Designing for complex organizations
Multi-Entity View extended Impact OS to support companies operating across multiple subsidiaries, business units and organizational structures.
The challenge was not only helping users navigate between entities, but also ensuring that KPIs, Actions and sustainability data remained consistent enough to be compared and aggregated across the organization.
- Company
- Planted
- Role
- Senior Product Designer
- Product
- ESG SaaS Platform
- Timeline
- 2024 – 2026
The problem
As larger customers started using Impact OS, a single-organization model was no longer enough.
Companies needed to manage sustainability work across multiple subsidiaries or business units, while still keeping a consolidated view at Root level.
The challenge was not only navigation between entities. It was also making sure that KPIs, Actions and sustainability data remained consistent enough to be compared and aggregated across the organization.
From one organization to many
From one organization to many
The model evolved towards a Root → Child entity structure, where information could live globally, locally, or be inherited.
This introduced a new challenge: allowing local teams to work independently without losing consistency across the organization.
- Root
- Child entities
Early concept exploring the Root → Child entity structure and navigation.
Standardizing without removing flexibility
Standardizing without removing flexibility
At Root level, users could define which KPIs and Actions should be used across child entities.
Selected KPIs and Actions could be propagated automatically to child entities, creating a shared structure across the organization.
This helped avoid each entity creating its own versions of similar KPIs or Actions, which could later make aggregation and comparison unreliable.
KPIs inherited from Root as part of group-wide data consolidation.
Designing a clear mental model
The experience had to make it obvious:
- •what was defined globally
- •what belonged to a specific entity
- •what was inherited from the Root
- •what could still be managed locally
The goal was to introduce governance without making the product feel rigid.
Balancing overview and local control
Balancing overview and local control
Root-level users needed a consolidated view of the organization and tools to standardize how sustainability performance was tracked.
Child entities still needed enough autonomy to manage their own work within that shared framework.
Consolidated emissions development across entities at Root level.
Designing for scalability
The solution had to work beyond a handful of entities.
Navigation, inheritance logic and information architecture were designed to support increasingly complex structures while keeping data comparable and aggregatable across the organization.
What changed
Multi-Entity View transformed Impact OS from a single-organization experience into a system that could support shared standards across complex organizational structures.
It wasn't only about switching between entities. It was about ensuring that KPIs, Actions and sustainability data could remain consistent enough to be meaningfully aggregated at Root level.
Want to learn more?
There's more behind the information architecture, inheritance logic and trade-offs involved in designing for complex organizational structures.