Client Onboarding Portal

When we took on a new engagement with a Johannesburg-based financial services group, the first friction point appeared before any narrative work began. New clients were submitting career histories through email threads, scattered documents, and phone notes. The intake process took days, and details were frequently lost between the first call and the first interview.

The brief was straightforward: build a single portal where an executive could log in, see their engagement timeline, upload source documents, and track which stage of the portfolio process they were in. No more chasing attachments. No more guessing whether the competency mapping session had been scheduled.

We designed the portal around three stages that mirror our internal workflow — discovery, narrative structuring, and editorial review. Each stage has a checklist, a document upload area, and a short note from the assigned editor. The client sees exactly what is happening, what is needed from them, and what comes next. This removed most of the administrative back-and-forth that previously consumed the first week of an engagement.

• Stage-based progress tracking with clear status indicators for each phase of the portfolio build.
• Centralised document vault for CVs, performance reviews, board papers, and leadership awards.
• Inline comment threads so clients can clarify achievements without scheduling another call.
• Automated reminders for pending items, reducing the average intake time from six days to two.

The portal was built as a lightweight web application with a simple authentication layer, so no sensitive career data sits in email inboxes. Each client gets a unique link, and access is revoked once the final portfolio is delivered. Since launch, the onboarding team has cut its coordination time by roughly half, and clients consistently mention the transparency as a reason they recommend the studio to peers.