Alex Andersen Ølund

Background

Alex Andersen Ølund is one of the largest logistics companies in Denmark and among the leading transportation providers in Northern Europe.

The company operated a fleet of approximately 200 trucks, worked with more than 550 employees, and managed a large network of transportation and warehouse operations.

As the business continued to grow, many operational processes remained heavily dependent on manual administration, spreadsheets, phone calls, and fragmented systems.

The company wanted to create a unified platform that would reduce administrative overhead, improve operational visibility, and simplify day-to-day work for drivers, dispatchers, warehouse personnel, and management.

The challenge

At first glance, the project looked like a mobile application.

In reality, it was an operational ecosystem involving multiple user groups, business processes, and data flows.

The platform needed to support:

• Fleet inventory management
• Warehouse inventory tracking
• Pallet registration and reconciliation
• Driver rest period management
• GPS vehicle tracking
• Delivery and pickup requests
• Customer service workflows
• Operational reporting

Each user group had completely different goals.

Drivers needed a fast and simple mobile experience.

Dispatchers required visibility into fleet operations.

Warehouse personnel focused on inventory control.

Management wanted reporting and operational oversight.

Customers expected transparency around deliveries and pickups.

The challenge was not designing screens.

The challenge was understanding how all these processes interacted and translating them into a coherent product experience.

Discovery

Before moving into design, we conducted a series of workshops with stakeholders from different departments.

The objective was to understand:

• Existing workflows
• Operational bottlenecks
• Manual processes
• Information dependencies
• Communication patterns between departments

One of the key findings was that many business processes existed only in people’s heads.

Different departments often followed different versions of the same process.

Creating a shared understanding of workflows became a critical part of the project.

This phase helped identify opportunities for automation and exposed several operational inefficiencies that were previously accepted as normal.

My role

I was responsible for UX design, workflow definition, and product structure.

My work included:

• Stakeholder workshops
• User flow mapping
• Information architecture
• Wireframing
• Mobile UX design
• Process simplification
• Navigation design
• Cross-functional collaboration with developers and project stakeholders

A significant part of the work focused on transforming operational complexity into workflows that could be executed quickly by drivers and employees in the field.

Designing for operational efficiency

The platform was intended to become a daily tool for multiple departments.

Because of that, efficiency was a primary design objective.

Every unnecessary step multiplied across hundreds of employees and thousands of operational transactions.

Particular attention was given to:

• Fast data entry
• Clear status visibility
• Reducing repetitive actions
• Minimizing user errors
• Mobile-first workflows
• GPS-related interactions
• Inventory management processes

The goal was to reduce administrative friction while increasing operational visibility across the organization.

Technical considerations

Based on the complexity of the required functionality, the decision was made to build native applications for both iOS and Android.

This approach provided:

• Better performance
• More reliable GPS functionality
• Improved responsiveness
• Greater flexibility for future integrations
• Better support for complex operational workflows

The product also required integration with several internal and external systems supporting logistics operations.

Outcome

The final solution consolidated multiple operational processes into a single platform used by drivers, administrators, and operational staff.

The platform simplified inventory management, improved visibility into fleet operations, digitized previously manual workflows, and reduced administrative effort across several departments.

Most importantly, it demonstrated how thoughtful product design can simplify highly complex operational environments without sacrificing functionality.

Key learnings

Looking back, this project became one of my earliest introductions to transportation technology.

Many of the challenges explored here would later reappear in larger and more complex products involving fleet management, driver operations, compliance systems, ELD platforms, Hours of Service regulations, and enterprise logistics software.

The experience reinforced an important lesson:

Designing enterprise products is rarely about interfaces.

It is about understanding operations, identifying constraints, and creating systems that help people perform complex work with less effort and fewer mistakes.