A unified platform for all Knauf orders

Knauf Digital is the innovation arm of Knauf Group (a 15+B global building materials leader with 43,500+ employees, operating in 90+ countries). The unit focuses on developing B2B digital products for the construction industry.

As PDM, I personally led all discovery and research phases, crunched the numbers, owned the design system and templates, and was directly responsible for the onboarding flow and key feature design. The team owned engineering, and delivery.

Dealer: B2B partners who sell Knauf materials to construction companies and manage order logistics.

The Problem

The lack of transparency created frustration for both dealers and Knauf, resulting in inefficiencies and low trust in the system.

• Constantly changing ETAs
• No unified tracking platform
• Different contact points per Knauf entity
• Manual customer updates consuming hours weekly

The Goal

Design a unified, easy-to-use order management platform that reduces friction, increases trust, and saves dealers time.

• Provide users a unified overview of all their orders live status & changes
• Give transparency to the deliveries on material level
• Help our customers work more seamlessly togehter

Contraints

Every brand. Every country. A completely different system.

• Each Knauf brand operated independently, and each brand ran different systems in each country. A brand wasn't just a sub-brand — in another market it was effectively a separate company. Consolidating that into a single order view required constant tradeoffs between technical feasibility and user-centricity.
• Scope changed frequently due to HQ reprioritisation and markets that weren't ready to adopt the new requirements on schedule. The roadmap was live and shifting throughout the 12-month build.
• Several markets had spent years building their own internal tools that served their needs well. Asking them to adopt a pan-European solution that was necessarily a compromise — optimised for the majority, not the exception — required months of political groundwork to even get a fair hearing.

I led field visits and interviews across 9 countries — logistics & warehouse management works in dealerships and on the construction site. We combined JTBD analysis, expert interviews, and a survey with 20 dealers in Europe.
Field shadowing • Expert interviews (9 countries) • JTBD analysis • UX surveys (n=20 EU).

Key Insights

• Changes in ETA = #1 priority.
• Dealers’ notification preferences vary widely.
• Users needed fast setup (Day 1 value).

PMF Hypothesis

If dealers have transparency about their deliveries, they will be able to better manage their customers, delivery points, and construction sites; returning daily.

Scope decisions Desktop-first; all-in-one app; design system prioritized to accelerate delivery across 4 apps.

• Cross Knauf Brands Order Overview See the status of any order from any Knauf brand or sub-brand.
• Calendar View Provide order & delivery data in an easy to grasp context that helps customers organize their day.
• Notification Settings Customize on event level what to get notifications on, and on which channel.

Key Feature 1: Unified Order Table

I created a single source-of-truth order table that consolidates all delivery information, replacing what used to require several calls or systems.

The single source of truth for all deliveries.

Highlights

All Knauf entities in one view

Think 10+ Knauf entities with their own contact... I created a single source-of-truth order table that consolidates all delivery information, replacing what used to require several calls or systems. Now dealers can see everything at a glance.

Customizable columns

Every customer has very different needs in monitoring their orders & deliveries. A one-size-fits-all solution was not going to be useful to any customer. So I gave our customers the ability to choose what they want to see, and in which order.

Simplified visual status

The delivery states for every Knauf entity where completely different, and even worse, the states of an order could change quickly. I standardized the delivery states for all entities; color-coded and icon-coded for a quick grasp of the status quo.

Impact

Dealers could see everything instantly, cutting down cross-team calls.

Key Feature 2: Calendar View

A bird’s-eye view of upcoming deliveries.

Highlights

Visual timeline of the week

Although tables are a great structured, and searchable view on orders, essentially orders and deliveries are about time. This calendar view now a birds-eye view on the day or whole week.

Easy day planning for warehouse teams

Displaying deliveries like calendar events, helps customers manage their own fleet, their warehouses, and their logistics more precisely. Without having to click through several orders, or even worse - calling the customer services.

Impact

Dealers reported fewer surprises and smoother operations.

Key Feature 3: Notification Settings

Personalized update preferences.

Highlights

Choose events to be notified about

In numerous customer interviews we've learned that each and every customer has very different preferences on what they want to receive notifications on. I've therefore designed a notification center that gives the user maximum customization.

Email, app, or SMS alerts

Not only the events, but also the channel differed. Not only from customer to customer. But a single customer might need one important event notification to be sent immediately via text, while the rest can be delivered by email.

Impact

Engagement and trust increased — users stopped “checking constantly.”

Key Feature 4: Share Order Details

Let dealers share live delivery info with applicators.

Highlights

• One link, always up to date
• Reduced double communication

Impact

Order Overview also accelerated how the whole team shipped. Components I built for the order table and calendar view were adopted across all four Knauf products, cutting delivery time by 40% portfolio-wide.

Seeing a well-validated product move faster than a sprawling one shaped how I structured the team going forward — formalised into the Knauf Growth Guild and company-wide UX Maturity Assessments.


Order Overview proved that transparency, done with precision, scales.

Our initial scope centred on the order table, which was the logical data structure. But in post-launch interviews, dealers consistently said the calendar view changed how they planned their week — not the table.
In hindsight, the mental model we mapped clearly showed that logistics is time-first, not data-first. We saw it in the research and still built the table first. I'd flip that sequence if I ran this project again.

On notification settings: we gave users maximum configurability from day one because interviews showed highly varied preferences.
That was right, but we underestimated how much that choice paralysis delayed time-to-first-value — many dealers didn't customise at all initially, which suppressed our day-7 retention numbers in the first month. Smarter defaults with opt-in customisation would have served both goals better.