SUMMARY

Saving Netflix millions through optimization and accountability

Based on the insights gathered, it became clear that Netflix was facing challenges with overspending in asset production and needed a solution to control costs. The project initially started with a 6-week contract but extended to one year as the scope expanded from North America/Canada to Latin America. Through the development of Grand Arcade, a management software solution, the problem of overspending was validated and addressed effectively.

Role

Product Designer

Year

2019-20

Producers, Vendors, Finance, PM, Engineers

XFN

Project

Web B2C SaaS

THE PROBLEM

Poor producer decision-making behavior, insufficient vendor accountability, and needless accounting efforts wasted millions

The asset production life cycle was full of inefficiencies coming from all 3 major user groups: Producers, vendors, and finance. During interviews I realized that much of the process was still “old school”, emails and phone calls. Updates, changes, and delays we

HOW MIGHT WE

Producers

Help producers make cost-saving orders while maintaining a high quality of work?

INSIGHTS

  • Valued high quality of work regardless of price because of its impact on their reputation/work success

  • Believed, “Were Netflix, we’re rich. We can afford to hire the best”. General belief that it wasn’t their money so who cares

  • Used vendors with a longtime relationship

  • Needed to see vendor portfolios, pain point

  • Used peer reviews but did so by yelling across the room

SOLUTION

I designed vendor profiles that housed portfolios, their workers, their rates, reviews, and ability to create order bundles. Each vendor would fill this out and be added to the marketplace for producers to browse. On the homepage we have a section for Netflix to feature a vendor they view as inexpensive but high quality. These designs help producers find cost effective options without reinventing their process.

Vendors

Create billing transparency to reduce overspending?

INSIGHTS

  • Accountants repeatedly sent emails to inquire about orders. Consistently ignored and blocked them from doing their job

  • They used multiple softwares to track and close orders.

  • Hoped to have a single software to track, manage, and ping producers with 1 click

SOLUTION

  • Designed a detailed order tracker with the ability to ping producers to close orders

  • By consolidating the entire order process in Grand Arcade we created visibility for accountants

Finance

Save time and make closing orders easier

INSIGHTS

  • Updates to the project were lost in emails or spoken over the phone. Hard to prove who said what when the final bill came

  • Managers could only see the initial cost and final cost. They wanted need visibility with inflight orders

  • Netflix wanted an approval process on overtime or any updates that increased cost.

SOLUTION

  • Created a timesheet for vendors to use on Grand Arcade

  • Overtime hours and changes would ping users for approval. 

  • All conversations go through GA for record keeping

  • Order cards with their current cost were on each producer’s homepage that managers could view at any time.

IMPACT

Increased investment from Netflix with global adoption.

As the product was being built while I was no longer with the company I would’ve tracked these metrics…

Overall production cost: Are producers using Netflix featured and less expensive vendors?

Finance team’s time spent to close orders: Are they spending less time pestering producers?

Accuracy of final order cost: Are we keeping vendors inline with improved transparency?