From 10 to 52 in twelve months.

Context

TaxPort AP was used by accounts payable teams at mid-to-large enterprises to manage 1099 compliance, vendor tax ID validation, and year-end filing. The kind of work that has to be right or the IRS gets involved. The product had been built tax-form-first because that was the language the engineering team and the tax SMEs spoke. The users didn't speak that language. They spoke vendor and exception and deadline. The mismatch was the problem.

Research

Ran discovery with the people who actually used the thing. Mostly non-technical, high-volume, deadline-driven. Phone calls, screen-share sessions, on-site visits where I could get them. The pattern emerged within a week. The IA was built on tax form logic. Users navigated by vendor. Every workflow required them to translate from how they thought back into how the system thought, which is the kind of cognitive tax that turns a 30-second task into a 5-minute one.

Redesign

Restructured the IA around vendor lifecycle. Redesigned bulk uploads, exception management, TIN validation. Surfaced the information users needed at each step instead of making them navigate across the app to assemble context. Introduced progressive disclosure for compliance complexity, because the people who need the deep tax detail are not the same people doing the daily work and the UI shouldn't pretend otherwise.

Results

Twelve months post-launch. NPS from 10 to 52. Support costs down $112K annually against prior-year ticket volume. Marketing saw 5× improvement in qualified lead generation. The redesign became the centerpiece of every sales demo, which is the closest a UX redesign gets to a standing ovation.

“5× lead gen lift. The redesign became the demo.”