Sapiens, a leading global provider of software solutions for the insurance industry, arrived at a crossroads after a rapid series of acquisitions and organic growth. The company’s product portfolio expanded significantly, which led to inconsistent product naming and created redundancies. Most product names still started with the word “Sapiens,” but others began with the names of companies Sapiens had acquired. This lack of clarity threatened to eventually fracture the unity of Sapiens’ powerful brand in the insurance and financial services marketplaces, and to complicate sales processes. Sapiens engaged Joe Smith, the brand consultancy of Padilla, to analyze its brand architecture, determine specific value propositions for each product line, and present a strategy for organizing and grouping its applications and services. The goal was to better position the company in an increasingly competitive space and to unify the brand following explosive growth.
Research revealed Sapiens’ naming architecture told a product-centered story. While stakeholders referred to and trusted the Sapiens brand for solutions, their portfolio was not organized and presented in a way that made it intuitive for insurers to quickly understand what they needed from this one-stop-shop with an extensive product portfolio. It was unclear which offerings were full suites with core offerings, which were single products to upgrade legacy systems, or which geographic market and carrier sizes they best served. Additionally, the legacy names for products and services were often obscure/abstract and it was necessary to create a “one-brand” approach. This entailed starting all product names with the word “Sapiens,” to capitalize on an industry-leading brand and demonstrate that the offerings are pre-integrated and work best together.
Sapiens required a brand architecture that defined a structure for the future that led with elevating the Sapiens brand first, and was straightforward and simple to offer prospects and existing customers a more pleasant pre-sales experience, yet sophisticated enough to tell the story of an industry leader with 30+ products who services clients around the globe. After a series of acquisitions, it was critical to present Sapiens as a unified and holistic company, and leverage the company’s powerful name.
The team at Padilla developed clear roles and benefits for each Sapiens offering, then created a structure for organizing the portfolio that made it possible for each offering to communicate an individual value proposition, while showing how it complemented the broader brand portfolio. Rather than become a conglomerate of many software brands, Sapiens was repositioned as a master brand with integrated product suites. With this architecture in place, the team established a decision-making strategy for future Sapiens acquisitions and developed a roadmap that enabled quick launch of new products following changes, which is important in a dynamic and evolving marketplace.
By optimizing the naming architecture and setting up a framework for future brand solutions, Sapiens now has a simpler brand portfolio with more clearly differentiated offers that is easier for customers to understand, accommodates product growth and streamlines marketing for more than 30 solutions.