Our designer’s primary task was to organically fit the Account Management Module into the WKO marketing website and EdCast learning management system.
During the research phase, we made an ERD dependency diagram and a detailed user flow. Keeping in mind that some companies could have 500 employees and more, we made the module’s interface adaptive and user-friendly when displaying large tables and dashboards of payment history.
Wise Up
Digital Training Platform with a Custom-Built Account Management Module
A custom-built Account Management Module
For individuals, small-to-medium companies, and enterprises
Single Sign-On, two admin panels, high-end billing system
Prehistory
Creating a highly-educated and qualified pool of specialists is one of the most surefire avenues to economic growth, which is what WKO, the Austrian Chamber of Commerce, considers its main goal.
WKO entrusted its mission to a software-as-a-service learning management system (LMS)
EdCast.
EdCast allows downloading learning materials in various forms and issuing licenses to students upon completion of courses.
Once the platform for storing and delivering learning materials was found, WKO started thinking of a way to attract companies to use their educational service and monetize it. EdCast didn't allow them to generate invoices. That was the kind of initial request with which WKO came to us in October 2021.
The Moment Wise Up Was Born
During the preliminary negotiations with the client, we concluded that the project scope would comprise three core development tasks:
- Design a website for marketing purposes
- Build billing functionality
- Create a customer relationship management system
- Integrate all three components with the EdCast LMS.
We merged tasks 2 and 3 into one Account Management Module (AMM) and took on the development of a shell over a third-party LMS. Our client named the project Wise Up.
Identifying Target Users
It has always been — and is — crucial for us to understand for whom we create a product. We always start the project development with the discovery stage to figure it out.
In this AMM–LMS development case, our client came to us with already defined three target user personas with their expectations from the service:
Individuals
Contractors, freelancers, and individual employees want to obtain licenses to legally operate, win customer trust, advance their careers, and simply earn more.
Individuals looked for:
- Flexible payments with pay-per-license or subscription-based pricing.
- Transparent pricing to understand what they are paying for and avoid hidden fees or charges.
- Responsive customer support to get assistance with billing or other issues.
Small-to-medium businesses
This type of target users wants to be compliant with industry regulations, reduce liability and risks, increase productivity, improve employee retention, and get satisfied customers.
Small-to-medium businesses looked for:
- Affordable payment fees since SMBs, as a rule, have limited educational budgets for staff training/upskilling and licensing.
- Scalability of the system to adapt to ever-increasing team size without incurring additional costs or fees.
- Easy and secure payment processing, including automatic payments and multiple payment options.
Enterprises
Big corporations also need to license their employees to comply with industry-specific standards and regulations; otherwise, they’ll pay eye-popping fines and penalties. In addition, they want to train, upskill, and re-educate staff to boost efficiency, enhance brand awareness, and stand out.
Enterprises looked for:
- Volume-based discounts to fit their budget and specific needs.
- Integration with their accounting software to streamline billing and payment processing.
- Advanced invoicing system to bill different departments or teams separately, split invoices across multiple payment methods, and automatize payments.
What we did
UX Design
UI Design
WKO already had their own design system, used for learning courses and the marketing website. While creating the AMM, we needed to make the color scheme and the overall look of the elements in line with the client’s design system.
In other words, we needed to ensure that when the end users switched between the marketing website, the AMM, and the LMS, they found screen layouts, transitions, visual elements, and interface micro-interactions not contradicting each other.
As a result, we worked out 67 design wireframes and 110 colored screens that were approved by our client with little to no revision.
On the backend
Single Sign-On (SSO) for registration:
Single Sign-On (SSO) for registration:
To provide a user-friendly experience for all three types of target users, we needed to organize a proper onboarding system, including easy registration.
However, having two platforms — our account management system and EdCast learning — involved two separate authorizations, which, we thought, would be an unnecessary hassle for users and not a good UX practice.
To relieve our users from double-entering their credentials, we enabled them to authorize only once through our AMM system. Then, we applied the Single sign-on (SSO) authentication scheme to do the rest for the EdCast LMS registration.
Advanced custom admin panel for managing multiple roles
Advanced custom admin panel for managing multiple roles
Since the Austrian government backed the WKO project, we needed to make Wise Up ready for large corporations with thousands of employees to enter the platform. Where significant amounts of data exist, there should be proper data accounting, control, and management.
To do this, we understood that we needed to streamline invitation and user filtering, licensing deactivation processes for laid-off employees, switching pricing plans based on staff reduction/increase, and more.
Important to note:
EdCast provided WKO instructors, responsible for the educational part of the service, with its own admin panel. Our task here was to create two separate custom admin areas:
01
For companies’ representatives who would manage users (their employees) within companies’ accounts on Wise Up
02
For the WKO staff responsible for interactions with clients, sales, billing, and customer support within Wise Up
For both admin panels, we created three leading roles: owner, administrator, and manager.
Thus, in the company admin panel, an owner could assign roles, change the company’s info, send invitations to staff members, filter their students, buy certificates and licenses, and upgrade their profiles. Specific user roles could also deny licenses for some employees to transfer them to others.
The admin panel of the WKO staff includes a financial dashboard, invoice history, and payment details and allows to handle requests from clients.
Wise Up Challenge: Billing System
Wise Up Challenge: Billing System
Stripe is our go-to payment system in most products. It is safe and secure because it has a default script Stripe.js that allows transferring clients’ data directly to Stripe, bypassing the servers.
So, we used it for the Wise Up online learning platform project as well. It perfectly worked to accept payments from individuals and companies, say, with 10–100 employees and fixed prices.
While the project was evolving, we recognized our client’s primary users were large corporations with thousands of employees. Stripe became economically inexpedient. Moreover, the service price for enterprises became floating, not fixed.
Our solution: New Pricing Plan & Direct Invoicing
For large corporations, we created a new pricing plan with a custom billing system. On the backend, we built a progressive algorithm of price calculation. It calculates the proper price plan based on the fields with the prices divided into groups (≤20 invitations, 20–50, 50–70, etc.), variable tax amounts, and purchase dates.
For regular clients, it means the more they buy, the less they pay. For example, a company bought 20 licenses for the fixed $X per license. When the company returns to buy more licenses, between 21 and 50, they will need to pay $Y per license, where Y < X, and so on.
Although the methodology of the invoice calculation itself was challenging, we did it! As a result, the system generates the direct invoice with the calculated price and sends it to the enterprise for payment via bank transfer.
Technologies We Used For Wise Up
Frontend
Backend
Two-Sided Cooperation:
Our Biggest Asset
Throughout this digital training platform development process, we actively collaborated with Wise Up’s product owner, together brainstorming the project's scope and finding practical solutions for intuitive data arrangements.
By conforming to the communication plan and providing sprint reports on time, we developed a complex account management module, integrated it into the SaaS educational platform, and made this system run like clockwork.
Everyone from freelancers and enterprises to advisors and instructors of the Austrian Chamber of Economics to the Wise Up owner and support manager found this online learning system attractive, functional, and easy to use.
Wise Up Launch and Ongoing Results
WKO asked us to release the project before Christmas, which was three months after the start of the project. We built the roadmap with this deadline, and we managed to finish on time: Wise Up's first version was launched by Christmas 2021. But that was just the beginning.
Since Wise Up’s launch at the end of 2021 and to this day, we've been working with Wise Up's support manager and handling requests from large corporations. They ask us to make slight adjustments or add new functionality to meet big clients' needs.
At the time of writing, a few big Austrian corporations are using Wise Up to train and license their employees. And it's an immensely pleasing fact!
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