Untangling Complexity: Service Blueprinting the Healthcare Contracting Ecosystem

Creating clarity across 10+ teams, 10+ tools, and years of fragmented workflows.

Project Summary

Over time, Cigna had accumulated over 10 internal tools to support the process of contracting with healthcare providers. However, the end-to-end process had not been documented in over six years, and no one knew how these tools fit together to support the full business workflow. I led a service blueprinting effort to uncover the full process, map tools and handoffs, identify pain points, and align siloed product teams around a shared understanding of the business process they supported.

My Role

  • Discovery Lead

  • Service Designer

Outcome & Impact

The service blueprint, data flow/integration documentation, and user archetypes helped drive alignment, inform strategic initiatives, and improve operational onboarding across the organization:

  • The service blueprint informed 10+ UI enhancements and new features, drove integrations with two external platforms, and led to the creation of two new internal tools

  • Created the first end-to-end documentation of the contracting process in over six years

  • Unified 10+ product teams around a shared understanding of the business they support

  • Informed strategic planning, onboarding programs, and roadmap development

  • Led to my being asked to run training sessions using the blueprint to ramp up new team members faster

By aligning teams and clarifying user needs, the blueprint and archetypes helped the organization work more collaboratively and strategically toward future improvements.

The Challenge

Each product team owned a piece of the workflow — from contract modeling to pricing to presentation tools — but no one had visibility into the entire contracting process. This created:

  • Workflow redundancies and missed opportunities to share data between systems

  • Disconnected development roadmaps across teams

  • Frustration for users who had to navigate inconsistent naming, disconnected tools, and manual handoffs

  • A lack of clarity around how tools supported business needs, especially as new products were introduced

    The organization needed visibility into the full process — not just for strategic planning, but to better serve users, train new team members, and support scalable development.

The Approach

I led a discovery effort that included:

  • User interviews with contractors and underwriters, plus additional sessions with leadership and subject matter experts. I initially scheduled 10 interviews with each core group, but paused data collection after 7 per group once theme saturation was reached — a deliberate decision based on UX research best practices.

  • Artifact reviews with domain leaders to understand legacy workflows, tool overlaps, and documentation gaps.

  • Coaching stakeholders on how to interpret and apply service blueprints for alignment, onboarding, and roadmap discussions

Key Findings

My research surfaced systemic pain points, including:

  • Manual handoffs between tools and roles, leading to data inconsistencies and lost time

  • Redundant data entry across multiple applications due to lack of system integration

  • Low trust in data sources, with users unsure how values were calculated

  • Time-consuming contract modeling, often taking days to complete

  • Lack of visibility into Event Plan scheduling, requiring extensive coordination

  • Navigation and findability issues, with confusing naming conventions and siloed data

  • Tool overlap, with multiple applications addressing similar problems but in inconsistent ways

  • A missing centralized database, forcing data to be passed tool-to-tool via fragile API connections

  • Competitive disadvantage, with other companies (like Anthem) offering more advanced claims systems and contract flexibility

The Blueprint

The blueprint was used to:

  • Align 10+ scrum and product teams on the full business process

  • Identify new product opportunities and integrations

  • Support onboarding and training for new team members

  • Inform future development and investment priorities

Visualizing the Invisible: Data Flow Diagram

To complement the blueprint, I created a data flow diagram that mapped how information moves across the AMP ecosystem. It highlighted:

  • Primary capabilities of each tool

  • Data handoffs and dependencies

  • Gaps in integration and data duplication risks

  • “Source of truth” inconsistencies

The artifact helped:

  • Engineering teams identify redundant system interactions

  • Product teams see where tools fit into the larger process

  • Leaders understand how backend constraints led to UX pain points

It was used alongside the blueprint to inform technical recommendations and product planning discussions.

Understanding the Human Side of the Ecosystem

While mapping the end-to-end healthcare contracting process, I also developed a set of user archetypes to better capture the diverse behaviors, goals, and pain points across teams. These archetypes helped translate complex workflows into human-centered insights and identified opportunities for improvement across tools, processes, and collaboration practices.

The three primary archetypes were:

  • The Detail Analyzer: A meticulous underwriter focused on in-depth financial analysis and trend monitoring.

  • The Market Optimizer: A strategic market lead who tracks broader market trends and informs leadership decisions.

  • The Relationship Manager: A contractor responsible for provider negotiations and ensuring contract terms aligned with Cigna’s goals.