Exact Online Product UX

Delft, Exact 2014-2016

Background
Exact Online is a business software solution that supports Small and Medium enterprises with their accounting and business process needs.
In my role as UX Designer at Exact, I designed multiple solutions to improve or create new experiences in Exact Online. See examples of my work in this role below.
Designing for a product with more than 200.000 users, gave no room for error. Support calls would inmediately soar.

Payroll solutions
A business case pointed out the growth potential of Exact’s payroll propositions in the local market. Among other decisions, the company decided to invest on renewing all payroll product solutions.
I set up a team of 5 engaged UX designers, spread among different solution and scrum teams. Together with different stakeholders, I mapped the payroll journey, including the collaboration processes between the payroll administrator, employer and employee. We identified 6 main problems, using different information sources (business case, competition and support data analysis, internal stakeholders input).
In this role, I act as UX manager: coordinating and collaborating with 5 designers, creating opportunities for knowledge sharing, planning UX work and aligning it with Product Management.
Outcomes of this initiative include among others an Employee Portal, new notifications, better onboarding for payroll administrators, better collaboration between the employer and the payroll administrator.

Menu structure redesign
Low success and efficiency scores in a usability test, triggered the start of this project. Out of all the tasks completed by our participants, only a fraction ended up at a correct or expected menu link.
To increase the usability scores and the experience, I followed a rigorous user-centered design process. I reorganized, restructured, and renamed the hundreds of links inconsistently named and even duplicated in the menu.
During the redesign, more than 700 real users from 4 different countries participated in the research (card sorting, tree testing and user test).

Trial and login experience
The complete getting started experience was reviewed and redesigned in this project, with the aim of first getting users to try out our product, and then increasing conversion rates from trial to paid.
We focused on making the flows cleaner and simpler. Among the deliverables of this broader topic, we redesigned the trial sign up and the login pages. Improvements in comparison to the previous version included responsiveness and a reduced number of fields.

Exact Online Accountancy
I collaborated with the Accountancy product team as a UX strategist temporarily. I performed research to elicit needs around document management and customer relationship management in accountancy offices.
I also coached and supervised a Strategic Design graduation project, in which data-driven personas were created to inspire and guide the UX strategy of the Accountancy solution.

Guidelines
Exact Online was originally designed and built by developers. Over time, the UI design evolved and became better. Over the last 2 years we have been busy building a new Design System and a Living Style guide, but in the old times, documented guidelines helped us create a consistent experience. I created many of those guidelines and shared them with other designers in our internal website.