SAGE ESS Timesheets

Overview

Company
The Access Group (formally Sage)

Role
Product Design Lead

Platform
SaaS | Responsive

Date
2021

Product
Sage ESS

Key Contributions

• Conducted stakeholder & user contextual interviews
• Performed competitive analysis
• Developed user personas & product strategy
• Facilitated user story mapping workshops
• Defined user stories & journeys
• Created sitemaps, wireframes, & visual designs
• Developed prototypes & led usability testing

The Challenge

Our existing timesheet solution, particularly for Annualised Salary, suffered from several critical shortcomings: a poor user experience, slow development cycles from a third-party vendor, and high-risk dependencies with other Sage systems. To overcome these significant gaps, the business strategically decided to design and build a new timesheet module in-house, fully integrated within Sage ESS.

Research & Strategy

I initiated the research phase by conducting stakeholder and user contextual interviews to thoroughly understand existing pain points. Based on these findings, I developed key personas to represent our target users.

Next, I facilitated a user story mapping workshop with the team to strategically outline our development path and define the Minimum Viable Product (MVP). A competitive analysis followed, exploring how other solutions addressed similar timesheet challenges, providing valuable inspiration and insights.

Design & Prototyping

With a clear MVP defined, I designed the comprehensive user journey. Drawing inspiration from direct and indirect competitors, I began by sketching various ideas and gathering early feedback. Subsequently, I developed a detailed prototype, specifically designed to validate both its technical feasibility and usability through testing with our target users.

Validation

The usability tests were a resounding success. Stakeholders expressed high satisfaction with the design and the strategic direction for our MVP, confirming its potential to significantly improve the user experience for annualised salary timesheets.

The Team

Product Manager Janice Aldinger
Product Owner Sharon Anderson
Product Delivery Manager Payroll Sam Barber
Web Products Team Lead Mark Foster

Special Thanks

Product Marketing, Learning, and Implementations Teams

© 2025 Gabs.io