Foundation of a SaaS Spend Management Platform for Small Businesses, Accountants, and Bookkeepers

User Persona

After reviewing the user research and interview findings shared by the founders, my next step was to create user personas based on the research findings. I carefully reviewed the interview responses to identify common patterns, goals, and challenges among the participants. Based on this analysis, I created two primary user personas that represented the platform’s target users.

After creating the user personas, I developed empathy maps for both user groups to better understand their thoughts, feelings, actions, and challenges. This helped me look at the problem from the users’ perspective and make more informed design decisions throughout the project.

Empathy Map for Eric Jackson (Business Owner)

Empathy Map for Olivia Brown (Bookkeeper)

User Stories for Both Users

Problem Statement

Once I created the user personas to better understand our users’ pain points, I developed empathy maps to understand their thoughts, feelings, actions, and needs. I then wrote user stories to capture their main goals and expectations. Based on these insights, I defined three problem statements that addressed the recurring challenges identified during the research.

Competitor Audit

After identifying the target users and their pain points, I wanted to understand how existing SaaS spend management platforms approached these challenges. I conducted a competitor audit to study common workflows, feature sets, and user experiences. This helped me identify industry best practices as well as opportunities where AppVentory could differentiate itself.

Prouct Goal

The insights from the user research and competitor analysis helped me define clear product goals. These goals became the foundation for prioritizing features and planning the MVP.

Information Architecture

After defining the product goals, we decided to move into the design phase. Before designing individual screens, I started by creating product’s information architecture. This helped me organize the product into logical modules, map the key user journeys, and establish a clear foundation for the overall user experience.

Early Concept Design

Using the information architecture and user flows as a guide, I created low fidelity wireframes to validate the overall product structure and core workflows before moving into visual design. This helped me quickly explore different layouts, gather feedback from stakeholders, and refine the user experience early in the design process.

The initial wireframes focused on the product’s key modules, including the Dashboard, Apps, App Details, Clients, Client Details, and App Stack. These screens helped define the overall navigation, information hierarchy, and interactions, providing a solid foundation for the high fidelity designs.

Foundation of Design System

After reviewing the low fidelity wireframes with the founders and other stakeholders, we finalized the core user flows and overall product structure. With the workflows validated, I was ready to move into high fidelity design.

Before designing the final interfaces, I created a scalable design system to establish a consistent visual language across the product. This gave me a solid foundation for designing new features efficiently while maintaining consistency throughout the user experience.

Final Solution

With the scalable design system in place, I moved on to designing the final high fidelity screens based on the validated wireframes. My focus was on creating a consistent, intuitive, and scalable user experience across the entire product.

Dashboard

I designed the dashboard to give users a clear overview of their software spending. It highlights key metrics such as total spend, active users, spend forecast, upcoming renewals, and allows users to analyze spending by month, app, user, and department.

App Listing

The Apps page gives users a complete view of all the software used across their organization. Users can search, filter, and manage applications, review software spending, identify inactive or discovered apps, and quickly access important details such as subscription cost, app owner, users, and departments.

App Details

The App Detail page provides detailed information about a specific application. Users can review software spending, subscription details, renewal dates, usage trends, integrations, compliance status, app owners, departments, and other key insights to better understand and manage each application.

Client Listing

The Clients page allows advisors, accountants, and bookkeepers to manage all their clients from one place. Users can search and filter clients, view their onboarding status, connected integrations, app stack, spending opportunities, and quickly access each client’s workspace.

Client Listing

The Client Detail page provides a complete overview of a client’s software environment. Users can review SaaS spending, app portfolio, renewals, reports, opportunities, tasks, and integrations, along with key business information to help them manage and optimize software costs for each client.

Client Listing

The Reports page allows users to generate and manage software reports from one place. Users can create financial and system reports, review previously generated reports, track their status, and download or share them to gain insights into SaaS spending, renewals, software usage, and cost optimization opportunities.

After the designs were approved, I handed them over to the engineering team for implementation. My role didn’t end there. I continued collaborating closely with the engineers throughout development to ensure the final product was implemented as intended and maintained the quality of the design.

Measurable Impact

Through AppVentory, I designed a single platform where businesses could manage their SaaS apps, software spending, renewals, and usage in one place. My goal was to make everyday tasks simpler, reduce manual work, and create a product that could easily grow as new features were added.

The following outcomes show the impact of the product and how my design decisions helped improve the overall user experience.

Key Outcomes

Learnings

Working on AppVentory taught me how to design a product from the ground up. I learned how to turn research into product decisions, balance user needs with business goals, and work closely with founders and engineers throughout the product lifecycle. It also strengthened my skills in product thinking, design systems, and designing scalable B2B SaaS experiences.