Edoo/ Finance
Finance was conceived as a new, all in one system to manage tuition collection and payments along with other financial items, designed specifically for the needs of school administrators and parents inside the Edoo ecosystem of educational solutions. Edoo being an ecosystem of educational solutions for K12 schools in Guatemala, and looking to grow its value proposition beyond only academic management, Finance was launched to widen its scope into the finances of a school.
Rol & contribution
I led the Product Discovery and the Product Definition and Design of the MVP of the new Finance system.
Together with the Customer Success team we ran a Product Discovery that ended in an exhaustive mapping of all the user needs.
In collaboration with an expert in accounting auditing for schools, we developed and validated prototypes with our target users.
The design process was done in close coordination with the technical lead, making sure every product proposal was technically viable and efficient for the development team.
The problem
At some point, Edoo's sales growth slowed down noticeably. When we looked into the reasons, we found two recurring patterns. The schools that already worked with some collection system saw moving to Edoo as a step back, because adopting it meant losing a tool that was critical for their daily operation. On the other side, the schools starting from scratch had real alternatives, since local competitors like Homeschool, Geducar and Colplex already had some financial module. We studied the competition quite a bit and the conclusion was unavoidable, without solving the financial side Edoo could not compete and could not convince new schools to switch.
Research y Discovery
As Product Lead, I took an approach that turned out to be very valuable, which was actively sitting in on the sales meetings with school principals and administrators. Being there first hand let me capture real needs in real time and keep feeding our backlog of user stories. We complemented this with regular sessions with power users to spot recurring features. A collection and payments system came up consistently in those conversations.
MVP Definition
We evaluated Odoo as a base. Even though it is a solid platform, it carried too much surface and complexity for our users. School administrators need operational clarity, not an enterprise level accounting system, so we decided to build Finance from scratch, designed specifically for the mental model and the workflows of a Guatemalan school.
The most deliberate trade-off was dropping card payments for the first version. The research showed that most parents in Guatemala paid tuition by bank transfer, whether online or in person at the branch. Integrating a payment gateway would have added important complexity without solving the problem for most of our users. Instead, we designed a flow to import bank statements that lined up with how schools were already receiving their payment confirmations. This let us launch a working system, with charge tracking, a current account and a payment record, without getting stuck on infrastructure that was not a priority yet.
Launching
The process was hit by an important organizational event, the acquisition of Edoo by 1Bot. Despite the disruption, we managed to launch. The initial goal was 10 pilot schools, and we started with 6. The 6 adopted the system successfully and Finance has been in an active cycle of increments ever since.
Next Iteration
The acquisition brought new strategic relationships that led to a concrete opportunity, an integration with Banco Industrial through its PayBI gateway. Instead of building payment infrastructure from scratch, PayBI gave us a reliable solution with preferential commissions. I led the product design of the card payment feature on top of the existing Finance system. The MVP was reviewed and approved by Banco Industrial for commercialization, and the launch was scheduled for mid 2026.
Gallery
Made by David Galindo. 2025