From “Nice-to-Have” to Capital Allocation

By Alex D. Rodriguez Chief Financial Officer & Certified Turnaround Analyst

I have a confession: I am not a UX professional. Despite spending the last 11 years at Key Lime Interactive, I am probably the last person you’d want running a usability study. I am a finance professional with over 25 years of experience in the “other” chair—the one deciding which investments meet the “hurdle rate” and which are simply noise. My career has been defined by analyzing capital allocation, navigating corporate turnarounds, and managing risk.

Many UX practitioners struggle to secure the budget they need because they speak the language of “empathy” and “user journeys.” While these are the pillars of great design, they are rarely the pillars of a Board-level investment pitch. In my 25 years of pitching investments within corporations and sitting on the side of the table that approves them, I’ve realized that the problem isn’t that UX lacks value; it’s that it is often sold as a “creative luxury” rather than a Capital Allocation Strategy. When a project is framed around “making the user happy,” it sounds like a discretionary expense. When it is framed as “mitigating the risk of project failure,” it becomes a fiduciary requirement.

The Multi-Headed Beast of Decision Making

In my experience as a turnaround analyst, I’ve seen that UX initiatives rarely fail because of bad design; they fail because of a lack of alignment with key stakeholders. To win budget approval, you must understand that the “buy-in” is a multi-headed beast involving individuals who rarely care about typography or personas. You need to help these stakeholders answer one question: “What’s in it for me?”

• Product Managers: They are your most critical day-to-day allies. PMs are judged on product-market fit and meeting roadmap deadlines. They care about UX because it validates their roadmap. Without UX research, a PM is essentially guessing, which increases the likelihood of a “feature pivot” mid-cycle—a move that destroys their credibility with leadership and burns through development points.
• Marketing: They are looking for brand differentiation and a reduction in customer churn. They need to know that the “promise” made in the ads is actually being delivered in the app.
• IT: They are drowning in technical debt and want to stop building features that no one uses. They want clear requirements so they don’t have to rebuild the same module three times.
• Operations: They are focused on efficiency, throughput, and error reduction in the supply chain.
• Finance: We are focused on the “Opportunity Cost of Capital”—if I give you $100k for research, what am I not funding instead?

Beyond the Corporate Sector: Interested Parties Everywhere

While much of the ROI conversation centers on the S&P 500, the need for UX buy-in is just as critical in other sectors where the “customer” might be a patient, a citizen, or a donor:

• Healthcare: In medical organizations, the stakeholders are Chief Medical Officers (CMOs) and Chief Nursing Officers (CNOs). They aren’t looking for “delight”; they are looking for “Patient Safety” and “Compliance.” UX research here is sold as a way to reduce medical errors and improve the quality of care—metrics that directly impact the hospital’s malpractice insurance and accreditation status.
• Government & Public Sector: Here, the stakeholders are Program Directors and Legislative Bodies. They are concerned with “Equity of Access” and “Legislative Mandates.” UX research is the tool that ensures government services are actually reachable by the populations they are meant to serve, reducing the burden on call centers and physical offices.
• Non-Profits: Stakeholders include Donors and Grantees. For a non-profit, UX is about “Mission Efficiency.” Every dollar wasted on a confusing donation portal or a clunky volunteer management system is a dollar that isn’t helping the cause. UX is sold here as a way to maximize the impact of every donated cent.

The McKinsey & Wharton Evidence

In a landmark study, McKinsey & Company tracked 300 publicly listed companies over five years and found that those in the top quartile of the McKinsey Design Index delivered 32 percentage points higher revenue growth than their peers. This isn’t just a correlation; it’s an indication that design-led companies are better at capturing market share because they align their product development with actual human behavior.

The Path Forward: From Risk Mitigation to Value Creation

Identifying the “leaky bucket” is the fiduciary responsibility of every leader, but plugging those leaks requires more than just acknowledging the friction. It requires a fundamental shift in how we measure success—moving away from the “creative luxury” of making users happy and toward the strategic necessity of driving business outcomes.

As a CFO, I don’t just want to see a reduction in friction; I want to see how that reduction translates into lower support costs, higher transaction completion rates, and protected capital.

In Part 2 of this series, we will move beyond the concept of “user delight” to explore Outcome-Based Modeling. I’ll share how high-stakes industries—from healthcare to financial trading—are replacing subjective personas with rigorous data models to ensure that every design decision is a calculated investment in performance.

Finally, in Part 3, I will provide my fellow finance professionals with a CFO-Friendly ROI Formula. We will break down exactly how to quantify “Dev Rework,” “Support Costs,” and “Retention LTV” so you can finally speak the same language as your design team and make informed capital allocation decisions.

Stay tuned for Part 2: Moving Beyond “Delight” to Outcomes.