When BAT Agrar, a leading player in the German agricultural sector, needed a tool that could keep up with millions of daily price requests, complex contracts, and field operations, we redesigned PreisAktuell from the ground up. The result: a scalable, intuitive, and high-performance platform trusted by farmers, field reps, traders and back-office agents alike.

CLIENT
MY ROLE

BAT Agrar & Co. KG

Product Designer, UX/UI, UX Researcher

DURATION
TEAM

12 months (2024-2025)

10-20 person team


To comply with my non-disclosure agreement, I have omitted and obfuscated confidential information in this case study. All information in this case study is my own and does not necessarily reflect the views of BAT Agrar & Co. KG.

A redesign isn’t a facelift—it’s a chance to rethink how work gets done.

PreisAktuell (now Hofportal)

For decades, German agriculture relied on trust, intuition, and phone calls. But as the market accelerated and margins tightened, even experienced traders needed more clarity, consistency, and modern tools.

PreisAktuell—BAT Agrar’s system for real-time pricing and product management—was no longer keeping up. Slow performance, fragmented workflows, and reliance on manual processes made daily decisions harder, not easier.

BAT Agrar didn’t just need a UI refresh; they needed a scalable, future-ready platform capable of supporting their business through 2030 and beyond.

Understanding what was at stake.

To redesign PreisAktuell, we first had to understand BAT’s struggle with the platform.

  • The slow loading time during peak demand

  • The outdated system that couldn’t connect with modern tools or APIs

  • The multi-step flows that confused even experienced reps

  • The high cost and effort of making even small feature changes

  • The risk of losing users entirely if digital tools felt unreliable

In short, PreisAktuell 1.0 suffers from technical debt, poor scalability, outdated UX, lack of integration, and operational inefficiencies, all of which create friction for users and high costs for the organization.

Our mission: Build a reliable, intuitive, and scalable platform that reduces friction, accelerates workflows, and earns user trust.

Great design doesn’t start with pixels — it starts with listening.

What we achieved

The new PreisAktuell — now Hofportal — has become a core operational engine for BAT Agrar.

Within two weeks of launch:

  • 50,000+ price requests processed

    → A level of volume the old system could not have handled reliably.

Within 60 days:

  • 1,000+ digital contracts created and completed

    → A major increase in digital adoption, one of the client’s key KPIs.

Platform-wide improvements:

  • Teams across operations and trading reported reduced cognitive load

  • Farmers and field reps found the new interface significantly easier to navigate

  • Faster contracting flows

  • A system stable enough for peak seasonal demand

The direct result of rebuilding the experience around the way users actually work? A scalable, user-centered design that drives adoption and operational efficiency.

In enterprise tools, complexity isn’t the enemy. Unnecessary complexity is.

How we made decisions

This was a 12-month, enterprise-level redesign. My role went beyond UI execution — I led strategic design decisions.

Here’s how we shaped the product:

User-centered + system thinking

  • Mapped workflows of all user types to identify friction points

  • Converted technical constraints into actionable design principles

  • Used rapid prototyping to validate solutions with power users

  • Prioritized features based on user impact × engineering effort × business risk

System-level design

  • Unified component library using Ant Design and Tamagui

  • Flexible architecture supporting role-based workflows

  • Optimized for low-bandwidth and mobile-heavy environments

  • Cross-platform design simplifying training and onboarding

Collaboration & leadership

  • Partnered with product managers, engineers, domain experts, and customer-facing teams

  • Drove alignment between stakeholders on requirements and constraints

  • Mentored a junior designer, led weekly design reviews, and shaped the design process

When a tool is built around how people actually work, results follow—fast, reliable, and at scale.

Farmers and sales used to rely on calls, in-person meetings which often require long-hours of travel to request prices, sell crops, and arrange delivery.
Now, farmers gain price transparency, control over when to sell, and efficiency through shortcuts like favoriting crops, reducing repetitive data entry. Sales reps spend less time traveling for routine tasks, while interactions can still happen when needed. The platform is faster, clearer, and gives both farmers and reps control and visibility like never before.
Back-office agents used to spent hours handling contracts manually — approving, tracking, and managing them through paperwork and phone calls. We designed a digital end-to-end process that lets them create, approve, and manage contracts in just a few clicks.

A consolidated table and dashboard give agents view of all contracts and key operational details at a glance, helping them stay on top of multiple tasks efficiently. Paper contracts are still available for records, but the workflow is fully digital, faster, and far easier to manage.
Before, every trader worked differently — and the platform had grown into a maze of one-off features built over 20 years. By deeply understanding how traders actually create price for crops, we defined a single end-to-end workflow that serves all of them.

Now, traders manage products, price lists, trading hours, and freight costs in one place — and the platform is leaner, clearer, and far easier to maintain.
Admins needed a simple way to manage users. We provided a streamlined workflow that lets admins create, view, and manage users efficiently.
Now, admins have a clear overview of all users, while keeping the platform secure and maintaining confidentiality — a simple but crucial part of keeping the system reliable for everyone.

“The collaboration was characterized by professionalism and openness right from the start. The team was able to understand complex processes very quickly and the workshops were consistently solution-oriented. The performance and support were remarkably good and communication was excellent at all times.”

-Felix Hirth, Head of Digital Sales (BAT Agrar)

Collaboration that made the redesign work.

This project succeeded because it wasn’t designed in isolation.

I worked closely with:

  • BAT’s domain experts (agriculture operations, pricing logic, contracting)

  • Product management

  • Engineering leads

  • A junior designer

  • Customer-facing field teams

Together, we clarified ambiguous requirements, harmonized the expectations of different stakeholders, and ensured technical limits weren’t blockers but opportunities for better design.

One of the most critical parts of my role was driving alignment — translating complex constraints into simple, actionable UX patterns everyone could agree on.

This is where most of the design work happens; not just in the interface, but in the space between teams.

Mentorship is like design for people — remove friction, add clarity, empower action.

Mentorship & leadership

Though this wasn’t a people-management role, I contributed design leadership through:

  • Mentoring a junior designer on structuring decisions, communicating tradeoffs to stakeholders, and presenting design effectively.

  • Leading weekly design review to standardize craft and elevate design quality across our workflow.

  • Shaping our design process for consistency, documentation clarity, and cross-team visibility.

This improved the team’s velocity and raised the quality of deliverables without adding overhead.

What this project shows about my strength as a designer

Product thinking

Design solutions tied to business outcomes, not just UI.

System-level design

Think how processes are interconnected and long-term scalability.

Mentorship & leadership

Elevate junior designer and shape the team’s process.

Enterprise UX

Handle complexity, multiple personas, legacy systems, and operational constraints.

Cross-functional collaboration

Align product, engineering, clients, and domain experts.

Outcome-driven execution

Connect UX decisions to measurable impact.

What is your next challenge?

I’d love to hear about it. Let’s connect or leave me a message!

florarichardfrs@gmail.com