Unifying Admin Settings across products in Business Data Cloud

context

A platform bringing multiple products under one roof. The admin experience needed to follow.

SAP's Business Data Cloud brings together multiple products under a single platform. Each product had its own administration area, built independently over time, resulting in inconsistencies across the experience for administrators managing multiple products at once.

As the UX Designer on this project, I was embedded within a cross-functional team working across UX, development, user assistance, and product management, with team members distributed across multiple countries and product areas.

problem

Inconsistent admin experiences across products, addressed in parallel.

Administrators working across multiple products encountered different layouts, interaction patterns, and settings structures depending on which product they were in. Two related problems were scoped together and run as parallel workstreams, allowing shared learnings to feed into both without duplicating effort.

goals

Align structure, standardize components, and give every admin tab the same foundation.

The goal across both workstreams was consistency — bringing admin settings across products into alignment so administrators experienced a single, predictable interface regardless of which product they were in. This meant establishing shared layout standards, unifying interaction patterns, and producing specs detailed enough for development teams across multiple countries to implement independently.

process

Auditing the current state

Both workstreams started with an audit of the existing experience, mapping inconsistencies across products and identifying what a unified standard would need to cover. The audit surfaced a range of issues that had accumulated over time as each product built its admin area independently.

Designing and iterating

Design proposals were reviewed iteratively with the UXC lead, senior designer, and development lead. Feedback shaped both the design direction and the format of the specs, which were structured to be navigable by development teams without requiring them to work through the design file directly.

Working across teams

Both workstreams involved coordinating across UX, user assistance, project management, and development. Scope changes mid-project were incorporated without restarting the work, and regular check-ins ensured the direction remained feasible across all product areas involved.

outcome

Both specs completed, handed off to development, and unified 20 tabs across 3 products.

Both specs were completed and handed off to development. Full case study details are available on request.

reflections

Decisions take time, and that's okay

Even small design decisions can involve multiple stakeholders, reviews, and back-and-forths before a direction is locked. Working at enterprise scale taught me to separate the design work from the decision-making process. Keeping specs well-documented meant that when decisions finally landed, implementation could move quickly.

How you present work matters as much as the work itself

I learned early on that the format you use to present to developers shapes how well they understand the design intent. A Figma file works in a design review, but a structured spec or a live prototype is what actually moves things forward in a dev handoff. Developers respond well to being able to interact with the design directly rather than interpreting static screens. Finding the right format for the right audience became a skill in itself.

Leading design conversations and advocating for decisions

Working with developers and project managers on a regular basis gave me hands-on experience presenting design rationale and defending decisions in a professional setting. One thing I underestimated early on was assuming stakeholders remembered the full context of the project. In reality, everyone is juggling multiple workstreams, and coming into a review with full context, not just the latest changes, made conversations more productive and helped move decisions forward faster.