Grant Thornton
A faster client acceptance process, with Grant Thornton in full control, in one single platform.
Digitizing client acceptance
Accepting a new client at Grant Thornton involved several departments and roles, and much of the work was done by hand: data was collected and validated manually, which slowed the process down and led to errors. Each department worked with its own tools and information passed from hand to hand, so nobody had a complete view of where each client stood. Our mission was to turn the process into a unified digital experience, without losing the rigour that client acceptance demands at an audit firm.
Design team manager
As Design Manager I led a team of three people (a researcher, a UX designer and a UI designer), in a role that combined managing the team with research and interface design. Together with the Project Manager, we split the many processes into batches, estimated each phase and set the delivery roadmap for the two years of the project. Planning in phases let us deliver value continuously and adjust priorities as we learned from users. My job was to keep the team aligned with that roadmap and with Grant Thornton's goals.
Researching where the work happens
We interviewed Grant Thornton employees and observed them while they worked with their current tools, to understand not only what they did but where they got stuck. We found that the process was decentralised, very slow, and that key information got lost along the way. That led to the central decision of the project: bring everything into one platform where each step keeps its information and anyone can see where each client stands.
A platform organised by role
Each profile sees only what concerns it, according to its permissions. That cuts the noise and makes it clear what each person has to do. Defining those profiles well was one of the foundations of the project: a single client passes through people with very different responsibilities, and the platform had to show each of them exactly what they need at every moment.
Flows designed with the users
We co-designed the flows for each role with the employees themselves, making sure every step made clear what to do and who held the information. It was the biggest challenge of the project: flows involving several roles, with decisions that depend on one another. For each one we designed in detail how every profile interacts with the system. Those flows became the guiding foundation for every design decision.
A scalable design system
Built on Grant Thornton's brand guidelines and designed for desktop and mobile web, it is ready for the company's future platforms. It brings together in a single language the components, styles and patterns that every screen shares.
With it we designed every screen and its variants, using “master screens” as reusable components at each stage of the flow, for consistency and speed. That way, every new process added to the platform started from pieces that had already been tested.
What we achieved
- A faster client acceptance process.
- Grant Thornton in full control of the process, in one centralised platform.
- A scalable design system, ready for the rest of its platforms.
