BuiltKojo Technologies2025

Cutting hours of manual entry out of construction quoting

Vendors were hand-keying hundreds of line items on quotes worth millions. I led the workflow redesign from onboarding through document scanning to review.

My role: Workflow design lead — current-state analysis, journey mapping, interaction design, usability testing
Focus: Product design, Analysis, User testing, UI/UX
Outcome: 701 unique users and 459 PDFs scanned in release week

Kojo's redesigned bid portal shown on desktop and mobile over a photograph of a glass high-rise under construction

Context

Kojo is a construction materials inventory platform. I led the workflow design for vendors responding to requests for quotes — onboarding through document processing to review.

Vendors not yet integrated traded emails with customer success, then manually entered every line item. Line items run into the hundreds. The quotes run from hundreds of thousands to millions. A tedious step sat directly in front of the most consequential transaction these businesses make.

The key decision

Start from recorded behavior, not the wireframes. I tested the existing designs internally and watched Fullstory recordings to find where vendors actually stalled. The redesign responded to real friction rather than assumed friction.

Existing manual entry screen with a dense table of requested line items, each row requiring unit price, tax, and lead time to be typed in — The table vendors were filling by hand — hundreds of rows, on quotes worth up to millions.

Existing bid portal showing a vertical sequence of steps for uploading a quote PDF, reviewing requested items, and submitting the total quote, all stacked on a single page

Flow diagram of the current state showing parallel paths for PDF actions, table actions, and yields actions, with decision points between them

Persona sheet for Mike Thompson, an inside sales representative at a supplier in Los Angeles, listing his jobs to be done, goals and motivations, challenges and pain points, and user roles and permissions

Wide current-state journey map made of sticky notes in horizontal lanes, tracking the vendor's steps from receiving an RFQ email through submitting a completed quote — Journey map built with my PM, integrations specialist, and customer success.

What I did

Three iterations, one page to stepper. The single-page version tested worse for a specific reason: on a quote with 300 line items, showing every stage at once meant vendors never knew whether they were done. Splitting it gave the work a visible end.

First iteration: a single page containing upload quote, review requested items, and submit total quote as three sequential sections — Iteration 1 — everything on one page.

Second iteration: a dedicated upload page with a four-step progress stepper across the top and a large drag-and-drop zone below — Iteration 2 — one task per page.

Kept the source PDF beside the extracted table. Vendors verify a scan without switching context — the step that decides whether they trust it.

Scan review screen with the original quote PDF displayed on the left and the extracted line items in an editable table on the right, with a confirmation banner above

Mapping screen pairing scanned quote line items on the left with the customer's requested RFQ items on the right, with dropdown controls to match them — Where automation and judgment meet: the system suggests, the vendor confirms.

Account registration screen for the Kojo bid portal, alongside a welcome panel explaining how to submit a quote — Iteration 3 — authentication entered scope once we needed to capture who was submitting.

Kept manual entry first-class, not a fallback.

Final entry screen offering two paths, upload quote PDF or manual entry, presented as two equally weighted cards

Tested with four participants — two internal, two external vendors. They understood the upload CTA and liked the dedicated pages. Fixes that came out of it: limit uploads to one file, rename the confusing “next” buttons, make scrollability obvious, consider bulk editing.

Outcome

Release week:

701 unique users on the new bid portal
459 PDFs scanned
333 quotes still entered manually

“You just saved me half the time it takes to enter a quote” — Tom, Commercial Pipe & Supply

The 333 is the honest number — a third of vendors bypassed scanning. That gap was next on my list.