Extract discovery insights

Product Discovery Synthesis: Q3 Interviews & Support Tickets

To: Chief Product Officer From: PM, Ordering Subject: Correcting the Q4 roadmap recommendation: Delivery & Invoice Reconciliation vs. Supplier Marketplace

Executive Summary

An initial look at last quarter’s data suggested we should build a supplier marketplace next quarter. However, a deeper analysis of our 200 support tickets and 10 customer interviews shows the marketplace signal is a mirage caused by a single vocal enterprise account.

For our core customer base of independent restaurants, the most urgent, expensive, and widespread problem is delivery tracking and invoice reconciliation—specifically handling short deliveries, substitutions, and credit notes. We should focus Q4 on fixing the post-order workflow, not building a marketplace.

---

Main Findings & Strength of Evidence

#### 1. The "Supplier Marketplace" demand is heavily skewed and misunderstood * Strength of Evidence: Weak * What the data actually shows: On the surface, "Add more suppliers" is our #1 ticket category, making up 72 of 200 tickets (36%). However, 56 of those 72 tickets (78%) came from a single 14-site customer: Calder Group. The remaining 16 tickets came from just 16 unique accounts (out of 1,140 total). * The Nuance: Even Calder Group’s tickets are not requests to discover new suppliers in a marketplace. They are repeatedly asking us to onboard their existing suppliers (their meat supplier, dairy supplier, wine merchant, and Brakes) so they can centralize ordering. * Interview Context: In interviews, only 1 of 10 customers (the single-site Pizzeria) genuinely wanted a marketplace for supplier discovery and price comparison. Calder Group used the word "marketplace" to mean having all their current vendors on the platform. Two others actively dismissed the idea: the Tapas Bar expressed lukewarm interest before pivoting to paperwork pain, and the 5-site Café Group explicitly stated: "Finding suppliers isn't the problem. Knowing what actually arrived is."

#### 2. Delivery mismatches and invoice reconciliation are our largest widespread pain points * Strength of Evidence: Strong * What the data actually shows: In our interviews, 8 out of 10 customers identified post-order tracking (short deliveries, substitutions, invoice matching, and chasing credit notes) as their primary operational headache. This directly causes financial loss (e.g., the Gastropub losing ~£600/month paying for undelivered goods) and severe time waste (owners spending Sunday nights matching paper notes to invoices, or re-typing clipboard notes into Larder). * Support Ticket Alignment: In the ticket data, "Delivery didn't match order" (36 tickets across 36 unique accounts) and "Invoice reconciliation" (31 tickets across 30 unique accounts) are two halves of the exact same problem. Combined, they account for 67 tickets across 64 unique accounts—four times the unique account volume of the supplier requests (excluding Calder Group). * Specific Product Gaps: Customers are explicitly telling us where the product breaks down: * At the back door: Short deliveries aren't showing in the app (9 tickets), users don't know how to log substitutions (8 tickets), and chefs check deliveries on paper clipboards—likely exacerbated by our tablet login bug (10 tickets). * In the back office: Invoices include undelivered items (9 tickets), invoice totals don't match orders (9 tickets), users can't match invoices to orders (10 tickets), credit notes are missing (8 tickets), and accountant exports fail to show credits (10 tickets).

#### 3. Core ordering and access friction creates unnecessary noise * Strength of Evidence: Moderate (Ticket data only) * What the data actually shows: We saw 31 tickets for basic "Ordering" issues (10 duplicate orders, 11 delivery day changes, 10 cut-off time questions) and 30 for "Login and access" (10 password resets, 10 adding users, 10 tablet login failures). While unmentioned in interviews, these represent 30% of support volume and hurt day-to-day usability.

---

What This Means for Q4: Recommendations

Building a two-sided supplier marketplace next quarter would be a costly misstep. It solves a problem (supplier discovery) that almost none of our customers have, based on un-deduplicated ticket data from one large account.

Instead, we should align our Q4 roadmap with our core value proposition—"track deliveries and invoices"—where our independent restaurants are bleeding time and money:

1. Build a "Goods-In" & Discrepancy Workflow (Primary Q4 Bet): * Allow kitchen staff to easily check off deliveries on mobile/tablet at the back door, logging short weights, missing items, and substitutions in real time. * Automatically flag discrepancies against the original order, adjust expected invoice totals, and track pending credit notes through to the accountant export. 2. Fix the Tablet Login Bug & Ordering UX (Quick Wins): * Fixing the tablet login issue (10 tickets) is a prerequisite for kitchen staff checking deliveries digitally instead of on clipboards. * Address duplicate order prevention and surface supplier cut-off times clearly in the UI to cut ordering support tickets. 3. Handle Calder Group Operationally, Not via a Marketplace: * Have Customer Success and Partnerships work directly with Calder Group to onboard their four requested suppliers (Brakes, meat, dairy, wine). For the broader base, improve our "request to onboard my existing supplier" intake flow so sites don't spam support.

Synthesis: what customers are telling us

Headline: Our biggest problem is that customers can't easily check what arrived against what they were invoiced. A supplier marketplace is a real but narrow request, concentrated in one large account. I don't recommend building it next quarter.

Sources: 10 owner and manager interviews (September) and 200 support tickets from last quarter (LT-5000 to LT-5199).

What changed from the draft: "Top category by far" holds only because of one account. "Most customers we spoke to want a marketplace" is 2 of 10, and one of those is hedged. The recommendation doesn't follow from the evidence.

Findings

1. Checking deliveries and reconciling invoices is the main pain. Evidence: strong. - 63 of 200 tickets (32%) are "delivery didn't match order" or "invoice reconciliation." The most common issues are short deliveries not shown in the app, missing credit notes, invoices including items not delivered, invoices that can't be matched to orders, and accountant exports that omit credits. - These tickets come from many different accounts, not one. - 8 of 10 interviews describe this problem. A gastropub lost about £600 in a month paying for unchecked deliveries. A hotel finance team chases credit notes weekly. A bakery is in a "my word against theirs" dispute with a supplier. A noodle bar re-types clipboard checks into the app. - Caveats: ticket categories are assigned by support staff, and 10 interviews is a small sample.

2. Supplier demand is concentrated in one account. Evidence: strong for Calder Group, weak as a base-wide signal. - "Add more suppliers" is the largest ticket category (75 tickets), but 58 come from Calder Group (14 sites). Outside Calder it is 17 tickets, fewer than delivery issues (34) or ordering issues (31). - Calder's requests repeat four named suppliers: Brakes (15 tickets), meat (15), dairy (14), and a wine merchant (14). These are four specific onboarding requests, not a general need for a marketplace. - Outside Calder, requests are vague ("any plans for more suppliers?", "would like more produce suppliers"), spread across accounts. - In interviews, 2 of 10 want more suppliers: the pizzeria and Calder. A tapas bar says it would use a marketplace "I suppose," but says the paperwork is what hurts day to day. A café group says finding suppliers "isn't the problem. Knowing what actually arrived is."

3. Calder Group is a high-value but conditional signal. Evidence: one account, one conversation. - Calder says: "If you had a marketplace, we'd move all our ordering to you." That is the strongest commercial statement in the material, but it is one customer's conditional view, and it depends on four specific suppliers. - We don't know from these materials how much ordering volume or revenue Calder represents.

4. Ordering and login tickets are routine. Evidence: moderate, low priority. - Ordering (31) and login (31) tickets are mostly specific fixes: cut-off times, duplicate orders, delivery-day changes, tablet login problems, password resets, adding users. None of these came up in interviews.

What this means for next quarter

Build: a receiving and invoice-matching workflow. This addresses the largest and most widely shared problem. - Let staff record received quantities at delivery, with shorts and substitutions flagged in the app. This covers the short-delivery tickets and "how do I record a substitution?" - Automatically match invoices to deliveries and orders, and flag differences before payment. This covers "can't match," "total differs," and "includes items not delivered." - Show credit notes against deliveries and in the accountant export. Fixing the export that omits credits could ship early as a quick win. - Measures: the 63-ticket category volume, and credit value recovered per account, which we can ask customers to report.

Don't build the marketplace next quarter. Instead: - Talk to Calder Group about their ordering volume and what they'd need to move everything to us. Check whether onboarding Brakes, their meat supplier, dairy, and the wine merchant is feasible as partnership or integration work. That is a much smaller decision than building a platform. - Add a "request a supplier" flow so demand from the wider base is captured in a structured way. Then we can see whether requests extend beyond Calder. - Triage the ordering and login tickets into the backlog as small fixes.

What would change my view

• A clear rise in supplier requests from accounts other than Calder.
• Around 20 more interviews, across account sizes and including some churned customers, where supplier access is named as the blocker.
• Evidence that Calder's ordering value justifies the integrations, or that a marketplace would win or retain several accounts of Calder's scale.

Until then, the evidence supports fixing receiving and reconciliation first, and treating the supplier question as a targeted account decision rather than a platform bet.

Product Synthesis: Customer Research & Support Ticket Analysis

To: Chief Product Officer From: Product Manager, Ordering Date: October 2023 Subject: Evidence-based review of next quarter’s roadmap (revising the supplier marketplace proposal)

---

Executive Summary

Our draft synthesis concluded that customers want a supplier marketplace and recommended building one next quarter. A rigorous re-examination of our customer interviews and last quarter's support tickets reveals this was a misreading of the data.

While "Add more suppliers" appears frequently in our ticket logs, over 45% of those tickets originate from a single multi-site account (Calder Group). Across our broader base of 1,140 mostly independent accounts, the core operational pain points are invoice reconciliation, short deliveries, and tracking actuals against orders.

Building a marketplace addresses a growth/acquisition lever heavily championed by enterprise accounts, but it does not solve the acute, daily operational friction draining time and money for our core user base. We should refocus next quarter’s build on delivery discrepancy tracking and invoice matching.

---

Main Findings & Evidence Strength

#### Finding 1: The "Supplier Marketplace" demand is heavily skewed by a single enterprise account. * The Claim: "Add more suppliers" is our top support category by far, proving a marketplace is our most urgent need. * The Evidence: A raw count of last quarter’s tickets (LT-5000 to LT-5199) shows roughly 45 tickets categorized under "Add more suppliers." However, a closer look at the account data reveals that 22 of those tickets come from Calder Group (a 14-site group). Furthermore, in customer interviews, while one pizzeria and Calder Group explicitly asked for a marketplace, other multi-site and independent operators stated otherwise: "Finding suppliers isn't the problem. Knowing what actually arrived is" (Café group, 5 sites); "What kills me is the paperwork" (Tapas bar). * Evidence Strength: Moderate to Weak. The support volume for suppliers is inflated by one outlier account. Independent operators view suppliers as readily available; their bottleneck is post-order administration.

#### Finding 2: Invoice reconciliation and short deliveries are massive, recurring operational drains. * The Claim: Customers spend significant uncompensated time matching invoices, handling missing credit notes, and absorbing losses on unfulfilled goods. * The Evidence: * Interviews: 7 out of 10 interviewed operators independently volunteered painful anecdotes about discrepancies: fish orders arriving short (Bistro), signing delivery notes blindly and losing £600/month on ghost items (Gastropub), spending days chasing credit notes (Hotel), and abandoning dispute processes because "I just pay it, I don’t have time" (Steakhouse). * Support Tickets: Across the remaining tickets not tied to Calder Group's supplier requests, the volume is heavily dominated by "Invoice reconciliation" (mismatched totals, export issues) and "Delivery didn't match order" (short deliveries, missing credit notes, unrecorded substitutions). * Evidence Strength: Strong. Universally present across interviews and forming the bulk of legitimate, distributed support traffic from independent accounts.

#### Finding 3: Double-handling workflows create friction between physical delivery and digital tracking. * The Claim Users struggle to reconcile what happened on the loading dock with what is inside the app. * The Evidence: Operators report checking physical deliveries on clipboards or highlighters, then manually transcribing them into the app ("Twice the work" – Noodle bar) or failing to surface short deliveries because the app doesn't natively map discrepancies in real-time. * Evidence Strength: Strong. Directly observed in multiple site interviews.

---

What This Means for Next Quarter (Product Recommendations)

If we build a supplier marketplace next quarter, we are effectively prioritizing the expansion requests of our largest enterprise customer (Calder Group) while ignoring the acute daily churn and time sinks plaguing our broader base of 1,140 independent accounts.

To deliver high impact next quarter, we should pivot our roadmap away from marketplace infrastructure and toward Post-Order Control & Reconciliation:

1. Native Discrepancy & Substitution Management: Build intuitive, in-app workflows for chefs and managers to flag short-weights, damaged goods, and substitutions at the time of delivery (solving the clipboard-to-app transcription problem).
2. Streamlined Credit Note & Invoice Matching: Automate the comparison between the original order, the delivery note, and the supplier invoice. Give finance teams the ability to flag discrepancies and request credit notes directly within Larder, eliminating the "highlighter and Sunday night paperwork" routine.
3. Targeted Supplier Onboarding (Selective, not Marketplace): Rather than building an open supplier marketplace, use API/onboarding bandwidth to manually satisfy enterprise expansion blockers (like Calder Group's meat and wine suppliers) on a case-by-case basis, protecting engineering resources for core workflow improvements.