ExpenseThis
An Apple Watch app that lets users file expenses under 10 seconds
In Summer 2015, as a Product Management Intern on Concur Mobile team, I worked on making expense filing effortless. Our solution enhances the capability of Concur platform, using context-aware wearable computing and automation, to simplify expense filing user flows.
🚫 Limited details shared due to sensitive nature of information, as per NDA
TYPE
Team project with Concur Labs Team
PROJECT ASPECTS
Product Ownership, Project Management, Full-stack Software Development, UX Design, Presentation
MY ROLE
Product Manager (Ideation to Final Presentation)
Contributed to Ideation, UX Design, Product/Project Management and Presentation
TIMELINE
June - Aug 2015 (8 weeks)
PROBLEM
After a business trip, it’s difficult to recall the details of every meal. How many clients attended? Did you use a personal credit card, and, if so, which expenses were only for business?
Our research shows that submitting expense reports on time is the number one pain point of Travel & Expense (T&E) industry.
PROPOSED SOLUTION
With ExpenseThis app, you simply tell your Apple Watch “Expense this.” and your expense is automatically sent to Concur in real-time.
DELIVERABLES
We developed an Apple Watch app called ExpenseThis that utilized Yodlee API and Factual API to track and create expenses. Our node.js server enabled automated expense filing. I pitched the idea to the top executives at Concur and was selected as the "Best Intern, Summer 2015" for my work on this and AttendIt project.
PROCESS
Brainstorming for ideas/concepts/pain points
We were given a set of project directions such as Apple Watch, sharing and NFC. We started by brainstorming for ideas and pain points in the ecosystem to prepare a list of projects. Affinity diagrams were used during the process.
Data about key pain points and their impact in T&E industry
Next, I did market research to gather data for validating each project concept. I worked with key stakeholders and managers to gather requirements.
This shaped my understanding of T&E personas (not shared here), use cases and various scenarios.
I created user flows to reflect upon user stories proposed.
User Story Proposal Document
(recreated) User Flow Shorthand of MVP
Research. Develop. Validate. Repeat.
We prototyped MVP because this is a new concept and required fresh thinking. We reiterated in 2 week sprints and validated our weekly hypotheses to prove an unmet need. Final system architecture is not shared here but I would be happy to walk you through our final solution from a technical standpoint.
I used Jakob Nielsen's 10 heuristic principles to evaluate the MVP, prepared test cases (golden path + edge cases) to reveal gaps in the prototype and presented it to our managers for feedback. Eventually, I made a pitch with go-to-market strategy and business plans to higher executives at Concur.
this is what executives had to say:
“Tap - Speak - Done. I love it!
”
“You should stay back to ship this”
Secret sauce: Location from Apple Watch is mapped onto the last transaction on your credit card with a timestamp; an expense is created and sent to Concur as soon as the transaction record is found.
FINAL THOUGHTS
A large amount of my work involved validating ideas and modifying roadmaps using data from internal analytics, data science teams and through market research. During my first 8 weeks of internship, I managed development teams of both ExpenseThis and AttendIt involving 5 developers and 2 designers.
I used data from sources present in the ecosystem in order to make informed decisions while defining a product roadmap. Power of LEAN Startup mentality and Agile methodology were the key takeaways from this experience.