"Working with Kate granted me a new level of respect from my stakeholders, and helped me repair team relationships. She made me into one hell of a product manager."
Biz/Org
The Home Depot - Vendor Support Team
Year
2018
Retail
B2B UX
Product Overview
A centralized portal for B2B vendors to access credentials, documentation, onboarding, and security tools.
Led product strategy and delivery as a consultant PM embedded in the internal tools team.
Unified fragmented workflows across procurement, security, and IT.
Partnered with design leads to overhaul UX based on real vendor interviews and internal pain points.
Prioritized internal alignment across conflicting stakeholder groups.
Defined success metrics around ticket reduction and onboarding time.
Product Goals
How might we simplify vendor onboarding and access workflows while reducing dependency on support teams?
Home Depot’s internal teams were managing multiple legacy vendor systems, each with their own access protocols, onboarding docs, and credentialing processes. Support teams were overwhelmed by vendor confusion, while security teams struggled to enforce consistent practices. We aimed to centralize, streamline, and scale.
Enable vendor self-service and reduce internal support volume.
Align internal teams around a single onboarding experience.
Ensure consistent access control and documentation across systems.
Improve speed-to-productivity for new vendor integrations.
Challenges
Siloed internal systems and ingrained manual workflows.
Security and access concerns across multiple stakeholders.
Lack of reporting infrastructure to track improvements or adoption.
Culture of ad hoc support calls rather than scalable solutions.
Solutions
Designed a secure, centralized portal with unified login and credential flows.
Conducted journey mapping and vendor interviews to identify friction points.
Consolidated onboarding steps and surfaced the most-requested documentation.
Built stakeholder consensus through service blueprints and event storming workshops.
Championed support ticket categorization to measure downstream impact.
Outcome & Impact
Cut support tickets by 30%
Reduced vendor onboarding time by 45%
Helped internal teams adopt consistent, scalable vendor workflows
Set precedent for future internal tooling initiatives at scale.
