Artifacts of the Future
by Rutuja Jog
Earnings Lifecycle Management
by Q4
Investor relations and role of Q4 organization
Without Q4
Investor relationship management is a core responsibility of Investor Relations Officers (IROs), who, each financial quarter, communicate the company's performance narrative to maintain strong relationships with existing investors and attract potential new ones.
With Q4
Q4 supports IROs throughout their earnings journey by streamlining key tasks, from scheduling earnings events and publishing content to analyzing post-event results, thereby enhancing overall efficiency.
Goal
To understand the existing journey, tasks, and needs of IR professionals during the earnings period, and identify opportunities to improve their workflow.
Timeline
September 2024 - November 2025
My role
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Led end-to-end research and design as the sole designer on the project.
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Defined the research strategy and execution plan.
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Collaborated closely with product, business, technical stakeholders and customer support teams to align on goals and vision.
User research
Research methodologies
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Customer interviews
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Stakeholder interviews
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Usability testing
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Co-creation
Tools
Recruitment
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Customers​
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Email outreach
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Internal referrals
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Internal stakeholders
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Internal referrals
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Research operations
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Google Calendar (scheduling)
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Zoom (interview and remote concept testing)
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​Maze (unmoderated concept testing)
Other tools
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Analysis
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Miro
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Google sheets
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Deliverable
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Microsoft PowerPoint, Word
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Respository
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Dovetail
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Research questions
Customers
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​What does the earnings publication process look like for IR professionals, and where does it break down?
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How do the customers feel during the earnings season?
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What motivates them to get through the challenges of the earnings period?
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What are their tasks before, during, and after the earnings period?
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​How can Q4 add more value to their earnings journey?
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Is there a digital product that they enjoy using at work or outside work? Why?
Stakeholders and Subject-matter experts
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​​​​​What does the customer journey look like from their perspective?
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What, according to them, are customer pain points?
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What role do they see the AI playing in this?
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If the Q4 platform didn't exist, what would the users have done?
Key findings
Customer interviews
1.
The majority of customers are not tech-savvy and can get easily confused if what is required of them is not clear.
2.
There is always a high stress around accuracy of the content being posted, which makes customers anxious.
3.
The current process being heavily manual, there is a general resistance from the customers to switch to a tech-driven process.
Subject-matter expert interviews
1.
Small IR teams (1-4 people) face heavy administrative work during earnings, impeding the strategic goals.
2.
IR engages with sell-side and buy-side investors, who often make real-time decisions following the earnings event.
3.
Transitioning Q4 clients to a self-service model is hampered by heavy reliance on manual services and poor data quality, resulting in a low trust in technology.
Key questions based on insights
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How can a high-touch service model be gradually replaced by a self-serve platform without disrupting user confidence during the transition?
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How do IR professionals navigate manual, error-prone workflows under time pressure, and what conditions would enable them to trust an automated alternative?
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How can a high-touch service model be gradually replaced by a self-serve platform without disrupting user confidence during the transition?
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How do breakdowns in a multi-stakeholder publishing workflow propagate across organizational and technical boundaries — and where is intervention most effective?
Customer persona
Based on customer and subject-matter experts interviews
Current earnings user journey
Key touch-points
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Core customer journey
Problems with current process
Framing the problem
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The research made clear that this wasn't just a usability problem. IR professionals work at the intersection of people, processes, and technology, where a single error at the wrong moment can have real financial consequences for their organization.
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This called for a sociotechnical systems lens: rather than fixing individual screens or tasks, the design process focused on the relationships between users, internal teams, legacy tools, and the Q4 platform as a whole.
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What emerged from this framing were two core tensions: the mismatch between how high-stakes the work is and how unreliable the tools supporting it are, and the resistance that surfaces when users are asked to hand control over to a system they don't yet trust.
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These tensions became the foundation for the design direction, not just improving the workflow, but creating the conditions for users to gradually build confidence in the system.
Identifying the moment that matters
Why does this moment matter?
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If the content gets published before the earnings call, it can have a catastrophic impact on the stock value of the organization.
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If the content gets published late, it will leave a negative impression on investors, hampering the prospects of investment.
MVP Service Blueprint
Focused on the moment that matters
With a vision of a total digital transformation for 2028, the MVP takes a gradual approach by integrating the existing email communication, legacy CMS and salesforce with the Q4 secure platform where the users can upload their content and schedule upload without the risks of a data breach.
Proposed journey map - upload documents
Elaborating the moment that matters
Technical user-flow
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Action:
User:
Asset setup in an internal legacy application
Internal Q4 support agent
Action:
User:
Earnings content upload, website preview, and publish
Q4 customers
Action:
User:
Earnings plan setup in the internal-facing side of the application
Internal Q4 support agent
Prototype
Click here to interact with the prototype
Design rationale
Before content submission
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Each content group publishes at a different time and has its own tab.
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Since the goal of the page is to provide content, the buttons that allow users to provide content will be primary.
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The footer action will be tertiary until all content is provided.
Partial content submission
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As the user provides each piece of information, the primary button will convert into an icon button, indicating the hierarchy of interaction.
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Each content piece will have a time stamp and the title of the content provided for an easy overview of task completion.
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Content submission complete
When all the content has been provided, the footer actions will change into two buttons, primary and secondary, in order of importance.
Notifications
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When the earnings content is published, but not live, the user will get a banner message notifying them.
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When all the content is published and live at the time provided by the users, they will get a confirmation banner message.
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All of these will occur in tandem with an email notification system.
Usability testing
Sample
Five existing Q4 earnings customers
Key metrics
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Customer satisfaction
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Task completion rate
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Task completion
Key findings
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100% of customers rated the ease of task completion as 5/5.
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5/5 customers completed tasks without critical errors.
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3/5 customers completed tasks without critical or non-critical errors.
What's working?
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An intuitive experience that guides users sequentially through tasks.
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The interface is easy to understand and use.
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Gives users greater control over their actions.
What can be improved?
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Confidence in the system to publish content at the scheduled time.
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Ways to get quick assistance.
Target success metrics
<2%
Publication error rate
Track the number of users who see the delayed publication modal due to a missed scheduling deadline.
<10%
Customer support contacts
Track the number of times customers reach out to support for assistance.
4/5
Customer satisfaction score
Measure customer satisfaction from the CSAT surveys at the end of each quarter.
SaaS vision for 2028
The gradual transformation between the MVP to the vision will iteratively eliminate the offline communication and reduce the reliance on support team to fully utilize the Q4 platform for the entire earnings journey that the customers can use to self-serve. This would be achieved through the use of AI-powered conversational chat experience, contextual help, messaging feature and in-house support ticket system.
Risks and mitigation strategies
Risks
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User adaptation: The non-tech-savvy user base might and it challenging to adapt to a complete SaaS model.
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​Expectations with assistance: Customer expectations for on-demand support conflict with the SaaS shift away from high-touch service.
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Internal pushback on a full-service transformation.
Mitigation strategies
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Onboarding, training, and research (interviews, surveys, fake-door test) into user behavior, motivations, and perspectives towards adaptation.
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Investigation into service scenarios (diary study) that would allow for online as well as in-person assistance.
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Leverage customer insights and feedback to iterate on the service model and present the value of service thinking at an organizational level.
Next steps
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Expand the scope to account for other moments that matter in the user journey.
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Conduct a service gap analysis to analyze knowledge, delivery, and communication gaps.
3.
Conduct research to learn about ways to mitigate the service gaps and enhance the service further.