Overview
Rose Rocket TMS (Trucking Management System) was in need of filling a gap in its product in order for carriers to be able to schedule and pay their drivers through the platform. Driver Calendar & Settlement is designed to solve that by helping carriers better plan out their driver’s schedule and provide accurate driver pay.
This new feature provides carriers with the ability to do more of their workflow within the RoseRocket TMS, making it one step closer to an all-in-one solution.
Role
Lead Product Designer, Workflows
—
I was the sole designer, working with a team of 4 engineers and a product manager.
Length
April - July 2021
What is Rose Rocket TMS?
Think about the Amazon delivery package sitting on your porch — What happens when you place the order? Who packages it? Who picks it up? Who delivers it? This is what Rose Rocket TMS does but for the trucking industry and on a slightly different scale. The Rose Rocket TMS allows brokers and carriers (FTLs: Full Truck Load & LTLs: Light Truck Load) the ability to create, manage, dispatch, track, and invoice orders all within one platform. The product also allows users to be able to chat with their drivers and customers and allows their customers to be able to track their order — all in one place.
Focusing on the must-have’s for carriers
Customers who use Rose Rocket enjoy using it for a variety of reasons but that doesn’t mean it’s the perfect all-in-one solution. The complexity of the trucking industry, allows us to be able to push out new features and improvements to the product. One feature became more apparent as we grew when we realized that there was a major hole within the platform that we needed to fix in order to close more deals and entice potential customers to want to use the Rose Rocket TMS.
Now let’s switch gears for a bit. Imagine if Steve Jobs created the iPhone but it didn’t make calls. Doesn’t make sense right?! Well, this was the problem we were running into with the TMS. The TMS had all these great features such as integrations, chat, and a customer portal but it didn’t have a lot of the core functionality that a TMS should have such as driver settlement, truck routes, and fuel imports. These were items that are a core part to any carrier’s workflow that Rose Rocket did not have.
This assumption was further proven when we discovered that we lost out on a large percentage of carrier deals in Q1 2021 online due to missing workflows and integrations specifically in regards to Driver Settlement & Calendar. Potential customers were making it very obvious that without a Driver Calendar and Settlement and specific ELD integrations, they weren’t going to purchase Rose Rocket as it was an important piece to their day-to-day process.
After understaning our key pain points, the objective was clear. RoseRocket TMS needed:
“The ability to create driver schedules and enable hourly pay and automatic deductions across multiple manifests.”
The challenges: holes within our application
Before beginning we needed to understand where the holes were in our platform. We looked at previous data and customers feedback to understand why what we implemented was not working. To start, when carriers tried to assign a driver to a manifest- they don’t know who’s already working. When they pull up the manifest table, they’re able to see who’s working but can’t tell who’s available.
More challenges…
Moving forward to the driver settlement side of our product, we learned through customer calls that carriers weren’t able to automatically pay their drivers via the TMS. All carriers were either using excel sheets to track hours or manually updating them within Rose Rocket. These issues were stopping Rose Rocket from become an all-in-one TMS that we wanted it to be.
Final challenge: build quick, fix later
The last challenge was not a product related but timeline related. The timeframe that we were given to design was 1 week— a timeline that is clearly unrealistic for the size of the project so we knew that we had to make some compromises. To begin, we were lucky enough to have some previous concepts based on some early research that we were able to resurfaced for a start. Since we knew exactly what we had to design but had to work out the details— we revised the concept so the development team could have something to start and work on while we went back and worked out the details.
We would then return back to user research and interviews while simultaneously trying to understand how and where we needed to change our design as we interviewed more people and the direction started looking clearer. Though not an ideal process — given the circumstances, we felt that this was the best approach.
Introducing Driver Calendar & Settlement
By understanding the challenge and problems we have to face, we designed Driver Calendar and Settlement in three weeks. Now let’s get into the details of the approach we took to get here.
Research first… kinda
It was important for us to do research even though we were already designing so we could validate some of the assumptions we had and get clarity on our customers workflows. We interviewed about 6 carriers that use RR in order to understand how they schedule and pay their drivers and made sure to focus on different types of carriers so we could fully understand how to design for everyone. About 2 weeks into the process, we interviews 4 carriers which was enough for us to put together our notes and understand the details and how we should modify the design to fit the needs of everyone.
The key findings
Since the pandemic, things have drastically shifted within the industry. Truck drivers became scarce and carriers would have difficulty looking and keeping them. Carriers would mentioned that they had to cater to the truck driver’s wants and needs in order to keep them happy. Our research and user interviews allowed us to uncover a lot of key details in regards to a carriers workflow but also keep in mind how things have shifted since the COVID-19 pandemic. This allowed us to find clarity in how to approach our designs.
Different types of drivers
There are drivers who work 6-3 Monday to Friday, while others are more variable and work 4 days on, 4 days off. This does not stay consistent and carriers could have both types of drivers.
Different types of shifts
Drivers aren’t working 8 hour shifts like we do, instead some could work 12 hours- others could work 18 hours and take a 3 day break. Things aren’t set in tone.
Different type of pay
There are different ways that a driver can get paid depending on what they agree on their contract. From per mile to per hour to per % of revenue, etc. They can get paid by one, some or all of these ways.
Two key thoughts
With the knowledge, challenges, and findings that we discovered in our research, there were two key thoughts that we used throughout our process to help us better design for all carriers regardless of the type of driver, shift, or pay they were using. The two key thoughts were:
Design with flexibility in mind
Driver’s are hard to come by. It’s important to create a calendar and settlement that allows carriers to choose how to schedule + pay drivers
Follow their workflow
Each carrier has a specific way of doing things. By mimicking their current workflow within RR, we can provide a seamless experience
How does it fit within Rose Rocket?
When building out the user flow, we wanted to provide a flexible experience that allows carrier to be able to customize schedule and pay easily. We wanted to make sure we gave options to the carriers so that they could mold Rose Rocket to their desired workflow.
Introducing Driver Calendar
Driver Calendar
This calendar allows users to be able to see multiple views all on one page. By doing this, we allow the flexibility to schedule time off and view what manifests the drivers are on at the same time and easily.
We also designed this calendar to include an ELD (Electronic Location Device) integration, allowing us to pull in the driver log so it can automatically detect the driver’s location and hours spent on the road. This is useful as it helps carriers track the driver’s whereabouts and ensure they are not going over their weekly hours.
Driver Settlement
We included a way for carriers to be able to customize the way each driver gets paid through their driver profile. By adding multiple options and our ELD integration, we can now generate accurate pay statements and schedule for each driver.
We also added the ability schedule driver’s on different pay schedules to allow for more flexibility for carriers to be able to pay drivers within the platform.
Changes fuelled by feedback
After designs, we ran the solution through carriers to get their feedback and thoughts. Overall, carriers were happy to see Rose Rocket implement a much needed Driver Calendar and Settlement but also let us know that the feature wasn’t perfect and could use some improvements.
We knew that given the timeframe, we were able to design an MVP of Driver Calendar and Settlement that we could improve and add to in the next few months once we get more carriers to start using it.
+ Positives:
“I love the ability to schedule recurring availability for my drivers”
“I like how the manifest is speaking with the calendar”
“The ELD integration takes this feature to be a 4/5”
- Negatives:
“I need to schedule more than one pay period- otherwise this is useless”
“Can I see the schedule when I assign a driver on the manifest page?”
“I’d move to drag and drop manifests and move them around”
Impact on closing deals and customer satisfaction
With development of the MVP closing out at the end of Q2 2021, we’re seeing more interest in Rose Rocket due to Driver Calendar and Settlement. Potential carrier customers are excited that Rose Rocket now has this feature with about 3 deals closed and counting in Q3 due to the new addition.
As for those who are currently in BETA and are using driver calendar and settlement, 70% of them approve using it and find use for it during our testing and feedback session.
Learnings and next steps
After designs, we ran the solution through carriers to get their feedback and thoughts. Overall, carriers were happy to see Rose Rocket implement a much needed Driver Calendar and Settlement but also let us know that the feature wasn’t perfect and could use some improvements.
We knew that given the timeframe, we were able to design an MVP of Driver Calendar and Settlement that we could improve and add to in the next few months once we get more carriers to start using it.
Design generally not specifically
Before interviewing carriers, we had a specific path and flow in mind in which we had to scratch after interviewing carriers with all sorts of different drivers. This made us realized that we couldn’t design for a specific type of carrier/driver but had to be more general in order to allow for customization.
Start small and build
When given this project, I felt completely overwhelmed with the timeline and the amount of knowledge I had to occur and do in a short period of time. I took a step back and decided to start with the calendar as it made the most sense to me which helped me better manage timelines.
What’s next
Driver Calendar and Settlement MVP is now complete. We now want to make improvements to the feature based on feedback from not only our current customers but potential ones as well. We want to ensure that we are making improvements that are useful for all carriers, not just one.
Some improvements that we have in the roadmap that we have discovered through our testing and feedback are:
Team Driver
Allowing users to be able to create teams within Rose Rocket and view them on the calendar as 1 driver
Default Driver Pay
Allowing carriers to be able to set a default set of pay items to assign to drivers without having to do everything manually
Driver Calendar Filtering
Better filtering options to help carriers easily look for the right driver to assign to a trip
Copyright© 2023 Jane Tran.