GR1 -

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MileageManager

Pam Chuang, Ari Dukes, Leo Espindle

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There are a few personas who represent the main users of our product. To create each persona we have interviewed people who perform user class function:

• Phyllis the Traveler
• Juan the Auditor
• Mary the Approver

Phyllis the Traveler

Phyllis is a salesperson and an experienced traveler.  She works late almost everyday and is always looking for new ways to make her daily job more efficient, especially for tasks that do not directly impact her performance at her job.  She has three kids, and therefore wants to maximize the amount of time she spends at home.  She is comfortable with using the internet from her daily job, but she is not necessarily up to date with the newest cutting edge technology.  She finds that doing reimbursements is the worst part of her day, and most of the time has to take care of her expense reporting at home, because she is not allowed to bill those hours to her work.  Phyllis wants an interface that is easy to use and will save her a lot of time.

Lessons learned from a business consultant (Traveler persona):

Things already done well for expense reporting:

• Company has their own homegrown system for business expenses
• Air, hotel, car rental was automatically input from company AMEX

Things that are not done well with regard to expense reporting:

• For mileage: "we end up estimating." This is likely a source of at best inaccuracy and at worst bilking.

Juan the Auditor

Juan is an auditor who has to deal with multiple systems.  Juan works in the finance department and has to transfer the data from expense reporting to the financial software used by the finance department for bigger expenses.  Juan enjoys his job because of the analytical aspects that he enjoys doing and also enjoys finding mistakes that people make.  Juan's primary role is to look at expense reports and compare line items to insure that there is nothing wrong between the receipts and expense reporting.  Juan also analyzes total travel expenses for all employees across the whole company and is always looking for incremental ways to improve travel expense reporting.

Lessons learned from auditor (Auditor Persona):

Things that are not done well with regard to expense reporting:

• Very manual process of comparing line items to ensure correctness
• Sending back when people make mistakes is very time consuming
• End up having to work with multiple systems at once

Mary the Approver (Travel Manager)

Mary is a sales manager who cares about dealing with her budget.  She has ten direct reports (including Phyllis) and just wants to see the big picture to see how her employees are spending money.  She generally only cares about big ticket items but will appreciate reducing waste in her budget as long as she does not have to put in any extra effort. She is very busy at work and with kids, and she does not have time to analyze individual line items but yet has to approve every expense report.  She consults with the traveler to help them plan where to go.  She is part of the initial process and a user of the system herself. She likes her job, which she has held for 30 years. She is less tech savvy than Phyllis.

Lessons learned from a VP of Sales (Approver Persona):

Things that are not done well with regard to expense reporting:

• Manager hand signs approvals.  Need a quick way to make sure that no line items are completely inaccurate
• People end up submitting all reports at the same time, and the system gets crowded all at once, therefore need a solution that can handle high volume and allow the person receiving the high volume to be able to deal with all the expenses.

Task analysis

There are a few main tasks involved with creating MileageManager.  These tasks include:

• Creating a trip
• Approving the trip
• Analyzing the trip

Creating Create a trip

Goal: Enter a trip into the system for eventual approval

Subtasks

• Decide where you want to go on your trip
• Enter/modify trip information
• Submit or Save the trip for further modifcation

Preconditions

• Have a traveler profile
• Need to know Know where you want to go
• Need Have an assigned approver
• Need a A personal car or and authority to go on create a trip

Time constraints

• Company policy for limit of timeHave to be before you get reimbursementtime limit between trip and reimbursement submission

Frequency of use

• Everyday - incremental data entry to input dataOnce a day

Approve a trip

Goal: sign Sign off on an a requested amount for mileage reimbursement for mileage

Subtasks

• View queue of trips to approve
• View details of a specific trip
• Approve/reject a trip

Preconditions

• Have employees Employees assigned to you
• Employees have to create a trip
• Have to have a profile
• your profile for approval
• Trip must be created and submitted by traveler
• Have an approver profileTrip should be submitted by traveler

Time constraints

• Company policy for limit of timeHave to be before employee gets reimbursementtime limit between trip and reimbursement submission

Frequency of use

• Once a week

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• Choose how you want to visualize information
• Check trends or rankings
• Go from trend/ranking to more detail (trips)
• high level data
• Dig in deeper on a certain traveler or a certain trip
• Flag a trip that looks questionable

Preconditions

• Trips Can only view trips submitted and approved
• Profile as auditor
• Authority to view multiple trips
• Authority to see analytics

Time constraints

• None

Frequency of use

• Every Many times a day

Domain analysis

Lessons Learned from Interviews

Lessons learned from the business consultant (Traveler persona):

Things already done well for expense reporting:

• Company has their own homegrown system for business expenses
• Air, hotel, car rental was automatically input from company AMEX

Things that are not done well with regard to expense reporting:

• "Meals were the worst", "we end up 'estimating' " (anything under a certain amount - depending on city - does not require receipts)
• Gas/mileage is done by the mile.
  

Lessons learned from VP of Sales (Approver Persona):

Things that are not done well with regard to expense reporting:

• Manager hands sign approvals.  Need a quick way to make sure that no line items are completely inaccurate
• People end up submitting all reports at the same time, and the system gets crowded all at once, therefore need a solution that can handle high volume and allow the person receiving the high volume to be able to deal with all the expenses

Lessons learned from auditor (Auditor Persona):

Things that are not done well with regard to expense reporting:

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