NTS — UNIFIED EMPLOYEE EXPERIENCE PLATFORM
Unifying HR, Payroll, Managers and Employees into One Connected Workspace
Lead Product Designer · Pronto Software · 60 Agile Sprints · Strategic UX Transformation
"Six enterprise systems. Five user groups. Zero connection between them. I designed the platform that unified them all."
THE NUMBERS
45% reduction in onboarding administration time60+ Agile sprints delivered over 2+ years6 systems unified — HR · Payroll · Onboarding · Approvals · Timesheets · Admin5 user groups served — Employees · HR · Payroll · Managers · IT1 architectural principle that changed how Pronto Software builds products0 email approvals remaining — replaced entirely by in-platform workflows
THE CONTEXT — WHY THIS PROJECT EXISTED
At Pronto Software, employee onboarding wasn't one broken screen. It was six broken systems that had never been designed to work together.
HR, Payroll, Employee Onboarding, Manager Approvals, Timesheets, and Employee Administration all operated as independent ERP modules — each with its own interface, its own workflows, and its own data. A new employee joining an organisation running Pronto Xi triggered a cascade of manual handoffs, email follow-ups, and disconnected tasks across every one of those systems simultaneously.
The result was predictable — and painful.
Onboarding typically took 2–3 days to complete. New graduates and new hires regularly started their first day without full system access, without payroll configured, and without clear guidance on what they were supposed to do next.
HR teams were spending hours chasing approvals by email. Payroll officers were correcting errors caused by incomplete data from onboarding. Managers had no visibility into where their new hire's onboarding stood. New employees were anxious, confused, and unsupported from day one.
The business logic within Pronto Xi was sound. The user experience was completely fragmented.
That distinction — business logic sound, experience broken — became the strategic insight that changed everything.
NTS — the New Tech Stack — was the platform I proposed, designed, and delivered to solve this. Not a screen redesign. Not a module update. A unified employee experience platform that connected HR, Payroll, Manager Approvals, Identity Verification, Tax Setup, Timesheets, and Employee Administration into a single, coherent workspace — for the first time in Pronto Xi's history.
THE DISCOVERY — UNDERSTANDING THE REAL PROBLEM
Before proposing any solution, I ran a structured discovery programme to understand the full scope of the problem across every affected user group.
What I did:
Stakeholder interviews — In-depth interviews with HR administrators, Payroll Officers, Hiring Managers, and recently onboarded employees. Each group experienced a different dimension of the same broken system.J
Journey mapping — End-to-end mapping of the existing onboarding journey from offer acceptance to first productive day — across all five user groups simultaneously. The map revealed 12+ handoff points where information was manually transferred between systems, people, or processes.
Workflow analysis — Systematic analysis of every task in the onboarding sequence: who initiates it, who completes it, what system it lives in, and where it fails.
Usability testing — Task-based testing with HR administrators and new employees on the existing system, measuring where confusion, delays, and errors occurred.
Pain point validation — Cross-referencing interview findings with support ticket data and HR operational records to confirm which pain points were highest frequency and highest impact.
What each user group told me:
New employees — "I didn't know what I was supposed to do before I started. I got emails from three different people asking for the same information.
HR administrators — "I spend half my time chasing people for approvals and following up on incomplete forms. I have no single view of where any onboarding is up to.
Payroll officers — "We constantly find errors on the first pay run because onboarding data was incomplete or entered incorrectly. We're fixing problems that shouldn't exist
Hiring managers — "I approve things by email. I have no visibility into whether my new hire has system access or knows where to go on day one.
The insight that changed the strategic direction:
The problem was never individual screens. The problem was that six modules — each technically functional in isolation — had never been designed to work together as a single employee experience.Fixing individual screens would have produced six better screens connected by the same broken handoffs.The real solution required a completely different approach.
Employees
A guided, progressive onboarding journey from offer acceptance to first productive day. Clear next steps. Visible progress. No anxiety. No confusion. Everything they need — in one place, in the right order, before day one.
HR Administrators
A centralised onboarding dashboard with real-time status across every new hire. No more email follow-ups. No more chasing approvals. Complete visibility at a glance — so HR can manage onboarding instead of administering it.
Payroll Officers
Structured, validated payroll setup data flowing directly from onboarding — eliminating the first-pay-run errors caused by incomplete manual entry. Payroll officers receive complete, accurate data sets, not partially filled forms to interpret and correct.
Hiring Managers
In-platform approval workflows with full context and automatic escalation — replacing untracked email approvals with a transparent, accountable process. Managers see their new hire's complete onboarding status without asking anyone.
THE STRATEGIC PIVOT — FROM REDESIGN TO PLATFORM
This is the decision that defines this project.
When I presented my discovery findings to leadership, the expected response would have been: "Redesign the onboarding screens." That's what most organisations ask for when onboarding is broken.
I proposed something different.
The proposal: New Tech Stack (NTS)
Rather than redesigning individual ERP modules — which would have preserved the fundamental fragmentation — I proposed a new strategic direction: a modern unified employee experience platform that sat as a presentation and workflow layer on top of the existing Pronto Xi ERP backend.
The architectural principle:
The core master records and business rules remained within Pronto Xi. The ERP was not replaced. The business logic it contained — payroll rules, compliance requirements, employment agreements, tax calculations — was preserved exactly as it was.What changed was the experience layer entirely.
NTS became the modern interface through which every stakeholder — employees, HR, payroll, managers — interacted with that underlying business logic. One connected workspace.
One source of truth. One experience that knew where every onboarding was up to, for every person, at every moment.
Why this was the right decision:
Replacing the ERP backend would have taken years and cost millions. Redesigning individual screens would have produced six better screens still connected by broken handoffs. Separating the experience layer from the business logic layer preserved everything that worked while completely transforming everything that didn't.
This wasn't just a UX decision. It was a product architecture decision. And it required me to work at a level of strategic, cross-functional, and technical depth that went significantly beyond interface design.
WHAT NTS UNIFIED — THE SIX FLOWS
NTS integrated six previously disconnected experiences into a single connected platform:
FLOW 1 — EMPLOYMENT OFFER & WELCOME PORTAL
The employee journey begins before day one. NTS introduced a digital employment offer experience — the new hire receives, reviews, and accepts their offer within the platform.
Immediately upon acceptance, a personalised Welcome Portal activates — giving the employee a clear, guided view of everything they need to complete before starting, with progress tracking and deadlines visible at a glance.
No more PDF attachments. No more "reply to this email to confirm acceptance." The offer and welcome experience is digital, trackable, and connected to everything that follows.
FLOW 2 — EMPLOYEE ONBOARDING DASHBOARD
A centralised onboarding dashboard — visible to the employee, their hiring manager, and HR simultaneously — that shows the complete onboarding status in real time.
Every task, every approval, every outstanding item is visible in one place. The employee sees what they need to do next. HR sees where every onboarding stands across the organisation.
Managers see their new hire's progress without asking anyone.The email follow-up loop — the single biggest source of HR administrative overhead in the discovery research — is eliminated by design.
FLOW 3 — IDENTITY VERIFICATION
Identity verification is one of the most friction-heavy steps in enterprise onboarding — typically requiring physical document presentation, manual HR review, and multiple back-and-forth exchanges.
NTS introduced a guided digital identity verification flow — the employee is walked through exactly what documents are required, how to submit them, and what happens next.
The HR administrator receives a structured verification task, not a disorganised email attachment. Status is visible to all parties throughout.
FLOW 4 — TAX & PAYROLL SETUP
Payroll errors on the first pay run were one of the highest-impact pain points identified in discovery. The root cause was consistently the same: incomplete or incorrectly entered payroll setup data during onboarding, caused by confusing forms and no validation.
NTS redesigned tax and payroll setup as a guided, progressive disclosure flow — presenting one logical step at a time, validating input at each step, and confirming completion before the data flows through to the payroll system.
The Payroll Officer receives a structured, complete data set — not a partially filled form to interpret and correct.
FLOW 5 — MANAGER APPROVALS
Approval workflows that previously existed entirely in email — with no tracking, no escalation, and no visibility — were brought into the NTS platform. Managers receive structured approval tasks with full context. Approvals are tracked, timestamped, and escalated automatically if not completed within defined timeframes.
FLOW 6 — TIMESHEETS & ONGOING EMPLOYEE INTERACTIONS
NTS extended beyond initial onboarding to cover ongoing employee interactions — timesheets, leave requests, and employee administration — keeping employees, HR, and managers connected in a single workspace beyond day one.
THE DESIGN PRINCIPLES
Four principles governed every design decision across the 60+ sprint delivery:
Progressive Disclosure: Show each employee exactly what they need to do right now — not the entire onboarding journey at once. Each step reveals the next. Completion is visible. Overwhelm is designed out.
Single Source of Truth: Every stakeholder — employee, HR, payroll, manager — sees the same onboarding status in real time. No conflicting information. No "I thought that was done." No email chains to reconstruct context.
Separation of Experience from Business Logic: The interaction model, information architecture, and workflows were completely redesigned. The underlying ERP business rules were preserved. This principle — experience layer separate from logic layer — became the template for future Pronto Xi transformation initiatives.
IBM Carbon Design System — AdaptedNTS design patterns were heavily influenced by IBM Carbon Design System — bringing enterprise-grade interaction standards, accessibility compliance, and component consistency to a platform serving enterprise organisations. Carbon was adapted rather than adopted wholesale — the same selective approach used across the broader Pronto Xi design system.
THE DELIVERY — 60 AGILE SPRINTS · 9 TEAM LAYERS · 2+ YEARS
This wasn't a 6-week design project. It was a 2+ year cross-functional transformation programme — one of the most complex collaborative delivery structures I've worked within.
Cross-Functional Team Structure
NTS was delivered through nine distinct discipline layers, each with their own technical domain, all collaborating across 60+ Agile sprints over two years.
1. UX Design — End-to-end experience design, user research, prototyping, usability testing, and design system governance. My layer. I was the bridge between every other team.
2. Product Management — Roadmap ownership, sprint prioritisation, stakeholder alignment, and business requirement translation.
3. Technical Architecture — System architecture decisions including the core separation of experience layer from ERP backend — the foundational principle that made NTS possible.
4. Data Layer — Data modelling, master record management, and ensuring the Pronto Xi ERP backend remained the single source of truth for all business logic.
5. Service Layer — API design and integration architecture connecting the NTS front-end to the Pronto Xi ERP data and business rules.
6. Front-End Engineering — Implementation of the NTS interface, design system components, and IBM Carbon-influenced interaction patterns.
7. Infrastructure — Platform hosting, deployment pipeline, environment management, and scalability architecture.
8. QA — Test planning, functional and regression testing, usability validation, and release quality gates.
9. Development — Feature development across all six platform flows — offer, onboarding, identity verification, payroll setup, approvals, and timesheets.
How I worked across all nine layers:
I didn't sit inside the UX layer and hand designs over the fence. I was present in technical architecture sessions — shaping the experience layer separation decision from the design side. I worked with the Data Layer team to understand what master records lived where, so information architecture decisions were grounded in technical reality. I collaborated with the Service Layer team on API contract design to ensure the interaction model I was designing was actually deliverable. I ran design QA alongside the QA team to validate that shipped features matched design intent before release.
"I was the bridge between every other team.I collaborated on API contracts, shaped architecture decisions, and ran design QA.That cross-layer presence — a designer who understood the technical architecture,not just the interface — is what kept NTS coherentacross two years and nine team layers."
My role across the programme:
I led UX design end-to-end across all 60+ sprints — from the initial strategic proposal through discovery, information architecture, user flows, wireframing, prototyping, usability testing, design system work, engineering collaboration, QA reviews, and release support.
How agile delivery worked for this project:Each sprint delivered a tested, validated increment of the platform — not a design deliverable, but a working product feature. POCs were run in staging environments to validate technical feasibility before sprint commitment.
Usability testing fed directly into sprint planning — findings from one sprint shaped the design brief for the next.
IMPACT & OUTCOMES
User outcomes
A. 45% reduction in onboarding administration time — measured across HR, Payroll, Managers, and Employees. The biggest gains came from eliminating email-based approval workflows and replacing manual data re-entry with connected, validated flows.
B. Payroll errors dramatically reduced — the guided Tax & Payroll Setup flow eliminated the incomplete data problem that had been generating first-pay-run corrections consistently.
C. Manager approval delays eliminated — structured in-platform approvals with escalation replaced untracked email approvals entirely.
D. HR email follow-ups dramatically reduced — real-time onboarding visibility meant HR administrators could see status without asking. The follow-up email loop was removed by design.
E. New employee anxiety significantly reduced — the Welcome Portal and guided step-by-step flows gave new hires confidence and clarity before day one. Employees knew exactly what to do, in what order, with visible progress throughout.
Business outcomes
A. New licensing opportunities created — NTS created a standalone licensing model for HR and Payroll modules, generating new commercial opportunities for Pronto Software beyond the core ERP.
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B. Strategic influence beyond onboarding — the separation of experience layer from business logic layer became a blueprint for future Pronto Xi transformation. The same architectural approach was subsequently applied to Supply Chain and directly influenced the Internationalisation (i18n) programme.
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C. Redefined enterprise UX at Pronto Software — NTS demonstrated that complex ERP systems did not need to remain constrained by traditional module boundaries. It fundamentally changed how Pronto Software approached enterprise product design going forward.
WHAT THIS PROJECT DEMONSTRATES
I identified an opportunity nobody had framed correctly.The onboarding problem had existed for years. It had been framed as "the screens need updating." I reframed it as a platform architecture problem — and that reframe was what made the 45% efficiency improvement possible.
I proposed a strategic direction, not just a design solution.NTS wasn't a response to a brief. It was a proposal I made based on research evidence. Convincing leadership to invest in a 2+ year platform transformation rather than a screen redesign required presenting research findings as business outcomes — not UX arguments.
I operated at programme scale, not project scale. 60 sprints. A multidisciplinary team spanning design, engineering, architecture, data, and QA. Two years. This was not a design handoff. It was sustained design leadership across a complex, long-running product programme.
I created architectural thinking that outlasted the project.The experience layer / business logic separation principle didn't stay in onboarding. It became the template for how Pronto Software approached enterprise modernisation — applied to Supply Chain, and later to the entire i18n re-architecture programme. That's the kind of strategic impact that defines a Lead Product Designer's contribution.
CONCLUSION
New employees deserved a better first day.HR teams deserved to stop chasing approvals by email.Payroll officers deserved complete, accurate data on day one.Managers deserved visibility without asking.NTS didn't just fix onboarding.It proved that enterprise ERP could be transformedby separating the experience from the system —and it changed how Pronto Software builds productsfrom that day forward.
Lead Product Designer · Pronto Software · NTS — Unified Employee Experience Platform · 2+ Years · 60+ Agile Sprints
NDA Statement: To respect confidentiality, certain details including data, visuals, and system specifics have been adapted or abstracted. The focus is on showcasing design approach, thinking, and impact.