The FINSYNC Impact Center
From Software to Support System: The Evolution of FINSYNC 💻
FINSYNC is a SaaS Platform that helps small businesses manage accounting, payroll, and payments—all in one platform. (See FINSYNC Case Study) After two years designing on the FINSYNC Platform, I led the creation of the FINSYNC Impact Center—a hub connecting entrepreneurs with bankers, investors, accountants, and coaches to provide real-world support beyond software.
The Problem:
The Right Advice Requires the Right Timing ⏱
Entrepreneurs usually start with vision—but not always with a plan. Many don’t seek guidance until they’ve exhausted time and capital. The problem: they’re often just a small insight or lending boost away from achieving success and just don't know where to turn for help. We wanted to create a network where professionals could guide founders at just the right moment—before they act—to turn dreams into smart, sustainable strategies.
The Vision:
Supporting the Entrepreneurial Journey Every Step of the Way 📍
At FINSYNC, we set out to do more than offer financial tools—we aimed to create a robust ecosystem that supports entrepreneurs at every stage of their journey. Our goal: connect business owners with real-world professionals who can guide, advise, and unlock new growth opportunities. The solution: Through detailed profiles, messaging, and shared business intelligence, entrepreneurs and advisors can connect meaningfully—exchanging everything from projections to historical data. The platform opens doors to tailored business programs, expert mentorship, and diverse financial pathways—including government-supported lending and private capital.
Product Goals 🚀
Build a dual-system product infrastructure that empowers service professionals while syncing perfectly with FINSYNC’s existing tools and data architecture.
Understand and map user needs through stakeholder engagement—ensuring we solve for their goals, data workflows, and performance tracking methodologies.
Business Goals 📑
Expand FINSYNC’s monetization strategy by embedding loan mechanisms directly into user workflows.
Improve subscription retention by providing meaningful incentives—like mentorship, capital, and curated learning experiences.
Network Effect: Build a community-centered platform that acts as the go-to resource for business owners navigating strategic and financial challenges.
Design Goals 🖼️
Leverage the FINSYNC Atlas Design System and native conventions to deliver a familiar, brand-consistent experience while minimizing engineering cost
Architect adaptable UX frameworks to support distinct user journeys and use-case-specific product configurations.
Deliver organized, role-specific handoff documentation that allows cross-functional teams to quickly orient themselves and move through complex workflows with confidence.
The Audience:
Designing Role-Specific Tools Through Stakeholder Discovery 🛠️
One of our biggest challenges was designing a solution that truly reflected the diverse needs of our end users. From educators and trainers to accountants, consultants, and lending professionals—each group came with its own unique goals, workflows, and data requirements. To get it right, we conducted in-depth interviews with stakeholders and professionals to uncover what drives them, how they support entrepreneurs, and what information they need to track success over time.
One Platform, Many Doors 🚪
Creating detailed personas became our anchor point—helping us align with internal stakeholders and keep user needs at the center of every decision. These personas guided our understanding of which data sets, product features, and language were essential for each audience. What started with three core user roles—Community Organizations, Investors, and Bankers—quickly evolved into five, as we expanded to include Alternative Lending Institutions and Service Professionals. Each group required its own login, tailored interface, and specific functionality to serve its distinct purpose.
Validating Through Real-World Collaboration 👩🏽💼👨💼
Throughout the design process, we actively iterated our prototypes with teammates who supported each user role. In collaborative calls that included both stakeholders and their clients, we were able to troubleshoot, gather feedback, and make critical course corrections.
Key insights from this hands-on testing included:
Investors were open to making smaller investments than expected
Community Organizations preferred using their own training content over our internal offerings
Bankers wanted a simplified onboarding process where clients could self-enroll via a link
Early wireframe presentations helped us pivot away from several flawed assumptions, saving both time and resources. With a new product in the works, I was also tasked with pushing design quality forward—delivering high-fidelity mocks that tested light/dark modes and laid groundwork for a refreshed design system.
Project Phase
We experimented with many different concepts for making designs that would ensure the greatest level of impact. These were carefully scaled down as we got feedback from stakeholders as to the limitations of our engineering team and MVP.
This project is currently going live. That said, we are in the process of adding partner banks as well as business accelerators to the product to grow network adoption. In this stage we are collecting feedback from our new users and using it to gain insights into customer needs and next steps for the product. These will lead to new discoveries, improvements and strategy as we scale the product.
