Platform
Financial Reporting
Objective
The primary objective was to create a comprehensive, user-friendly platform that streamlines financial reporting and performance management. The platform needed to address key challenges such as complicated report generation, inadequate permission settings, and the lack of a holistic, shareable dashboards and insights.
Our goal was to design an intuitive experience that accommodates multi-language, multi-currency support, and provides relevant, role-based data and insights to users across different regions.
Target Audience
Financial controllers
Upload trial balances and manage financial data.
Dealer principals
Oversee one or multiple brands and need performance dashboards.
OEM users
Want network-wide performance insights.
Admin users
Responsible for creating reports, managing permissions, and reviewing submitted data.
Problem statement
How might we consolidate financial reporting for dealerships into a single, intuitive system, so that financial controllers and other users can access real-time insights, considering the current reliance on offline methods, performance and reliability issues, and the need for a more streamlined, user-friendly experience?
Role & Responsibilities
Role
As the Lead Product Designer, I oversaw the end-to-end design process from initial research to final implementation.
Responsibilities
Conducted stakeholder and user interviews to identify pain points and opportunities
Developed information architecture (IA) and user flows for multiple user roles
Created wireframes, interactive prototypes, and high-fidelity designs
Facilitated usability testing and integrated feedback into iterative design cycles
Collaborated closely with the development team to ensure feasibility and a seamless implementation
Research
Methodology
Stakeholder interviews and workshops
Conducted sessions with admins, OEM representatives, and dealer principals.
User interviews
Focused on financial controllers to understand their day-to-day processes and pain points (e.g. offline Excel usage and timeouts).
Competitive analysis: Reviewed similar financial reporting tools to identify best practices.
Key Findings
Permissions and profile management
There was no robust profile management tool. Users needed granular permissions to hide certain data from specific roles.
Reporting inefficiency
Running a report took about an hour and users had to manually email outputs, causing significant delays and confusion.
Timeout issues
Session timeouts were set too aggressively, forcing users to work offline.
Account mapping gaps
The process for mapping accounts in trial balances was largely manual, leading to errors and extra work.
Audit trail
Key review processes were happening outside the tool, creating a lack of transparency and no clear audit trail.
Ideation
Brainstorm and whiteboard sessions
Mapped out various user roles (e.g. FC, Dealer Principal, OEM, Admin) to align system features with their distinct needs.
Wireframing and iteration
Rapidly produced low-fidelity wireframes to visualise user flows for uploading trial balances, self-service account mapping, and permission and role based reporting dashboards.
Prioritisation workshops
Sorted features into priority groups based on immediate business impact.
Design
Design challenges
Complex role hierarchy
Multiple admin roles (global admin, reporting team, admin), plus OEM users, dealer principals, and financial controllers, all with different permissions and data visibility.
Long report generation
Users waiting nearly an hour or more for a generated report, then manually distributing it.
Offline/online disruption
Frequent session timeouts forced users to complete tasks offline in Excel.
Multi-language and multi-currency
The system needed to accommodate diverse locales, currencies, and translation nuances.
Solutions
Role based dashboards and permissions
Developed a flexible permission structure allowing granular data visibility (e.g. blocking specific financial data for certain roles).
Optimised reporting workflow
Introduced background processing with email alerts when reports are ready, and integrated an “auto-report generation” feature.
Session management
Extended timeout settings and added auto-save to prevent data loss
Self-service and manual account mapping
Account-mapping feature with machine learning for financial controllers. If the matching failed, admin teams could manually map accounts using an admin dashboard.
Financial Controller
OEM
Admin
User-testing
Testing methodology
Usability testing
Conducted remote sessions with clients, observing ease of uploading trial balances, generating reports, and using the reporting dashboards.
Pilot implementation
Launched a pilot with selected OEMs and Deloitte teams to gather real-world feedback on performance, timeouts, and role-based access.
Feedback integration
Refined permissions
Based on user confusion, streamlined the permission assignment process.
Report queue monitoring
Enabled real-time progress updates for report generation, reducing user frustration around long wait times.
Notifications and reminders
Added both email and in-platform notifications to remind admin users and financial controllers of critical tasks (e.g., uploading trial balances, finalising data reviews).
Impact
Quantitative Results
Reduction in report delivery time
By optimising the report generation workflow and allowing background processing.
Decrease in offline work
Extended session timeouts and auto-save functionalities encouraged users to remain in the platform and monthly reporting process.
High adoption rate
A majority of clients transitioned to the new system within a relatively short time.
Qualitative Feedback
Financial controllers
A financial controller remarked that having a single view of all their dealerships combined with a self-service mapping tool significantly reduced time spent on routine tasks every month.
OEM representative
An OEM representative noted the straightforward layout of the new dashboard, which made identifying struggling dealerships easy and allowed for quick insights.
Admins
Switching user views or creating new client users is no longer a headache, it’s all centralised in one admin panel.
Lessons learned
Designing the financial reporting platform was a significant learning experience, especially in balancing complex permission hierarchies with a simplified, intuitve user experience. Collaborating closely with technical teams taught me valuable lessons in optimisation and data security. Seeing the platform reduce offline work and manual emailing was particularly rewarding.
Conclusion
The financial reporting platform project successfully streamlines financial reporting for dealerships, accounting teams, and stakeholders by providing a user-centric design, robust permission structures, and efficient reporting workflows. By prioritising real user pain points, especially around monthly reporting tasks, removing timeouts with saved sessions, offline tasks, and lengthy report generation, the platform not only improved operational efficiency but also enhanced overall user satisfaction.
From a user experience perspective, the project underscored the importance of collaboration across diverse stakeholder groups, thoughtful information architecture, and iterative testing to deliver a platform that meets complex business needs without sacrificing usability. This project exemplifies how focusing on end-to-end user journeys can transform a complicated and inefficient, offline heavy process into a cohesive, efficient cloud solution, demonstrating the power of research, design thinking, and continuous iteration.