From Excel Chaos to Visual Clarity - Design Partners to a Modern Financial Modeling SaaS MVP

Industry
Finance
Head Quarters
Germany
Service
Product Design
Project Duration
8+ Months
Imagine an ideation-phase founder seeking help with business planning.
Or a pre-seed entrepreneur requiring simplified financial modeling to validate ideas.
Or a seed-stage leader aiming for accurate forecasting and investor readiness.
Do you see a pattern here? All of these founders need Business and Strategy Modeling with accurate number forecasts to present their ideas to investors and stakeholders. But the question is, how do you do Financial modeling? The answer is Excel, a pretty complicated tool for non-financial people.
Recognizing that traditional financial modeling tools like Excel were overly complex and intimidating for many founders, one of our existing customers and long-term partners (with whom we were successfully collaborating on another SaaS product) came up with the idea of an intuitive SaaS platform that simplified financial and business modeling. He and his team dreamt of a user-friendly interface that empowers users to build intricate financial models without hassle.
But as you know, ideas are only as good as their execution, and they knew they needed an experienced design partner to turn their vision into reality.
Considering our successful collaboration history and track record in designing complex SaaS products, working with Denovers on this project was an obvious choice for the client’s team. The challenge was to design the product at a fast pace so that the MVP could be developed in a short time.
Denovers took on the challenge, assigning the same designer who worked with the team on the previous project to this MVP as well.



Kicking off the Journey
The idea was to launch two rapid prototypes in:
- Strategy Modeling
- Financial Modeling
Along with two different landing pages to present to stakeholders for feedback. After collecting feedback, the team decided to pursue the product's Financial Modeling and Angle.

Once the direction was set, the team started working on the product's first core feature: Business Modeling. Let’s take a look at that.
Making Business Modeling Intuitive with GUI
Designing an intuitive Business Modeling GUI was a critical component. Our designer collaborated with the client’s team multiple times a day to understand the Business Modeling requirements deeply.
The challenge was first to understand the business logic, then design an intuitive interface around it. The module had to make strategic planning straightforward and flexible.
The Business Model interface allows companies to create and manage nodes in three customizable formats:
- Kanban View: A visual, board-style layout ideal for organizing tasks and workflows
- List View: A structured format for those who prefer a straightforward, itemized approach.
- Tree Flow View: A hierarchical representation for mapping out strategies and sub-strategies.




Nodes and Subnodes
To solve the challenge of crafting business models visually, the team came up with the concept of Parent and Child Subnodes. Users could create multiple nodes and subnodes, and within these, build different views.
A control panel was designed on the right side of the screen to input key values, dynamically generating and updating nodes. Users could modify data directly from this panel for real-time insights and adaptability.
Each view helped teams choose the most comfortable planning format, and the interface made it easy to visualize long-term effects of key business moves.



Before jumping into the next part of the case study, it's important to mention here that the MVP was in development side by side, so our designer had to produce quality output at a fast pace. On one end, the designer collaborated with Alex and other product team members, and on the other with developers to ensure designs were getting through the dev pipeline properly.
Alright, so coming back to the case study, the next important feature that was designed was the Formula Builder.
Formula Builder
An Interactive Dynamic Formula builder was conceptualized to allow users to tackle multiple use cases. For example,
- Calculating total spend, salaries, and financial impact based on dependencies (nodes).
- Linking financial datasets to real-time business models for accurate forecasting.
- Using predefined templates for financial calculations reduces manual effort.
- Instantly updating dashboards and reports with any financial changes.
This ensured consistency, accuracy, and efficiency, empowering teams to make fast, data-driven decisions.



Next, it was important to design a Dashboard module.
Dashboard
The goal of the Dashboard was to make business planning easy and visual. Remember the nodes and subnodes we discussed earlier? So, in Dashboard, any nodes you created in the Business Model are automatically displayed.
The widget on the Dashboard is fully customizable. You can choose how you want to view and organize your data. The dashboard was also designed to turn complex financial information into clear graphs and charts, helping teams track progress and make informed decisions. Plus, with multiple editable views, users can adjust it to fit their needs anytime.



Financials
The team conceptualized the financial section to seamlessly integrate the Financial Data with the Business Nodes, ensuring a smooth and intuitive workflow. With this module, users could view the backend data, make real-time adjustments directly on the financial screen, and see changes instantly reflected across the platform.




The next module added in the MVP was Task Management and Goals. Let’s have a look at them.
Task Management Goals
It was designed in a way to empower users and their teams to collaboratively create goals, subgoals, and actionable tasks. Each goal functions as a comprehensive plan, with a detailed roadmap and steps to achieve it.
As tasks are completed one by one, the progress is visually reflected, with subgoals and goals being marked as complete in sequence. This not only showcases actionable progress but also doubles as a reporting feature, keeping teams informed and aligned.
Furthermore, Goals can be displayed in multiple formats to enhance usability and presentation. This included List View, Chart View, and Board View to offer users the flexibility to choose a style that best fits their workflow.



MVP Finalization and Results
Within weeks, the team had a fully functional MVP ready to present to investors and stakeholders. The result? Overwhelmingly positive feedback.
The team was successfully incubated in a top accelerator program. Today, the product is in beta testing and early adoption has already begun.
Denovers’ dedicated design support helped the client team gain investor traction and lay a strong product foundation for future growth.

Client feedback
Denovers quickly turned our vision into an investor-ready MVP. Their intuitive designs, fast execution, and close collaboration helped us secure accelerator backing and early product adoption.
Managing Director
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