The problem

Accountants who own their own firm want — and deserve — to sit behind the wheel. They want to understand and have control over who’s doing and seeing what in their firm’s books, and in their clients’ books.

Before, they had mostly binary control over their team’s access and they wanted more.

Solution

We heard them, and we acted. We started incrementally, giving accountants granular control over who on their team can see and take action in the firm’s books.

This work also played an important role in the landscape of role-based access control and firm management across the ecosystem.

My role

As the primary content designer on this slice of the role-based access control pie, I independently drove product content and also collaborated closely with other content designers on similar initiatives in different areas.

I was a part of the design process from start to finish, from discovery to delivery.

Challenges

Systems and platform thinking: Roles and permissions at a large enterprise with legacy considerations is complicated. Thinking about the importance of language not only in the short term, for this specific chunk of work, and long-term across time and products helped elevate the effort from a set of deliverables to a crucial part of the larger role-based access and firm management landscape.

Shared ownership: Design is a team sport. Roles and permissions, even more so. Practicing effective stakeholder management meant forging and articulating relationships that led to better customer outcomes.

Results

Accountants loved it! Feedback from a set of critical power users pointed to nothing short of delight with the new level of control. Moreover, the work contributed to the much-desired broader approach to granular access and control for accountants.