Octostudio
Year
'23
Client
Octostudio/cartimatic
Work
Co-Founder
Features
It balances clean typography, structured layouts, and smooth animations to deliver a seamless user experience.
Interctive Pixels
Alaan solves the problem of manual business spending and finance inefficiency by providing a comprehensive platform with smart corporate cards, expense management, and AI-powered accounting automation for businesses in the Middle East.
What's my role in it?
As a design and fintech enthusiast, I wanted to join Alaan as a designer during the early stages when there were only 3-4 members on board. To contribute, I conducted research and designed a product within a week based on the information available on their site and my understanding of it.
Quantitative Research
What I collected from my initial research and what they are trying to solve
I initiated my research to create constraints, hypotheses, rationales, and understand the business perspective of the target audience, unique selling propositions (USPs), etc. I collected information from competitors and Alaan's own website.
All-in-One Spend Control:
They offer a single platform that combines Corporate Cards (virtual and physical), Expense Management Software, and Accounting Automation. This eliminates the need for businesses to juggle multiple, disconnected systems.
Real-Time Financial Discipline:
They enable real-time visibility and custom controls (e.g., setting spending limits, blocking specific merchants, creating custom approval flows) to ensure every transaction is compliant and within budget before it is completed.
Local Expertise & Multi-Currency Functionality:
They are built for the regulatory and operational needs of the MENA region, offering multi-currency support (AED, SAR, USD, etc.) and deep integration with local banking/regulatory infrastructure.
Alaan's target market is Small to Mid-Market (SME) companies, primarily in the UAE and KSA, across high-spend sectors like Real Estate, Logistics, and Technology, where the CFO/Head of Finance seeks to replace manual, paper-based expense reporting and reconciliation with a unified platform offering real-time spending control and full accounting automation.
Solution
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Dashboard to take a quick actions
to solve: Lack of Real-Time Control & Visibility
Corporate cards and real time spend
Granular Card Controls
Administrators set and enforce custom spending limits (daily, weekly, or monthly), and vendor locks (restricting cards to specific merchant categories or single vendors) on every card in real time.
Unlimited Physical & Virtual Cards
Businesses can instantly issue dedicated physical cards for field teams or virtual cards for specific online subscriptions, vendors, or projects.
Multi-Currency Support:
The cards are designed for the MENA region, allowing for easy multi-currency transactions (AED, SAR, USD, etc.) with transparent exchange rates.
Expense Management Automation
Custom Approval Workflows
Spend requests and out-of-pocket claims are routed through a multi-level approval process based on pre-set rules (e.g., amount, department, manager role), ensuring compliance before an expense is finalized.
Custom Approval Workflows
Spend requests and out-of-pocket claims are routed through a multi-level approval process based on pre-set rules (e.g., amount, department, manager role), ensuring compliance before an expense is finalized.
Accounting & Financial Reporting
Automated Bookkeeping
Approved and matched transactions, along with all associated metadata (category, department, project code), are automatically exported into the accounting system, eliminating manual data entry
Real-Time Financial Dashboard
Provides the finance team with a centralized view of all company spending, budgets vs. actuals, and cash flow in a live dashboard, aiding in accurate forecasting and quick decision-making.
Learnings & Conclusion
Things I would have done it differently here
I would prefer a design system that is widely used rather than a custom one where every component needs to be created from scratch.
Any design system that is easy to incorporate changes, developer-friendly, and efficient for scaling the product.