Case Summary
As SAM+ Hub took shape, I recognized that the self-serve portal around it fell short in usability, visual design and brand alignment. Launching the new product inside that fragmented environment would leave customers with an inconsistent experience.
As Softchoice’s sole UX practitioner, I audited the portal, built a redesign roadmap and secured funding and development support from Digital and IT leadership.
I designed shared navigation and components, and aligned leaders around a coordinated launch to avoid sending customers between redesigned and legacy experiences.
The portal launched alongside SAM+ Hub, connecting account and commerce journeys and giving the flagship product a consistent environment from its first release.
Project Overview
The Self-Serve Portal brought orders, invoices, account administration, approvals and SAM+ Hub into a single signed-in environment. Those experiences had evolved as separate dashboards, with different navigation assumptions, terminology and visual patterns. Customers had one login, but not one coherent platform.
The redesign needed to support the SAM+ launch while preserving existing commerce and administration workflows.
The scope covered navigation, terminology, responsive behaviour, accessibility and shared components.
My Role and Leadership Scope
As UX Strategy & Product Design Lead, I originated the portal initiative and secured the mandate to deliver it.
I owned information architecture, navigation, interaction design, the visual system, prototypes and implementation QA.
Close collaboration with Digital, IT, Marketing, Brand and development partners was essential to turning the proposal into a delivered platform. I had no direct reports on the work; my leadership came through strategic initiative, collaboration and influence. By aligning these disciplines around the customer journey, I helped establish UX as a driver of the overall customer experience rather than a function focused only on interface execution.
The Problem
As SAM+ Hub took shape, the contrast with the portal around it became increasingly clear. Orders, invoices, account administration and approvals existed as disconnected dashboards within one signed-in environment. Each used different navigation assumptions, terminology and visual patterns, forcing customers to reorient themselves as they moved between tasks.
Navigation was the most significant usability issue. The portal did not give customers a dependable way to understand where they were, how its different areas related or how to move between account and commerce tasks. Launching SAM+ without addressing that structure would place a modern flagship product inside an environment that still felt fragmented and outdated.
A piecemeal modernization would preserve that split experience during the transition. Customers would encounter some redesigned areas and some legacy ones, weakening the consistency and trust the SAM+ launch was intended to establish. The challenge was to modernize the platform as one foundation while preserving its core functionality and working within existing delivery constraints.
Strategic Response
I focused on four connected moves: turn the emerging risk into a funded initiative, establish the portal as one customer environment, build support for a coordinated release and prioritize structural changes with platform-wide value.
Turn the risk into a funded initiative
I audited the existing portal as the SAM+ experience took shape, documenting the navigation, usability and consistency problems that could weaken the launch. I translated those findings into a presentation and proposed roadmap for Digital and IT leadership. This created a mandate where none had existed and secured the funding and development resources needed to deliver the redesign.
Frame the portal as one customer environment
I mapped the relationship between the public website, signed-in navigation, SAM+ Hub and the existing commerce journeys. This exposed duplicated concepts, unclear labels and inconsistent transitions. The strategy repositioned the portal from a collection of dashboards to a shared platform for customer tasks.
Build support for a coordinated release
IT initially favoured an incremental rollout. I made the case that releasing the redesign piecemeal would leave the core navigation problem unresolved and create a visibly divided platform, with customers moving between modernized and outdated experiences. This secured alignment around launching the redesigned portal and SAM+ together as one coherent experience.
Prioritize structural changes with broad value
I worked closely with Digital, IT, Marketing, Brand and development partners to focus the investment on changes that improved multiple journeys at once: global and lateral navigation, information hierarchy, responsive behaviour, accessibility and shared components. This established a stronger platform foundation without rebuilding every workflow from first principles.
Research and Key Insights
The audit established the initial case for change. Comparing the existing portal with the emerging SAM+ Hub experience made the quality gap visible, while workflow analysis identified the navigation, terminology and structural issues creating unnecessary effort across the signed-in environment. These findings shaped the platform direction and helped define a realistic delivery scope.
Navigation was a platform problem
The existing portal did not provide a dependable model for moving among its disconnected dashboards. Customers needed continuity with the public Softchoice website and a clear way to navigate signed-in tasks. A global top navigation supported the broader brand relationship, while lateral navigation organized account-specific journeys. Solving this at the platform level was more effective than correcting individual dashboards separately.
Customer language mattered
Internal labels did not always match customer expectations. Renaming the workflow builder as approvals made its purpose clearer. Reviewing how customers understood standards lists and approval tasks helped refine the structure and reduce interpretation effort.
Related tasks belonged together
Orders and invoices were managed as separate destinations even though customers often used them in sequence. Bringing them into a connected structure created a clearer commerce mental model and reduced unnecessary navigation.
Consistency was essential to trust
Consistency depended on navigation and task flow as much as visual design. Customers needed to move from SAM+ to account and commerce tasks without relearning the portal.
Key Decisions and Execution
I designed navigation that kept links to the public website at the top and signed-in tasks at the side. This gave customers a consistent way to move between SAM+ Hub, orders, invoices, account management and approvals across screen sizes.
I consolidated related commerce destinations, clarified account and user-management flows and refined terminology around approvals. The previous contact-creation flow used a form with five to ten fields across multiple steps, enabling or disabling fields according to the access level being assigned. I moved that decision upfront: two or three questions established the intended access level, then opened a simplified five-field form. The redesign also introduced consistent accessibility treatments and a shared component base across the portal and SAM+ Hub.
The SAM+ entry point became a state-aware widget that could communicate availability, progress or required action without forcing customers to enter the product first. This connected the flagship product to the wider portal and made its role within the platform visible.
I worked closely with development partners to translate the direction into a coordinated release. Rather than modernizing dashboards one at a time, we implemented the shared navigation, platform shell and core experience standards together, allowing the redesigned portal and SAM+ Hub to launch as one coherent environment.
Outcomes and Impact
The redesigned portal launched alongside SAM+ Hub, delivering the coordinated release I had proposed and secured. Softchoice’s flagship digital product launched within a coherent branded environment rather than one divided between modernized and outdated experiences.
Contact creation became a guided sequence: establish the intended access, then enter the contact’s details. The redesign also connected order and invoice journeys and established shared navigation, responsive patterns, accessibility standards and components across the signed-in platform.
Beyond the release itself, the initiative demonstrated the strategic value of UX within Softchoice. By identifying an unaddressed platform risk, turning it into a funded roadmap and aligning Digital, IT, Marketing, Brand and development around the customer journey, I established UX as a contributor to platform strategy and the overall customer experience.
What This Changed
The work extended UX’s role at Softchoice from designing an individual product to shaping the platform around it.
It reinforced how I lead through influence: make an overlooked customer problem visible, give leaders a practical path to address it and align delivery around the experience customers will actually use.
Evidence and Attribution
The contact-creation improvement is documented in the user-management design flow, which separates access selection from contact details. The experience audit, proposed roadmap, approved scope and coordinated portal and SAM+ launch are documented in project materials.