What users truly want

The cover letter system allows our tax users to draft a document that highlights risks and other points to their clients. Looking towards enhancements and tweaks, adding a feature such as track changes was a high priority for the Transfer Pricing users, but what if there was a limitation on what could be built?

Role

User Experience Designer

Version

TPCL 2.0-3.0 / Merged Cover Letter

Timeline

2023 - 2025 Ongoing

Team Members

1 User Experience Designer
1 User Interface Designer
~2 Product Owner
Development Engineering Team
~3 Champions

Keywords

Feature
Insight
Prioritization
Redesign
Dashboard
Limitations
Feasibility

Can
we
have
track
changes?

For those who are like me and do not use Microsoft Word in the capacity that an accountant does, 'Track Changes' is a feature that shows users who and what has been edited or changed in their document. It also leaves markups and comments, which can be reviewed and accepted or rejected.

With the usage of v1.0 of Transfer Pricing Cover Letter (TPCL for short), our Transfer Pricing (TP for short) users had one thing on their mind and it was track changes.

We might need to simplify

Our development team had concerns and feasibility issues which caused our solution to be a simpler and more condensed version of track changes.

Or at least if we wanted it within a reasonable span of time, and a small budget.

Microsoft Words Track Changes panel

Well
then
what
was
important
to
include?

After many rounds of user testing sessions with 3 working prototypes; along with multiple proof of concepts from our developers, we ended up with a working solution that tackles the two points below.

Changes and edits between work flow states were important to differentiate.(E.g. When the draft is submitted for review)
A comparison of the changes done side-by-side was preferred as this allowed junior team members to refer and learn from.

These were the points we boiled down to after tons of prioritization, which caused a reduction in tickets.

We also included some other minor enhancements such as being able to edit the paragraphs while track changes were on, and alignment of paragraph positions for easier comparing if they still existed in both versions.

Not a lot actually

Yes, the solution was a rather simple one.

But as long as we could cater to what TP needed from this first rollout of track changes, it would eventually lead to a better overall user experience for their cover letter generation and work process.

Although not boasting as many features as Microsoft Word,
we included the ones that tackled our users pain points

One of the features that weren't that high up on the prioritization board when deciding what to work on, but seemed quite necessary for users

Then
what
was
the
big
deal?

Like putting the last puzzle piece into place, it may not have felt like a lot of work was done. But finally TP users were able to create a cover letter from start to finish on the platform without relying on external applications.

The initial purpose and problem statement of the cover letter system was to migrate from a physical process to a purely digital one, and this allows them to do so.

With the usage of v1.0, their biggest issue was how tedious it was to prepare the cover letter from start to finish.

With this addition of a simple version of track changes, we had successfully pushed TPCL to a >90% usage of cover letter generation for applicable clients in 2024.

The 'live' version of track changes showing an edit

Metrics

Track Changes from this project has been rolled across to 2 other business units.
I would track the percentage of mistakes and edits to the final cover letters to see impact.

close to 100% usage

of tpcl for all tp cover letters in 2025

1 sprint

was cut due to feature prioritization

4 out of 5

users have no issues with track changes