Designing the flow of business

The world of business is run on suppliers. Companies move fast, outsource that which they can’t do—or don’t need to do—in house, thereby relying on negotiations with external suppliers to drive towards a clear path to profitability. This makes procurement one of the most important processes of a business.

Put another way: business must flow.

At Zip, we see ‘flow’ as an invisible force that drives peak performance. It is our goal to help companies drive growth through the continued flow of business—”when procurement flows, business flows.”

This brings us to today.

Orchestrating our path forward

Zip started with a focus on ‘intake’, the moment at which someone at a company decides they need something in order to drive business forward. Our founding goal was to make this process easier than it’s ever been, while also driving more business impact than ever before, right from the start. 

Our customers loved our intake product and wanted to carry this workflow improvement into the entire procurement process.

And so, what began as a solution for intake soon evolved into an all-encompassing orchestrated AI-powered platform for managing all categories and pathways of spend.

As our scope expanded, so did the ways in which our customers—and future customers—perceive our brand. 

Not just as an entryway to a procurement request, but as an opening of all of the distributed pathways to procurement: an opportunity for business to flow faster, stronger, and more efficiently than ever before.

Our brand needed to reflect this categorical expansion of pathways. It needed to be the foundation of how we drive all business efforts forward.

Challenging the norm in B2B branding

What does brand mean, and why does it matter?

This is probably the biggest misconception that comes into play when people ask, “What is brand?” Oftentimes, a brand is defined by the most tangible elements of a visual system: logo, colors, fonts, etc. 

I’ve had someone ask, “Why do we need a rebrand when the slide decks don’t look that bad?” But brand  is about establishing all the inner parts that ultimately define your unique purpose in the world, and then to articulate that differentiation. It’s about understanding the deeper “why” behind your company’s existence, which then serves as the foundation for shaping and guiding business behaviors moving forward.

One thing you’ll hear me talk a lot about is the lack of movement and investment when it comes to the branding landscape of B2B companies. There’s a higher fear of rejection because these companies feel the risks of loss are higher—that creative expression might compromise their professionalism. In most cases, they ultimately prioritize other business objectives. 

However, with every software market becoming more saturated, how businesses market their product to stand out matters. Expectations are evolving, making this an exciting time to challenge and redefine these conventions.

This rebrand is a fundamental part of articulating Zip’s vision and purpose—not just reflecting what we’ve accomplished but communicating where we’re headed and what we can make possible. It’s about evolving our identity to align with our broader mission and our ambition to redefine procurement.

Bringing Zip’s new brand to life

To begin the visual work, we started with the foundational process of defining Zip’s brand strategy. How we articulate this vision, purpose, and mission governs how we present ourselves internally and externally.

The two fundamental themes and building blocks of our brand that guide our language are Flow and Peak.

When supplies between companies flow, impact flows. Much of business relies on competition, and Zip has a role there—empowering companies with negotiating leverage to help traverse the path to operating at peak performance. Zip, therefore, is a platform for ensuring great businesses can most successfully build atop one another.

We carried these themes throughout every element of our system, expressing the concept in our new wordmark, shapes, dynamic spacing and compositions to embody fluid movement, vitality, collective achievement, and peak performance.

Procurement makes business move

Driven by these same principles, we wanted our motions to feel highly dynamic, with behaviors that reflect our brand attributes. 

(Flow) flowing pathways and (Peak) precision orchestration. These attributes come to life through a range of behaviors from flowy and fluid to orderly and precise.

Procurement is a human process

We wanted to reshape the perception of the procurement process and the humans involved throughout every step. While the function is traditionally viewed as cumbersome, slow, and complicated, we wanted to reframe this notion—transforming the feeling of working with procurement into one that is optimistic, energizing, and connecting.

What is procurement after all, but connecting people with the products, services, and suppliers they need to move their own goals forward?

Procurement deserves its own best-of-breed experience

In tandem with our product team, we’ve infused the new brand language directly into the product experience. While at first glance it may appear to be a simple refresh of typeface and colors, this redesign is at its core about helping our users achieve a flow-like state. It’s about improving Zip’s UI to introduce more clarity, reduce cognitive load, and create clear and beautiful experiences throughout the app’s workflows.

Our product designers and engineers used this opportunity to refine core components, tackle design and tech debt, and incorporate valuable customer feedback we’ve accumulated over the years.

We balanced improved information density for power users with a simple, friendly interface for the average user. We revisited our entire color palette to ensure we were meeting accessibility standards, while working well within our minimal aesthetic.

As we continue to build new products and features, it’s important for us to develop a scalable, consistent system to fuel and streamline our growth. We made sure that every aspect of Zip reflects our commitment to helping businesses reach peak performance.

Zip: reimagined for the new era of procurement

Zip’s new brand identity encompasses so much more than new logos and colors. It embodies an orchestrated experience that reflects the nature of procurement as a key driver of growth and innovation. 

As procurement flows, so does business—connecting people, products, and suppliers in meaningful ways. 

When networks, markets, and entire economies can freely build upon each other, the potential for impact becomes exponential. Zip opens pathways for this flow, making b2b about more than transactions. 

Because in the end, no business works alone.

Thank you: Moniker, Aleene Webber, Joyce Liu, Jing Jian, Tracy Gao