In this case study, I will guide you through the research & development of a new account feature for a Private Marketplace, a white-label solution used by our org clients, financial institutions.

Business opportunity

Building a customisable user-management framework will help us to reach new markets - large financial institutions, not just individual users.

Discovering gaps

The initial version of our platform offered users the option to open either a corporate or personal account. Personal account holders were onboarded as individual investors, while corporate account holders could choose to be either asset issuers or corporate investors during registration.

But there were some gaps.

1. Regardless of which account type users selected, the platform only catered to one account user. There was no way to invite other users to a corporate account (in a way that doesn’t involve sharing your login credentials, passing identity and AML verifications).
2. There was only one role available: system admin, also known as the super user, who had access to all platform features.

User testing confirmed that this was a serious limitation for our highest-value clients, the corporate users. They needed to be able to invite different types of users to the platform and assign them access rights based on their org structure.

<aside> 💡 “If we don't build user management functionality, our highest-value clients will become frustrated with the lack of flexibility to manage users who are engaged with the platform” - Insight from the stakeholder interview

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Our team set out to build a user management feature, but the scope of the project changed several times. The initial feature spec included:

• Inviting new users