The next project I worked on was a major milestone for LOFINO: addressing a significant issue with customer and data management. Previously, all tasks — from creating users to updating data and budgets — were handled manually by LOFINO's customer support team. This daily manual work, compounded by miscommunications and delayed updates, often led to critical issues, such as incomplete pay slips. This inefficiency became the driving force behind discussions about introducing a self-service tool for customers. The concept of the LOFINO Employer Portal was born.
This project marked a turning point for me as I officially transitioned to the product team. With my growing understanding of technical topics, this move allowed me to dive deeper into product strategy and work more closely with product managers across mission teams. I began creating prototypes for the portal and, just a few weeks later, tested them with interested customers. Thanks to strong collaboration with my colleague, who co-led the research, we collected valuable feedback that shaped the portal’s base design, which was developed over two to three sprints.
The first version of the portal enabled employers to view a complete list of their employees, access their data and budgets, and manually create new users. Employers could also assign budgets directly, triggering an automatic invitation to the mobile app. While this was a significant step forward, the feedback loop didn’t stop there.
The picture shows the User Management feature of the LOFINO Employer Portal
We conducted a second round of customer calls to test the latest version of the portal and prioritize future feature requests. This feedback was shared with product managers, who used it to create a roadmap for ongoing iterations.
The pictures show one of the numerous customer interviews we have conducted with existing customers
After completing all planned customer interviews across multiple sprints, we created an affinity map to analyze, cluster, and highlight all customer needs regarding self-service tools for employee benefits. We used a tool called “Condens” to facilitate this process. The resulting insights were then shared with stakeholders to ensure alignment on the roadmap and open topics.
The pictures shows the conducted affinity map in Condens
Today, the portal has grown to include advanced features such as:
• Mass user uploads via CSV files.
• A function to mark users as absent for a defined period.
• A KPI dashboard displaying key data on Bongo usage.
• Integrations with popular HR systems for seamless data import and synchronization.
Despite its progress, the portal remains a work in progress. After the beta release, we continued to gather feedback through Customer Success to identify pain points and potential improvements. This iterative approach ensures the portal evolves to meet the needs of our customers effectively.
Here are my key learnings, which I was able to gather especially during this phase of my work: