What’s behind our new look? You.

You may have noticed that we updated our look and feel. We have a new logo, colors, and website. Yes, it’s a modernization of our brand, but there’s more behind the change. It represents a doubling-down on people, saying who we’re for versus what we do, and showing our value in a way that is clear and meaningful to our customers.

Who, not what
Well before we started this project, we asked ourselves what we’re trying to achieve and for whom and asked our customers why they choose (and choose to stay with) us. This informed our vision – to be the AI platform for modern finance teams – and our mission – to be our customers’ secret weapon for spend auditing. We were deliberate in talking about who we’re for rather than what we do on our site. Based on dozens of in-depth conversations and many hours of watching customers work, we’re confident that finance teams that want to transform their business with AI will be well served. From the words we use to the use cases on our website, you’ll hear our customers’ voices, look at challenges from their vantage point, and gain best practices from their experiences.

Our customer focus led us to choose “Finance favors the bold” as our new tagline. We wanted to convey that, by being innovative and forward-leaning (in other words, bold), finance teams will have an advantage both for their companies and within their companies. By the way, these aren’t our ideas; they’re what we heard – nearly verbatim – from our customers.

It’s not just words and colors
Our focus on people goes beyond words and colors on a website.

There’s a lot of talk in the market about how AI replaces people. That’s not our thing. Our intention is to help our customers be as impactful in their work as possible and elevate their experience. Early on, while finance leaders were happy with us, users were not. We realized we had not done enough to delight the people who have to spend every day in AppZen, which didn’t help us combat the AI-versus-people perception. This led us to do a massive UX overhaul that put the right information at people’s fingertips, removed unnecessary clicks and scrolls, and cut way down on visual distractions. The result was a far better, and quantifiably more efficient, user experience.

We’re not done. The experience prompted us to get back to basics and kick off several programs, including our cross-functional check-ins and TouchPoints, both of which are powerful forcing functions for walking in our customers’ shoes. Like James Carville famously quipped about presidential campaign strategy, “It’s the economy, stupid,” our blinding flash of the obvious was, “It’s the people, stupid.” D’oh!

What customers care about
Getting closer to customers helped us get really crisp about how they measure success, which led us to be more consistent about what we deliver and how we deliver it. We heard loud and clear that they chose us to reduce spend, comply with policy, and streamline process, and that they wanted to quantify, measure, and share these value pillars within their companies. We responded by aligning our business – from the way we market and sell to our in-product reports (coming soon!) to our implementation and customer success methodologies – to these pillars. We built and socialized a standard way of defining and measuring each so we’re clear with our customers about what they can expect from us, and then we hold ourselves accountable to delivering it.

We’re excited about this milestone and, more importantly, about what it represents in our learning and evolution. With “obsess about customers” as our #1 guiding principle, we are moving forward with renewed focus, unyielding commitment to customer success, and a bold outlook for the future.