Staff Portal For IRA Operational Utilities
You’re a fintech startup trying to scale. Your operations and customer care teams are small. Many processes are complex, manual, and difficult to learn.
We need a staff portal to scale.
How might we reduce manual processes, train new staff quickly, and reduce our labor-to-revenue ratio?
Table of Contents
NOTE: All logos and branding shown in these designs are placeholders. Any similarities to existing businesses, by name or design, are purely coincidental.
Outcomes
Here’s what we accomplished.
Fewer manual processes or faster workflows utilizing new features.
Streamlined training for new staff with an intuitive user experience.
Faster response rate for system monitoring.
A long-term ideal state with a backlog of utilities that can be pulled into the roadmap over time.
Design Process
The Design Process
Conduct one-on-one interviews and group working sessions with Operations and Customer Care Teams.
Thoroughly document current internal workflows and compile a folder of training documents.
Meet with developers to transfer knowledge on operational workflows. Discuss backend processes and technical limitations.
Create an inventory of all utilities needed for internal workflows and organizational scaling.
Create a navigational site map based on the inventory.
Create mockups and meet with Operations, Customer Care, and Development to review and refine the designs.
Site Map
DESIGNS
Both the operational and customer care teams needed to monitor the system and manage daily tasks. After running workshops with each team, I mapped out daily routines and challenges. Bringing their workflows together, I designed two dashboards for each department.
Daily Monitoring Dashboards
Operations Team Dashboard
Focus on transactions monitoring.
Customer Care Team Dashboard
Focus on accountholder activity.
Searching For Accountholders
Staff needed a way to search for accountholders and view their accounts at-a-glance. Considering common workflows for customer care, I included a multi-tab feature so that staff could search for and view multiple accountholder profiles open at once.
Accountholder Search
View after search is initiated.
Accountholder Profile
First screen of the profile includes all information customer care staff need at the beginning of calls.
Managing Client Companies
(Referred to as Partners)
As a B2B2C, this startup manages white-labeled portals for their business client partners (referred to here as ‘partners’.) Operations needed a way to view partner programs, onboard new partners, and manage bulk account creation for clients with existing accountholders.
Partner List
A list of all client businesses with programs in the system.
Partner Profile
A partner profile with extensive utilities for IRA program maintenance. The initial screen includes key analytics, client company contacts, and organization information.
Profile Empty States
Onboarding new clients is a non-linear process with many steps. The empty state for partner profiles includes reminders of each step and monitors any blockers along the way.
Account Creation Monitoring
In this utility, staff monitor accounts created in the system and reinitiate the process for any incorrect data.
File Upload Modal
An overlay for uploading a csv including a link to a file template and feedback for errors.
The staff portal includes several utilities related to bulk actions. In this utility, staff can create accounts via csv files. These accounts are usually pre-existing with the clients and are being transferred. This process requires correcting data inaccuracy and monitoring automated technical processes.
Bulk Creation Utilities
Reflection
My takeaways and self-evaluation.
Missions accomplished: To design a staff portal effectively you need to understand a company inside and out. These designs were successful because they took complex internal workflows and backend processes and made them as simple as possible. By working interdepartmentally, I supported mutual understanding among operations, customer care, and development. Note: I’ve shown the straightforward designs in this portfolio piece, but a lot is left out. Please schedule a call if you’d like to see designs related to reporting, fund changes, transaction processes, and more.
Room for improvement: Although there were benefits to creating mockups that looked far beyond near-term organizational needs, there were downsides. For instance, many designs were created when the company was still small. Technical and organizational workflows change quickly. Some of the designs were originally relevant but later outdated. I could have addressed this by discussing the backlog more frequently with Product and budgeting time for re-review.