Optimize Bonus Calculation for 100k+ employees

Client: Dell Technologies · Role: Senior Product Designer · Industry: HR · Year: 2025 · Scope: 100,000+ employees

Thousands of bonuses, one end-of-life tool

In short: bonus calculation for 100k+ employees ran on an end-of-life tool with a home screen nobody used. I deprecated the unused parts and rebuilt process control around the real workflow. The bonus cycle dropped from one quarter to one month (−67%), with NPS 80.

How do you calculate bonuses for thousands of employees, verify they are correct, and report them?

• Current solution does it

• Framework end-of-life

• DDS (new design system) adoption

Goals

1. Verify unused software

2. Check current solution business adherence

3. Gather improvement opportunities

Research Strategy

1. Survey to gather report usage

2. Exploratory interview to check current process

3. Analyze direct and indirect similar platforms

4. Analyze Splunk usage reports

5. Gather support tickets data to support decision

Nobody used the home screen; process control needed the attention

• “BCT is perfect!” - It works really well: Everybody agreed, at some level.

• User Maintenance is non-compliant: User roles should be maintained in Workday

• The home screen went unused: Nobody mentioned using it

• Reports: Don’t fix what’s not broken!

• Employee search is good: But, it could have some improvements.

• Upload/process control: This flow deserves attention

• Workflow: user does it outside the platform

• User roles are stable: No evidence of change needed.

Benchmark Research

User Journeys for “Admin” and “Processor” roles

Execution Priority

Deprecate what's unused, rebuild what matters

Step 1: Deprecate unused/non-compliant software

Step 2: start developing as soon as possible

Step 3: re-design the target - test it - iterate

Prototyping Day

Lightning Demos

Past good experiences - Past experiences on apps or solutions

Favorite products - What are you using everyday?

Trending - Technologies that are up.

Paper Prototyping - round 1

Prototyping - round 2

Mid resolution prototypes (content blurred for privacy)

Dell Design System rebuild, live validation, readable logs

Dell Design System adopted, automatic refresh + relevant data added to report (# impacted records and run time).

Major information architecture improvement, with data grouped by categories + tabs.

Real-time validation of file name and format.

Human-readable log + record count + run time in the same screen.

Prototype with accessibility annotation

Cycle −67%, NPS 80

• Bonus cycle cut from one quarter to one month (−67%)

• NPS of 80 after the redesign

• Dell Design System (DDS) adopted across the redesigned flows

• Accessibility annotations delivered with the design, so engineering built it right the first time

If I did it again, I'd put processors in front of prototypes earlier — support tickets had already flagged process control as the sore spot before we started.