Timeline
2016 – 2019
My Role
Principal Product Designer
Impact
ERP for a $1.7B+ network · 150+ locations · 5 countries · new company-wide pre-sales standard
Spreadsheets held a $1.7B network together. Someone had to replace them without breaking it.
Challenge
A construction franchise network turning over $1.7B+ a year ran on manual spreadsheets. 150+ offices across 5 countries, 2,900+ custom homes built annually — every quote, schedule and supplier order living in files passed between people. The obvious answer was a cloud ERP. The hard part was who would use it: franchise operators who build houses for a living, not software users. Many had run their office the same way for a decade and had no reason to trust a system that made their work more visible. Softeq won the tender on a multi-million-dollar contract, and the client's Product Owner asked for me on the project by name. For three years I was the only designer on it, working alongside three business analysts — which meant every workflow decision, every screen and every argument about scope came through one person.
MY ACTIONS
1. Mapped the real workflows before designing anything. I worked through how a franchise office actually operates — where a quote begins, who signs off, what happens when a supplier is late. The business analysts held the process knowledge; my job was turning it into an information architecture that survived contact with 150+ offices that each did things slightly differently. 2. Separated what must be global from what can stay local. The network needed consistency for reporting and franchise-wide control, but every office had local practices worth keeping. I classified each workflow step as either a fixed constraint or a configurable parameter — the decision that made one system work across 5 countries without forcing everyone into an identical process. 3. Designed for people who don't use software all day. Dense construction data — schedules, variations, supplier orders, cost tracking — presented so a builder could act on it without training. Progressive disclosure over feature-complete screens. 4. Invented Pre-Contract Interactive Prototyping. Instead of selling enterprise projects with slides, I built live interactive prototypes used inside sales conversations, so clients could click through the product before signing. It shortened the distance between "we think you need this" and a signed contract — and Softeq adopted it company-wide as a pre-sales standard.
Solution
A cloud ERP that replaced spreadsheet operations across a $1.7B+ network — 150+ locations, 5 countries, 2,900+ homes a year. The pre-sales prototyping method outlived the project: it became a company-wide standard at Softeq and was used on later enterprise deals.
What I'd Do Differently
Three years as the sole designer on a system this size was too long to stay solo. I held the whole model in my head, which made me fast and made the project fragile — onboarding anyone new meant transferring years of undocumented decisions. I should have pushed to build a second designer into the project by year two, not because the workload demanded it, but because a system that only one person understands is a risk to the client, not just to me.