What a two-week onboarding study actually examines
Not a tour of every screen. A cohort, a fortnight, four events, and the messages that sit beside the portal.
Field notes
Field notes from portal reviews
Pieces from reviews in Malaysia: invoices that nobody fetches, invites that never become logins, libraries that only staff open.
These notes come out of sittings in Ipoh and on clients’ floors. They are not product announcements. Each one starts from a pattern we kept seeing in session samples and support queues.
Where account managers still carry the portal’s real work
Self-service in a B2B portal often means the account manager did the clicking. Distinguishing those sessions from a client’s own path changes the brief.
When the document library is larger than anyone searches
A library with hundreds of files can still be a staff cabinet. Client sessions show search is rare; emailing a known PDF is the real habit.
Reading drop-off between the invite email and the first useful login
A polite invite can still be decoration. The path that works is often the account manager’s WhatsApp, and the portal letter is a copy nobody opens.
Why clients still email invoices that already sit in the portal
The invoice is in the portal. The client still asks for a PDF. Session samples usually show they never reached the list, not that they dislike it.