Silo // 2024
Capital Onboarding
Enabling new customers to self-sign up for Silo and apply for capital funding in order to grow their business.
Overview
Silo’s Capital products offer unique value, but the processes surrounding them were not sustainable for scale. This project focused on simplifying and streamlining the way in which someone joins and onboards to Silo Capital. Beyond that, it set the framework for a modular onboarding experience to be reused across Silo.
Role: Lead Designer
I worked with product management, engineering, and internal operations to ideate, validate, and execute end-to-end designs.
Timeline: 5 months
September 2023–February 2024
Silo supports businesses in the perishable food supply chain industry. It helps growers, distributors, and retailers connect and automate their operations
Silo Capital offers unique financing solutions that align with the dynamics of the the food supply chain—setting it apart from traditional lending institutions in that is gives businesses access to capital more easily and quickly than ever before. This is game changing in that it helps make it through slow season, tap into new markets, or open that additional warehouse facility to move more product.
THE PROBLEM
Onboarding to Silo Capital is inefficient, time-consuming, and heavily reliant on manual effort—creating a barrier for users to sign up and hindering Silo’s ability to collect information and assess prospective capital users with confidence.
For customers
The process is unclear, unfamiliar, and complicated—they have to juggle multiple softwares and conversations to even apply for funding.
For Silo employees
Internal process are inefficient and messy—from email outreach to sifting through applications, copious amounts of time are wasted on tedious work.
THE OPPORTUNITY
By creating a centralized onboarding experience, we can facilitate growth for Silo Capital—providing customers the funds they need to expand their business while improving Silo’s operations and due diligence in vetting and approving these users more confidently and quickly.
The process
DISCOVERY
Pinpoint the pain points
The process of underwriting is far from simple. There is a lot of information to be collected at specific times, layered with compliance and verification checks (among other things). Before I could do anything else, it was crucial for me to understand how underwriting works and the current framework in which the Silo Capital team operates. By meeting with internal teams, it became clear that the process was fragmented and unorganized which contributed to larger breakdowns with information collection, efficiency, and the overall adoption rate for customers.
INSIGHT #1
Most workflows are handled outside of the Silo platform, piecing together conversations and manually tracking progress.
INSIGHT #2
More time is spent tracking down data and reviewing accuracy than reviewing actual applications.
INSIGHT #3
No two applicants are the same; each business has a unique background and requires specific information.
INSIGHT #4
Users are generally hesitant with change; they’re comfortable with their current processes.
STRATEGY
Pain points to guideposts
The insights I gained helped shape my design approach, which revolved around themes that addressed the issues for both customers and internal team members. Communicating my approach also created alignment and a clear sense of direction moving forward.
Centralize
Reign in the fragmented setup steps and streamline it to be cohesive and smooth.
Think modular
Lay a foundation for how onboarding should look across all Silo experiences.
Don’t reinvent the wheel
Utilize tried and true onboarding practices, harness familiarity, and prioritize simplicity.
PLANNING
Sequence the work
Given the amount of information to be collected and the nuances of collecting that information, I knew I needed to take a structured approach to chip away at a solution.
Map out the journey. Capturing the entirety of the experience served as a crucial tool to validate the workflow with my team and understand the scope of design.
Define the reusable setup flows. These defined “modules” would be implemented to be self-contained and therefore utilized elsewhere in Silo. For example, linking a bank account would look the same here as it does when setting up payments in the core platform.
Fill in the details and sequence out the steps. More time was spent further refining the information within each step and the order in which a user would see them—specifically looking at easing the user into the experience and leveraging earlier steps to pre-fill information further in the process.
DESIGN
Preliminary concepts
I focused my initial designs on organizing a layout that could house varying amounts of information and tasks while still providing a sense of continuity throughout the workflow. Apart from the actual form inputs, these included things like progress indicators, flexibility of moving between steps, and access to support and references.
Details
As I rounded out the designs, I focused on the remaining details involved in the setup experience. This included:
Third party integrations: managing out-of-platform setups.
Document uploading: making it customized and approachable.
Application review: providing adequate summary details prior to submitting the application.
Post-submission: clear expectations of what to expect after a user sends their application to Silo.
Messaging: ensuring thoughtful product copy and translation-friendly UI (a lot of our users are Spanish-speaking).
The results
Final solution
The final onboarding experience guided new capital customers through setting up a Silo account and completing their preliminary underwriting application. This included providing proof of business legitimacy, verifying bank accounts, and providing sales history and other important documents for verification purposes. The structure and guidance of the application generated more thorough applications with less information gaps, and building it within Silo meant the internal operations team now had one single place to see, review, and approve applications.
Impact
A beta release was rolled out in February 2023, followed by a general release for all net new customers. In a timespan of 3 months, we saw an increase in Capital customers, and Silo ops team members noted a much smoother experience and less upfront work getting customers into the onboarding pipeline.
The setup framework also held up and was implemented in future projects, such as updating general Silo account creation and new order management product onboarding.
32
new users onboarded
(compared to 1-2 new users/month previously)
60%
conversion rate
with the new onboarding experience
2+ hours
shaved off of internal operations
for the Underwriting Team reviewing applications
Learnings
A balancing act. This project challenged me in balancing the desired quickness of onboarding with the extensiveness of a Capital funding application. With the two being in direct conflict, I had to lean into setting expectations and encouraging progress wherever I could.