Recover US$4M in tax credits

About the Project

In short: analysts were leaving PIS/COFINS tax credits unclaimed because they had too many documents to check by hand. I led the research and a Design Sprint, then designed three SAP Fiori apps with custom filters, document grouping and ERP import. After launch, one client recovered US$4M in credits it had never claimed.

Help Tax Analyst to make educated decisions on which fiscal documents the company can take credit from PIS/COFINS, avoiding legal penalties by the government.

Credits were left unclaimed for fear of penalties

• Customers complained that as they have a large number of documents to review, some credits were left out due to the risk of legal penalties;

• Product team was new to the business domain and the User-Centered approach.

Team structure

• UX designer and sprint facilitator - me

• UX Writer, PM, PO, 3 developers

Process

To leverage the knowledge of the team regarding the business domain, I facilitated the creation of a CSD (Certainties, Suppositions, and Doubts) matrix that sparked research questions.

This matrix helped us to create our research strategy:

• structured user interviews (remotely) and shadowing user (Tax Analyst) on their daily work conducted by me;

• benchmark research conducted by the team;

• legal research conducted by Product Manager.

I called this discovery phase “Day 0”, as it was executed previously to the 5 days Design Sprint process. I brought a tax specialist into the sprint, and we worked directly with a SAP customer.

Shadowing showed analysts living in spreadsheets

• Integration with ERP is a must-have - in the shadowing sessions, I was able to see the user scrambling in spreadsheets and macros;

• Custom defined filters would be awesome - grant the user the possibility to filter only relevant documents;

• Grouping documents would make classification easier - classifying documents one by one is not an option as there are too many;

• Legacy software users demand special attention - if a disruptive solution is offered, users may not adhere.

After research findings were consolidated by the team, I facilitated one Design Sprint that:

• Helped the team on mapping user journey and choosing the target area to work on;

• Led me to create interactive prototypes that evolved after 4 rounds of user testing.

Three Fiori apps: filter, group, post

Following SAP Fiori (SAP’s Design System) guidelines, a suite of three web apps was conceived where users can:

• Please notice that the images above are from Axure RP built high-fidelity prototypes.

1. Configure filters to specify integration criteria:

2. Create Credit Control from imported documents:

3. Post tax data to Financials:

Prototype walkthrough: filters configured for integration criteria, Credit Control built from imported documents, tax data posted to Financials.

Impact: US$4M recovered by one client

After launch, a single client recovered US$4 million in PIS/COFINS tax credits from documents that had never been credited before.

The design decisions behind that result: custom filters so analysts could isolate creditable documents, grouping to classify documents at scale, and ERP integration so documents were imported and classified automatically — all grounded in the legal research that clarified which documents qualified.

Since the suite was integrated with the ERP, the documents were automatically imported/classified.

Project Retrospective

💗 What we did well:

• Customers love to be heard;

• “Day 0” helped everybody to be on the same page regarding the business domain;

• Well-executed research and early validation may ferociously prevent waste.

✅ What could be improved:

• A team lacking experience on Design process will need special attention while explaining the goal of each activity;

• Target for the design sprint should be well measured to come up with testable prototypes for the last day.

Collaboration & implementation strategy

Tech stack integration with Design

Award

Winner of the Labs Ecosystem Award at SAP, for long-term success and satisfaction of customers and partners.