Intuit · Industry Solutions
Building the platform behind QuickBooks’ $50M industry goal
I led the design strategy that put five industry launches on one shared platform. It shipped in August 2026 and has generated $1.62M in ARR.
The outcome
Not one launch, but a repeatable model for every industry that follows
Where it landed
Construction became Intuit’s first industry-specific ERP edition, and the August 2026 release called it Intuit’s deepest industry investment to date.
The challenge
One roadmap became five, overnight
I joined a design team stretched thin by attrition, with Construction as our launch industry. Within my first month, leadership expanded the charter to five industries in parallel (construction, field services, nonprofit, healthcare, and manufacturing), against a $50M FY27 revenue goal. Top partners had told us we weren’t ready in their industries.
Projects, the workflow most industries depended on, had been built for construction. Under that pressure, the nonprofit PM proposed renaming “Projects” to “Grants” everywhere, without changing how it worked.
My push
A new label would promise nonprofits a product built for them, and they’d find the same tool underneath. Because Projects was shared, the rename would also ripple into every other industry.
My approach
Get every team in the same room, with the same evidence
I had the designer on each industry map their customers’ workflows from our weekly partner calls, all in the same format. Side by side, the maps showed which needs matched across industries and which truly differed. Then I led a three-day workshop with PM, PMM, Design, and Engineering from Construction, Field Services, and Nonprofit, plus the team building Projects. The maps gave everyone the same evidence to align on.
The mandate came overnight, so we often built before the pods were fully formed. In those gaps, design led much of the product strategy alongside PMM and Engineering.
Why it was better because I was in the room
I didn’t settle the Grants debate one pod at a time. I made the decision belong to every team that depended on Projects.
“I believe our vertical strategy is as mature as it is in large part because of Kiley and her team. They’ve consistently filled gaps when Product or PMM wasn’t present. Her team drove customer calls, helped map out jobs to be done, and more. She’s been a force multiplier across the vertical work.”
Brittany Sudlow
Group Product Marketing Manager,
Industry Solutions · Intuit
The insight
The real challenge wasn’t terminology. It was workflow.
Scale came from the platform. Trust came from the workflow.
The decision that unlocked scale
Separate the work from the industry
One contractor can run construction projects and service jobs at the same time. Tie the work to the industry, and every new industry needs a new product.
So the work object became its own layer. Every new industry extends the platform instead of rebuilding it.
Layer 4 · Industry surface
Terminology, homepage, KPIs
Layer 3 · Workflow configuration
Statuses, financial model, phases, steps
Layer 2 · Data model
Custom fields, sub-entities, data structures
Layer 1 · Work object
Project, Job, Grant
Shared platform foundation
Identity, financial core, status, people, documents
Layers 1–3 are configurable per industry.
Three principles every team designed against
01
Language follows behavior
Change what the product says only when you change what it does.
02
Configure before you build
Most gaps were configuration. Build new only where an industry truly differs.
03
Platform scales, industries shape
Platform without industry insight becomes generic. Industry without platform becomes bespoke.
Craft at Layer 1 · Nonprofit
Grants, two ways
Principle 01 in practice · Language follows behavior
Before · Proposed
Projects, relabeled
The same workflow, data, and reporting, renamed “Grants.” It sounds nonprofit-ready. It isn’t.
After · Built
Grant as its own work object
Its own data model and workflow on the shared foundation. Designed by my team, built by engineering, headed to beta.
Craft at Layer 4 · Construction homepage
One widget language, down to every state
Principle 03 in practice · Platform scales, industries shape
We started from the KPIs contractors run their business on. Through rounds of critique, the KPIs, their order, and how the data was styled all changed. New charts went into the data viz team’s pattern library, so every industry builds from the same pieces.
The work in progress widget: show the gap, or show why it’s there
Backup · The gap alone
Ranks projects by how far off they are. Quick to scan, but it shows that a project is off, not why.
Preferred · The gap and its cause
Earned revenue beside billed to date, with the gap between. The hover adds percent complete, so a contractor knows what to invoice.
Every state, not just the happy path
Craft at Layer 3 · Construction retainage
Following the money changed the model
Retainage is the 5–10% a client holds back until a job is done. The question I kept asking in critique: can we trace every dollar?
Billing · By work completed
Familiar to a project manager, but it hid where the held money came from.
Release · By source invoice
Each original invoice stays visible, so the release total can be reconciled.
The craft lived between the happy paths
Correctness
Stop invalid setup before it reaches the books.
Consequence
Show what else changes when a connected setting changes.
Control
Say what will change, and what won’t, before anyone commits.
Designed by Michael Noh, Staff Product Designer, with content design by Jenna Davis.
Raising the bar
I didn’t just scale the team. I scaled good design decisions.
Five pods were designing in parallel, and I couldn’t review every screen. So I built the bar into how the team was organized and how we worked.
“Kiley has an impressive ability to think at a high level without losing sight of the details. She could zoom out to connect my work to the bigger picture, then jump into the weeds when I needed help untangling something tricky.”
Jenna Davis, Senior Content Designer · Intuit
The team: Michael Noh (construction and field services), Ana Mora (nonprofit), Jenna Davis (content design), Anushka Joshi and Devayani Reddi (Projects), and a contract designer on healthcare, with research partners supporting construction, nonprofit, healthcare, and vertical expansion. Another design manager’s team led manufacturing, and I kept it consistent across the portfolio.
What I learned
One lesson, and one thing I’d do differently
Fast teams reach for surface fixes
Under launch pressure, a rename looks like progress. Part of my job was naming the difference between sounding right and being right.
What I’d do differently
Design the shared workflow for every industry from day one
Projects carried construction’s assumptions. I’d test it against the other industries early, so construction became the first case, not the template.
Every one of these got messy before it got simple. Ask me about that part.
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