I turned one ERP into four products, one for each role
Role-based design for UK SMEs: one platform where four roles get four products that still feel like one.
UK SMEs were juggling separate tools for billing, inventory, staff and B2B orders. Zendr unified them under one modular, pay-as-you-go platform, on the web and on iOS and Android.
I was its sole designer: the role system, the dashboards, quote-to-order, and the staff and sales portals.
- Product Designer
- Role
- Sole designer · 1 backend, 1 Android, 1 iOS engineer
- Team
- May–Dec 2025
- Timeline
- Live at zendrapp.com
- Status
01 / Context
Unified usually means cluttered.
One platform for billing, inventory, staff and orders sounds simple until four kinds of people use it: an admin, a merchant, staff and sales reps. Each needed a different product, and all four had to feel like one.
The opportunity
How could one platform give every role only what it needs?
02 / The insight
People didn't know what state anything was in.
Interviews with more than 20 SME owners showed the recurring pain wasn't missing features. It was not knowing what state anything was in: payments, stock, staff hours. That drove a status-first dashboard language across every module: what's paid, what's pending, what needs attention.
03 / Roles first
A dashboard for each role.
I designed the role and permission system before any screen, so each screen had one job. A merchant's first screen answers "how is my money"; a staff member's answers "what do I do next". The MVP shipped five modules: Inventory, Staff, Orders, Billing and Add-ons.
On the phone
The iOS and Android apps open on the same question: today's cashflow, then the week's sales.
04 / Quote-to-order
Two workflows, one truth.
Early merchants' loudest complaint: nobody knew where a deal stood. Quotes lived in one place, orders in another, payment state in a third. Odoo, Zoho Commerce and QuickBooks all treat quotes and orders as separate objects, so we collapsed them into one, with visible states. The merchant and the customer read the same record, so there is nothing to reconcile.
Pay on Account
Credit-approved customers can pay on account, which removed the payment wall that stalled repeat orders.
05 / Staff portals
The screens people live in.
Attendance, tasks, expenses, payroll: designed for daily use, not demos. I mapped the full staff lifecycle and permission model, and unified the navigation, modal and form patterns across every flow. These portals became the role-based access foundation adopted across the platform.
06 / Outcomes
What changed, measured.
Staff navigation was validated with internal teams.
07 / Takeaway
Status first, one truth.
“Four roles, four products, one platform: status first, and one truth for every deal.”