TL;DR Built a SaaS that made financial consultants cheer (and stop Excel-ing their souls away).


Transformed financial consultants' workflow by developing a SaaS solution that automates data aggregation and risk analysis. Key results included a 60% reduction in manual processing time while maintaining service value.

LESSONS LEARNED

THE PROCESS

THE CHALLENGE

Client ping pong -

Spreadsheet archeology -

Data entering -

50% of time spent chasing documents via email threads

Critical risks buried in cell C247 of 20-tab workbooks

Wasting 60% of billable hours manually requesting and reformatting client data.

Financial consultants were trapped in

Delivery: from skepticism to adoption

Building: from data to product

Discovery: uncovering the silent pain points

Re-typing data from PDFs into Excel

Consultants were trapped in a cycle of performing expertise through manual work, rather than practicing it through analysis.

Competitors added more features; we removed friction.

All focused on data collection, none on analysis acceleration.

Design System

Edge case prototyping

Broader user testing

Stakeholders interview

Analyzed 5 compliance tools

Weekly syncs to ensure technical feasibility

Partnering with Front-End

Saw consultants alt-tabbing between 15 windows

Design system for the win

Adoption Metrics

Overcoming initial resistance

Wireframing the possible solution

Ran "Show me your (worst) day" shadowing

High-Fidelity validation

Continuous testing and iterations to refine interactions

Dev-friendly for a smooth collaboration

Built a scalable design system in Figma

Wireframe helped our team to validate the task completion rate on the solution

Reduced onboarding time for new hires

The first team reported 60% less time spent in manual processing

3-month post-launch: 2 more teams started to use the tool

Created short Loom videos (≤90 sec) to demo key features

Anticipating the need

Quick wins: within 2 weeks, users reported less time spent on data entering.

Soft-launched with 1 team

Tested paper prototype within 3 days to validate the report builder concept.

Our component library grew organically. Next time, I’d document usage rules earlier to speed up dev handoff.

I’d prototype more ‘worst-case’ data scenarios (e.g., 100+ risk flags at once) to stress-test scalability sooner.

We tested mostly with senior consultants. Including junior staff earlier would’ve uncovered training gaps we fixed post-launch

© 2025 All Rights Reserved.
Bruna Vargas de Oliveira.