Designing the Back-Office Tool That Enabled Subscription Products

My client was launching their first subscription-based product after years of selling only capital purchases. This shift required a fundamental change in how customer access was managed.

Before this tool existed, only developers could grant or modify subscription access by manually editing databases. Support teams had no way to help customers with access issues, subscription changes, or account problems. Every customer support request required developer intervention.

Worse, the underlying data was chaotic. Hundreds of duplicate organization records had accumulated over years, created when customers registered using slight variations of their company name without validation. During user testing sessions, participants would sign in only to discover they were "missing" registered products because they'd landed in a dead organization record with no purchase history.

For the subscription business model to work, support and sales teams needed autonomy to manage customer accounts without requiring developer intervention for every issue.

The tool needed to pull customer data from Salesforce (the source of truth) whilst allowing specific subscription data to be pushed back. But the technical complexity wasn't just the integration—it was handling inconsistent data from multiple legacy systems without making the situation worse.

Working with data specialists, we had to verify and tidy data sets before implementing features. The tool needed to prevent support teams from accidentally corrupting Salesforce data whilst giving them enough control to solve real customer problems.

Key functions included:

• Organization management - Merging duplicate organization records so customers could access their full purchase history and registered products in one place
• Subscription controls - Viewing and managing customer subscription access across products, including legacy overrides for past capital purchases that needed subscription access
• Account corrections - Moving user accounts to the correct organization record when customers had signed into the wrong entity
• Self-service support actions - Triggering password resets for customers to action themselves, rather than developers creating temporary passwords sent via email (which customers often never changed)
• Data editing with Salesforce sync - Correcting customer account details with two-way integration ensuring consistency

I led the design work whilst mentoring a design intern through their first software development project. They came from a fashion design background and were studying industrial design, so the process of designing for developers was entirely new.

I guided them through creating Jira tickets, following the design system I'd been establishing across products, and taking responsibility for seeing their work through to implementation. This meant coaching them on how to think in terms of UI patterns, write clear specifications, and follow up with developers to ensure the intended design was achieved.

I reviewed and ratified their design work, using it as an opportunity to teach both design thinking and the practical realities of working with offshore development teams.

I wrote hundreds of Jira tickets with detailed specifications and conducted ongoing QA to ensure design requirements were met. Working with an offshore development team required clear documentation and regular check-ins to verify implementation quality.

As we learned from internal teams how they actually worked, we adapted the platform. This wasn't a one-time build, it evolved based on real usage patterns and emerging needs as more subscription products came online.

The tool was initially rolled out to the US market. As its value became clear, teams across Europe and Japan adopted it for managing their digital subscription products.

Today, dozens of support and sales staff use it daily. It's become critical infrastructure for the subscription business—without it, new digital products simply couldn't function at scale. Every customer access issue that previously required manual developer intervention can now be resolved by support teams in minutes.

The tool has saved hundreds of hours by existing. More importantly, it made the shift to subscription-based business models possible by giving non-technical teams the autonomy to manage customer access, correct data issues, and provide proper digital support.