After my stint in FinTech, I moved into something quite different: enterprise HR tech. At INRY, I led product management for two ServiceNow apps — an Applicant Tracking System (ATS) and a HR Service Delivery (HRSD) solution, both built for the ServiceNow store.
On paper, it felt like a lateral shift. In reality? Completely different ballgame. Enterprise HR tools come with their own flavor of complexity — workflows instead of journeys, admins instead of users, and “configurability” as a non-negotiable.
Looking back, here are a few things I learned building enterprise-grade HR products that had to work across industries, org sizes, and geographies.
1. Your User Is Often an Admin, Not an Employee
Coming from B2C, I was tuned to think of “users” as end-users. But in enterprise HR tools, the real power users are admins, HR managers, and implementation consultants. They’re not just using the product — they’re setting it up for hundreds or thousands of others.
✅ Lesson: Design for configurability without making it overwhelming. Your “setup” experience is as important as your UI.
2. Integration Isn’t a Feature — It’s the Selling Point
Most of our time wasn’t spent building shiny new features. It was making sure our ATS could plug seamlessly into background checks, interview schedulers, and core HR platforms. If something didn’t integrate, it didn’t matter how great it looked.
✅ Lesson: In B2B SaaS, the product is part of a workflow ecosystem. Map the full workflow, not just your slice of it.
3. Compliance Isn’t Optional, But It Is a Moving Target
Especially for HR products, where every customer could be subject to different labor laws or internal audit standards. We had to think ahead — build for compliance today, but stay ready to adapt.
✅ Lesson: Work closely with legal and compliance folks. Not as blockers — but as product co-owners.
4. Prioritization Is About Partners, Not Just Users
We weren’t just building for customers. We had implementation partners who deployed these products. Their feedback was gold — they knew where customers struggled, where documentation lacked, and what needed to be templatized.
✅ Lesson: Keep a feedback loop open with partners — they know your product in the wild better than anyone.
5. Enterprise Doesn’t Mean Boring
We still brought UX thinking into the process — simplifying onboarding, adding contextual help, designing clean dashboards. And guess what? Users noticed. Even in enterprise tools, good design delights.
✅ Lesson: Just because it’s enterprise doesn’t mean you stop caring about UX. In fact, that’s where it often matters most.
Final Thoughts
INRY was where I learned to think systems-first. Building for scale, configurability, and partner ecosystems isn’t easy, but it’s incredibly rewarding when you start seeing it all come together.
If you’re working on platform-native enterprise apps, especially in HR tech, I’d love to swap notes. These kinds of products don’t always get the limelight — but they make the working world actually work.
Beyond the Backlog 