SHC (White-Label SaaS)
Reinventing a SaaS Platform to Save $400K Annually
Overview
A strategic redesign and modular design system that transformed a rigid SaaS product into a flexible, scalable platform, cutting client time-to-market from weeks to just minutes.
Duration
3 Months
My Role
Product Designer
Before
Before
Before
Before
After
After
After
After
The Challenge
SHC's SaaS platform was powerful, but it had a critical flaw: it was rigid. Each new enterprise client required significant custom development to match their brand and workflow, creating a bottleneck that led to two major problems: high operational costs and frustrated clients with a slow time-to-market.
The core business challenge was clear: How might we empower clients to customize their own experience without relying on our developers, thereby cutting costs and accelerating growth?
Clients lack direct control over branding, forcing them into a slow and expensive support process for minor changes.
The rigid, one-size-fits-all platform prevents clients from creating custom roles and workflows to match their needs.
The manual effort required for customizations leads to long, costly onboarding times for new clients.
USER PROBLEMS
Skilled developers are bogged down with repetitive, low-level tickets, preventing them from focusing on core product innovation.
Without a central component library, inconsistencies and bugs are introduced as elements are rebuilt for each new client.
The tangled legacy code makes deploying even simple UI updates a time-consuming and high-risk process.
Clients lack direct control over branding, forcing them into a slow and expensive support process for minor changes.
The rigid, one-size-fits-all platform prevents clients from creating custom roles and workflows to match their needs.
The manual effort required for customizations leads to long, costly onboarding times for new clients.
USER PROBLEMS
Skilled developers are bogged down with repetitive, low-level tickets, preventing them from focusing on core product innovation.
Without a central component library, inconsistencies and bugs are introduced as elements are rebuilt for each new client.
The tangled legacy code makes deploying even simple UI updates a time-consuming and high-risk process.
Clients lack direct control over branding, forcing them into a slow and expensive support process for minor changes.
The rigid, one-size-fits-all platform prevents clients from creating custom roles and workflows to match their needs.
The manual effort required for customizations leads to long, costly onboarding times for new clients.
USER PROBLEMS
Skilled developers are bogged down with repetitive, low-level tickets, preventing them from focusing on core product innovation.
Without a central component library, inconsistencies and bugs are introduced as elements are rebuilt for each new client.
The tangled legacy code makes deploying even simple UI updates a time-consuming and high-risk process.
Clients lack direct control over branding, forcing them into a slow and expensive support process for minor changes.
The rigid, one-size-fits-all platform prevents clients from creating custom roles and workflows to match their needs.
The manual effort required for customizations leads to long, costly onboarding times for new clients.
USER PROBLEMS
Skilled developers are bogged down with repetitive, low-level tickets, preventing them from focusing on core product innovation.
Without a central component library, inconsistencies and bugs are introduced as elements are rebuilt for each new client.
The tangled legacy code makes deploying even simple UI updates a time-consuming and high-risk process.
My Process
My research focused on two user groups: our clients and our internal developers. I conducted stakeholder interviews and analyzed over 40 client support tickets. A recurring theme emerged from clients:
"We love the core functionality, but we need to be able to change the look and feel ourselves. Waiting two weeks to change a logo color is unacceptable."
This confirmed the need for a self-service solution and a fundamental shift in how the platform was built.
Priya, operations
Pain Points
The 2-3 week turnaround time for minor customization requests creates significant project delays.
She feels a complete lack of autonomy over a tool she is responsible for managing.
The process of submitting a ticket, waiting for a quote, and getting approval for simple changes feels inefficient and bureaucratic.
She worries that the platform's poor user experience reflects badly on her and her team.
Bio
Priya is a 34-year-old Operations Manager at a mid-sized consulting firm. She is tech-savvy but not a developer. Her role is to ensure her team of 100 consultants has the software they need to succeed, and that includes managing the company's instance of the SHC platform. She is evaluated on her team's efficiency and her ability to manage her operational budget effectively. She is constantly under pressure to launch new internal projects but finds herself blocked by the platform's inflexibility, turning what should be simple tasks into frustrating, expensive waiting games.
Priya, operations
Pain Points
The 2-3 week turnaround time for minor customization requests creates significant project delays.
She feels a complete lack of autonomy over a tool she is responsible for managing.
The process of submitting a ticket, waiting for a quote, and getting approval for simple changes feels inefficient and bureaucratic.
She worries that the platform's poor user experience reflects badly on her and her team.
Bio
Priya is a 34-year-old Operations Manager at a mid-sized consulting firm. She is tech-savvy but not a developer. Her role is to ensure her team of 100 consultants has the software they need to succeed, and that includes managing the company's instance of the SHC platform. She is evaluated on her team's efficiency and her ability to manage her operational budget effectively. She is constantly under pressure to launch new internal projects but finds herself blocked by the platform's inflexibility, turning what should be simple tasks into frustrating, expensive waiting games.
Priya, operations
Pain Points
The 2-3 week turnaround time for minor customization requests creates significant project delays.
She feels a complete lack of autonomy over a tool she is responsible for managing.
The process of submitting a ticket, waiting for a quote, and getting approval for simple changes feels inefficient and bureaucratic.
She worries that the platform's poor user experience reflects badly on her and her team.
Bio
Priya is a 34-year-old Operations Manager at a mid-sized consulting firm. She is tech-savvy but not a developer. Her role is to ensure her team of 100 consultants has the software they need to succeed, and that includes managing the company's instance of the SHC platform. She is evaluated on her team's efficiency and her ability to manage her operational budget effectively. She is constantly under pressure to launch new internal projects but finds herself blocked by the platform's inflexibility, turning what should be simple tasks into frustrating, expensive waiting games.
Priya, operations
Pain Points
The 2-3 week turnaround time for minor customization requests creates significant project delays.
She feels a complete lack of autonomy over a tool she is responsible for managing.
The process of submitting a ticket, waiting for a quote, and getting approval for simple changes feels inefficient and bureaucratic.
She worries that the platform's poor user experience reflects badly on her and her team.
Bio
Priya is a 34-year-old Operations Manager at a mid-sized consulting firm. She is tech-savvy but not a developer. Her role is to ensure her team of 100 consultants has the software they need to succeed, and that includes managing the company's instance of the SHC platform. She is evaluated on her team's efficiency and her ability to manage her operational budget effectively. She is constantly under pressure to launch new internal projects but finds herself blocked by the platform's inflexibility, turning what should be simple tasks into frustrating, expensive waiting games.
Vikram, engineer
Pain Points
The inability to work on more challenging and meaningful engineering problems.
The technical debt and messy code of the old platform make even simple changes risky and time-consuming.
The constant friction with the sales team, who have to promise long setup times to new clients.
The constant influx of low-priority customization tickets that disrupt his workflow.
Bio
Vikram is a 29-year-old back-end developer at SHC. He's a skilled and motivated engineer who is passionate about building robust, scalable systems. However, he spends nearly 60% of his time on repetitive, low-level customization tasks because of the platform's rigid architecture. He's frustrated with the constant context-switching and the technical debt of the old codebase. He wants to focus on building innovative features for the core product, but is stuck in a reactive loop of manual client setups, which he knows is not a scalable way to grow the business.
Vikram, engineer
Pain Points
The inability to work on more challenging and meaningful engineering problems.
The technical debt and messy code of the old platform make even simple changes risky and time-consuming.
The constant friction with the sales team, who have to promise long setup times to new clients.
The constant influx of low-priority customization tickets that disrupt his workflow.
Bio
Vikram is a 29-year-old back-end developer at SHC. He's a skilled and motivated engineer who is passionate about building robust, scalable systems. However, he spends nearly 60% of his time on repetitive, low-level customization tasks because of the platform's rigid architecture. He's frustrated with the constant context-switching and the technical debt of the old codebase. He wants to focus on building innovative features for the core product, but is stuck in a reactive loop of manual client setups, which he knows is not a scalable way to grow the business.
Vikram, engineer
Pain Points
The inability to work on more challenging and meaningful engineering problems.
The technical debt and messy code of the old platform make even simple changes risky and time-consuming.
The constant friction with the sales team, who have to promise long setup times to new clients.
The constant influx of low-priority customization tickets that disrupt his workflow.
Bio
Vikram is a 29-year-old back-end developer at SHC. He's a skilled and motivated engineer who is passionate about building robust, scalable systems. However, he spends nearly 60% of his time on repetitive, low-level customization tasks because of the platform's rigid architecture. He's frustrated with the constant context-switching and the technical debt of the old codebase. He wants to focus on building innovative features for the core product, but is stuck in a reactive loop of manual client setups, which he knows is not a scalable way to grow the business.
Vikram, engineer
Pain Points
The inability to work on more challenging and meaningful engineering problems.
The technical debt and messy code of the old platform make even simple changes risky and time-consuming.
The constant friction with the sales team, who have to promise long setup times to new clients.
The constant influx of low-priority customization tickets that disrupt his workflow.
Bio
Vikram is a 29-year-old back-end developer at SHC. He's a skilled and motivated engineer who is passionate about building robust, scalable systems. However, he spends nearly 60% of his time on repetitive, low-level customization tasks because of the platform's rigid architecture. He's frustrated with the constant context-switching and the technical debt of the old codebase. He wants to focus on building innovative features for the core product, but is stuck in a reactive loop of manual client setups, which he knows is not a scalable way to grow the business.
Quantifying the problem:
Key research findings
This data comes from a survey of 50 client administrators and 15 internal developers
The Solution
I designed and architected a comprehensive, modular design system from the ground up.
This system acted as a library of reusable components and defined styles that could be easily mixed and matched.
The centerpiece was a client-facing "Theme Editor," an intuitive dashboard where clients could manage their branding in real-time.
I designed and architected a comprehensive, modular design system from the ground up.
This system acted as a library of reusable components and defined styles that could be easily mixed and matched.
The centerpiece was a client-facing "Theme Editor," an intuitive dashboard where clients could manage their branding in real-time.
I designed and architected a comprehensive, modular design system from the ground up.
This system acted as a library of reusable components and defined styles that could be easily mixed and matched.
The centerpiece was a client-facing "Theme Editor," an intuitive dashboard where clients could manage their branding in real-time.
Post-Design:
Controlled Usability & System Usability Scale (SUS)
After the redesign, we tested the new platform with 12 client administrators to validate its intuitiveness and efficiency.
© 2025 All right reserved
© 2025 All right reserved
© 2025 All right reserved