Turning a one-off credit tool into a partner's daily routine
A credit tool salespeople opened once per customer. I turned it into something partners — from the shop floor to the owner — had a reason to open every day, starting with experiments that cost almost nothing.
Partner Portal has always been a simple, utility-focused, straightforward tool: create a credit application, sign it, and move on to the next customer. Convenient, but not functional enough to use daily.
Three problems under one tool
No reason to pick over competitors
When shops partner with multiple credit providers, salespeople have no compelling reason to choose us. Cash incentives aren’t an option, and loyalty alone isn’t reliable.
Couldn't self-serve
Owners and managers had to contact the bank for anything. New products reached them through a newsletter with a 14.6% open rate.
Manual and time-consuming setup
Adding a user took up to 3 days — once, 6 months, lost in a thread. Slow onboarding, frequent errors, constant support load.
One platform for everyone behind a contract
Instead of three separate fixes, I proposed a Partnership Management platform: a single tool for Inbank to interact with every person involved in creating a contract — the salesperson, the store owner and the back office that supports them.
It took about four months of research-backed advocacy — partner interviews, back-office feedback and survey data — at a time when the portal knew only two roles: “Accountant” and “Salesperson”.
A Duolingo-sized idea, tested with a PNG
Gamification had been stuck on “we need a complex system”. I proposed the opposite: a one-month sales competition announced with a static banner — about 4 hours of design and development, a €300 prize budget, no backend. Then compare contracts before, during and after.
Contracts created during the competitionBoth groups moved, which validated the bet that recognition could partly stand in for a payout. That earned the right to build the real thing: achievements in the user profile and a leaderboard managers can use to request their own competitions.
Next, to trust it fully: rerun on a larger dataset, split by vertical — what works in electronics won't work for car dealers — and track how long reactivated users stay active.
Give the owner a reason to log in
Inbank had the data and the expertise to help partners earn more — it just never reached the people deciding. Instead of a bigger newsletter, we brought the conversation into the product.
Welcome page
Reused the existing sales dashboard, added quick actions and role-based product tours via a third-party tool. Shipped without new backend.
Manager dashboard
Leaderboards, event management, and one-click requests for a marketing campaign, a sales competition or a staff training.
What it bought us: the portal stopped being a salesperson-only app. Store owners and managers became a second audience — and a new upsell channel for Inbank products.
Why does adding an employee need an email in 2026?
Partner interviews and shadowing sessions with support showed the same endless email threads. Inbank was spending support time — and losing contracts, because new staff simply couldn't log in.
A form that files a Zendesk ticket. Partners stop guessing what the bank needs; support stops chasing missing data.
Raising it surfaced that the back-office architecture couldn't store coherent user data. After a few rounds, it became that team's priority for next quarter.
Automated user operations: find people by document ID, synced with the bank's back office. Zero waiting.