concerns and designed the BCAR model for evaluation.


Reflection & Decision
After the BCAR analysis, I took a step back and reconsidered from two key perspectives:
1, The diverse situations and end user needs.
2, The necessity of centralized procurement.
Then I made the conclusion:
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Individual procurement SOP at the team/studio level are still needed.
Because while centralized procurement aims to unify management and enhance negotiation power, it isn't suitable for all situations due to varied end-user needs.
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Partial centralization in studio/team level procurement is essential.
Key activities like annual regional license statistics should include data of studio/team level procurement to guide future decision-making on centralized procurement and license related operations.

Design Flexibility through
Internal Charges & Policy
To implement team/studio-level procurement with partial centralized management, clear rights and responsibilities are crucial to avoid unnecessary communication costs and responsibility shirking.
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Unlike centralized license procurement, for individual procurement, teams/studios own the whole procurement decision-making process. Since they know the entire financial procedure from various other purchases, it is not a problem to complete the procurement process without IT. IT manages all licenses, including those purchased by teams/studios, for purposes like computer imaging and assigning license, etc.
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Effective internal charges, policies, and workflow design can reduce costs, increase efficiency, and ensure flexibility, transparency with in-place responsibilities.
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So, based on the above thinking, I designed the internal charges and policies as below:


Individual Procurement Workflow Design
Here is the Studio/Team Level Individual License Procurement SOP design. Together with centralized license procurement SOP design, it offers flexibility and leave entries to facilitate computer imaging and license management at both regional and studio/team levels.


Mechanism:
Benefits VS Accountability
I designed the mechanism within the policy for both centralized and individual license procurement, Essentially, it is for establishing a trackable feedback loop to ensure that accountability are in place through forming a mutual support and restrain relationship between benefits and accountability.
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It makes full use of the role of financial auditing, pushing all levels of procurement transparency to realize the centralization of documentation, statistics, and estimation. Meanwhile, the mechanism encourages centralized license procurement through better internal pricing, and still provides flexibility to teams and studios to cope with different license procurement situation that triggered by various users' needs.


Learnings & Reflections
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For solving complex problems, constant reflections with critical thinking are extremely crucial to re-evaluate the value, benefits, and possible consequences.
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Knowing what stakeholder care are equally important as knowing what they need to do, which will facilitate the overall cross-functional collaboration process.
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Establishing a mechanism with key factors that mutual support and restraint each other can help maintaining a healthy, efficient workflow with an effective feedback loop.
Scalability
For phase 1, I created Confluence templates for immediate use, including team-level license statistics and estimation reports, as well as regional license statistics and decision-making.
In the future, this could integrate with Agile platforms like Jira or ServiceNow for streamlined multilateral collaboration with both computer imaging and license management workflows. Alternatively, integrating into an internal product for real-time license recording and statistics is under planning to develop.


This Work is Very Special to me
As a UX Design Service Manager, I prioritize long-term impacts and problem-solving with healthy mechanism beyond just design.
Unlike the design solely focusing on creating a streamlined workflow, this design cares about stakeholders and their motivations. This perspective allows me to use reverse thinking to turn negative situations into positive incentives, even when faced with significant limitations.
In nature, this license procurement SOP design is for integrating resources to harness long-term and short-term dynamics to increase ROI (invested time & effort VS negotiation power & cost savings), efficiency, motivation, and accountability at all levels. It also unifies all factors by fostering a positive cycle of mutual support and restraint.
For this design, understanding the business logic and game play behind license procurement is crucial. It allows me to integrate business strategy into all design strategies and maximize benefits to the greatest extent.