Two products the market kept confusing became Autopaid: one brand, one interface, and a design system their engineers ran with.

ConnectWise is one of the biggest software companies in managed IT, the platform thousands of IT providers run their businesses on. Their payments division had a problem that no feature could fix: two products with near-identical names, WisePay and WiseSync, automating payments and accounting for IT businesses in a market where many customers still paid by paper check. The products worked together; the names worked against each other, and the market kept confusing them.

The engagement was the whole answer: unify two products under one brand, and build that brand from nothing, name included. Naming was contracted work, not a workshop exercise: four complete name-and-identity directions were developed, each with its own archetype, voice, and propositions written per audience, for the businesses getting paid, the customers paying, and the platforms in between. Autopaid, the name the product carries today, was presented out of that work and adopted. The brief we set ourselves in the project plan was blunt: set the stage for the name to become a verb in its industry.

The deep end was the product itself. The interface redesign shipped as a full design system, the components, patterns and rules ConnectWise’s own product and engineering teams would build from long after the engagement ended. Design at that level is judged twice: once when stakeholders see it, and again when another team has to implement it unaided. Both tests came back emphatic. Their product team demoed the design system internally and came back asking for me by name for component-level working sessions. At handover, two downstream agencies were briefed from the pack and carried the implementation without me in the room. And the brand went all the way up: the day after the brand presentation, ConnectWise asked for the strategy in board form, and the deck their executives took to their own board was one we designed.

The client’s Vice President and General Manager of Payments put the outcome in writing: “beyond what was expected in both professionalism and outcome,” and, on where it left his team, “we have absolute clarity on the vision ahead.” Months after handover they came back with a new brief and an instruction rare enough to quote: “we’re really trusting your creative license here.” The engagement led directly to the next one: the Novatti rebuild was planned in this project’s debrief.

The real test of design work is what happens after you hand it over.

Absolutely amazing approach to service delivery. Like nothing that I have ever experienced, beyond what was expected in both professionalism and outcome.

Delivered as Solutions Architect at Supernormal Systems.