Brandwatch OS
Transforming M&A headaches into business value
How I leveraged design to turn a global SaaS leader's business-critical ambition into reality.
Summary
Facing a fragmented product ecosystem after a merger and multiple acquisitions, Brandwatch, a global leader in social media intelligence, needed to unite more than 12 diverse products into a compelling suite. The organisation struggled with uncertainty, technical silos, and the collective inertia that comes from complex change. Stepping into the gap, I set a unifying vision, translated it into practical strategy, brought together several specialised teams to execute, and personally led the design and early execution. Through clear direction, hands-on leadership, and a shared commitment, my teams and I delivered a seamless new suite and user experience on time, unlocking further business growth.
Impact
3 companies integrated
16+ product teams aligned
4x faster integration
Jump to
Context
Employment
Brandwatch
Industry
Social Media
Role
VP Product Experience, leading hands-on
Duration
12-18 months
Contribution
Product & design vision Strategy & planning Team & tribe leadership Stakeholder management Design direction Information architecture Product design (UX/UI) Suite branding Prototyping
Tribe / Teams
Product Experience (core team) Design Systems Frontend Infrastructure User Enablement
Stakeholders
CPO CSO CMO SVP Design VP Product VP Engineering VP Brand Director of Strategy Sr. Director of Product Marketing Product teams, 16+
Brandwatch OS
Transforming M&A headaches into business value
How I leveraged design to turn a global SaaS leader's business-critical ambition into reality.
Summary
Facing a fragmented product ecosystem after a merger and multiple acquisitions, Brandwatch, a global leader in social media intelligence, needed to unite more than 12 diverse products into a compelling suite. The organisation struggled with uncertainty, technical silos, and the collective inertia that comes from complex change. Stepping into the gap, I set a unifying vision, translated it into practical strategy, brought together several specialised teams to execute, and personally led the design and early execution. Through clear direction, hands-on leadership, and a shared commitment, my teams and I delivered a seamless new suite and user experience on time, unlocking further business growth.
Impact
3 companies integrated
16+ product teams aligned
4x faster integration
Jump to
Context
Employment
Brandwatch
Industry
Social Media
Role
VP Product Experience, leading hands-on
Duration
12-18 months
Contribution
Product & design vision Strategy & planning Team & tribe leadership Stakeholder management Design direction Information architecture Product design (UX/UI) Suite branding Prototyping
Tribe / Teams
Product Experience (core team) Design Systems Frontend Infrastructure User Enablement
Stakeholders
CPO CSO CMO SVP Design VP Product VP Engineering VP Brand Director of Strategy Sr. Director of Product Marketing Product teams, 16+
Brandwatch OS
Transforming M&A headaches into business value
How I leveraged design to turn a global SaaS leader's business-critical ambition into reality.
Summary
Facing a fragmented product ecosystem after a merger and multiple acquisitions, Brandwatch, a global leader in social media intelligence, needed to unite more than 12 diverse products into a compelling suite. The organisation struggled with uncertainty, technical silos, and the collective inertia that comes from complex change. Stepping into the gap, I set a unifying vision, translated it into practical strategy, brought together several specialised teams to execute, and personally led the design and early execution. Through clear direction, hands-on leadership, and a shared commitment, my teams and I delivered a seamless new suite and user experience on time, unlocking further business growth.
Impact
3 companies integrated
16+ product teams aligned
4x faster integration
Jump to
Context
Employment
Brandwatch
Industry
Social Media
Role
VP Product Experience, leading hands-on
Duration
12-18 months
Contribution
Product & design vision Strategy & planning Team & tribe leadership Stakeholder management Design direction Information architecture Product design (UX/UI) Suite branding Prototyping
Tribe / Teams
Product Experience (core team) Design Systems Frontend Infrastructure User Enablement
Stakeholders
CPO CSO CMO SVP Design VP Product VP Engineering VP Brand Director of Strategy Sr. Director of Product Marketing Product teams, 16+
Brandwatch OS
Transforming M&A headaches into business value
How I leveraged design to turn a global SaaS leader's business-critical ambition into reality.
Summary
Facing a fragmented product ecosystem after a merger and multiple acquisitions, Brandwatch, a global leader in social media intelligence, needed to unite more than 12 diverse products into a compelling suite. The organisation struggled with uncertainty, technical silos, and the collective inertia that comes from complex change. Stepping into the gap, I set a unifying vision, translated it into practical strategy, brought together several specialised teams to execute, and personally led the design and early execution. Through clear direction, hands-on leadership, and a shared commitment, my teams and I delivered a seamless new suite and user experience on time, unlocking further business growth.
Impact
3 companies integrated
16+ product teams aligned
4x faster integration
Jump to
Context
Employment
Brandwatch
Industry
Social Media
Role
VP Product Experience, leading hands-on
Duration
12-18 months
Contribution
Product & design vision Strategy & planning Team & tribe leadership Stakeholder management Design direction Information architecture Product design (UX/UI) Suite branding Prototyping
Tribe / Teams
Product Experience (core team) Design Systems Frontend Infrastructure User Enablement
Stakeholders
CPO CSO CMO SVP Design VP Product VP Engineering VP Brand Director of Strategy Sr. Director of Product Marketing Product teams, 16+
Brandwatch OS
Transforming M&A headaches into business value
How I leveraged design to turn a global SaaS leader's business-critical ambition into reality.
Summary
Facing a fragmented product ecosystem after a merger and multiple acquisitions, Brandwatch, a global leader in social media intelligence, needed to unite more than 12 diverse products into a compelling suite. The organisation struggled with uncertainty, technical silos, and the collective inertia that comes from complex change. Stepping into the gap, I set a unifying vision, translated it into practical strategy, brought together several specialised teams to execute, and personally led the design and early execution. Through clear direction, hands-on leadership, and a shared commitment, my teams and I delivered a seamless new suite and user experience on time, unlocking further business growth.
Impact
3 companies integrated
16+ product teams aligned
4x faster integration
Jump to
Context
Employment
Brandwatch
Industry
Social Media
Role
VP Product Experience, leading hands-on
Duration
12-18 months
Contribution
Product & design vision Strategy & planning Team & tribe leadership Stakeholder management Design direction Information architecture Product design (UX/UI) Suite branding Prototyping
Tribe / Teams
Product Experience (core team) Design Systems Frontend Infrastructure User Enablement
Stakeholders
CPO CSO CMO SVP Design VP Product VP Engineering VP Brand Director of Strategy Sr. Director of Product Marketing Product teams, 16+
Situation
A merger, several acquisitions, and a strong market demand for 360-degree solutions
After bringing together several major companies through a merger and multiple acquisitions, Brandwatch was uniquely positioned with a broad product portfolio. However, this also brought a mix of highly diverse product experiences, legacy systems, and varied operational practices within internal teams. Externally, customers demanded comprehensive, accessible, and seamless 360-degree solutions to meet an increasingly competitive market. Internally, teams were still finding their footing in a newly shaped organisation, and it was unclear how to move forward together given this complexity.
Challenge
A unified suite and user experience across 12+ diverse products
The ambition from top leadership was clear: transform Brandwatch into a unified suite of products, and do it fast. Achieving this was business-critical, with the goal of delivering a consistent and accessible experience across more than 12 diverse products in less than a year. For customers, solutions needed to be both seamless and accessible. Yet for users, the daily reality was a fragmented journey, logging in and out of separate systems, navigating different interfaces, and adapting to unique patterns in each product.
Screenshots of legacy products acquired through multiple M&As
Each product with unique design patterns, user models and flows. Assessing and analysing their differences laid the groundwork for defining and creating a unified, seamless experience.
Fixing this highly complex problem was essential to fulfil the company’s vision of a suite. Internally, the organisation was not yet set up to tackle a transformation that spanned so many products, teams, and business units. Coordinating efforts and aligning priorities across such a broad landscape proved difficult for the company, and as a result, progress stalled despite our clear strategic ambition.
Action
Designing the path forward
Recognising that existing operational and organisational structures could not solve a transformation of this scale, I leveraged design to bypass the roadblocks and show the way forward. I created a clear and desirable vision for a unified Brandwatch and, together with my core team, developed a strategy to bring that vision to life. To make the vision tangible, I designed and presented how this could work, prototypes that gave everyone something concrete to rally around and believe in. Together with my core team, I also framed the challenge as “creating an operating system for our products” to make it comprehensible. This gave everyone a shared mental model of the domain, architecture, and navigational frameworks needed to solve the challenge. It allowed everyone to align around a common understanding and move forward together. My intent was to create a guiding vision that looked beyond the immediate user pain points and fragmented UX/UI, envisioning how Brandwatch should deliver lasting value to customers, users, and the business while creating a framework for future acquisitions and growth.
High-level schematic visualising unified companies and their products
To uncover structural differences and dependencies, I instructed every product designer to map their product’s taxonomy and flows while creating the global mapping myself. This process provided essential structural clarity and informed how to safely approach designing a suite which supports every product.
Diagram defining the domain of the suite, the products, and their overlaps exposed over an early concept of a unified suite
I helped bring clarity to the challenge by defining it as creating an operating system. A mental model and effort which had not been addressed consciously until this point. This definition and diagram brought clarity and direction to the entire product organisation.
Play
Early prototype demonstrating suite navigation and global patterns
Drawing on prior insights from product taxonomy, user models, and flows, I designed this prototype for leadership to make the unification strategy tangible and desirable. The prototype was received very positively and became a north star, guiding both strategic alignment and future design decisions across the organisation.
With our direction clear, I worked with my core team and my peers in product and engineering to bring several specialised platform teams across the product organisation into alignment and action to drive the effort. My core team and I took initial responsibility for the core concept and fundamental design, rolling up our sleeves to explore existing insights, user models, user journeys, taxonomy, navigation, and how we could genuinely integrate the products into a seamless experience. We worked closely with all product teams to test ideas, gather product-specific feedback, and further develop the fundamental design into detailed proposals. Since the initiative impacted almost every team and business area across the newly combined product organisation, my core team and I worked across more than 16 product teams and with executives and peers in product, strategy, brand, and marketing to secure alignment and buy-in, managing a wide scope of stakeholders to make it succeed. As the platform teams became more confident in the new direction, my core team and I gradually stepped back, allowing the platform teams to take ownership and drive the work forward.
Rebranding of merged products and major features
In collaboration with Brand, I helped redesigned product logos and major features to appear as part of the same visual system, ensuring each product felt connected yet distinct. This visual alignment helped reinforced a seamless experience across marketing and the product suite.
Design explorations demonstrating how a new shared suite navigation could support and elevate each product
By studying each product and collaborating with each product team, I designed a suite navigation and directed the Design Systems team to explore ways a new shared suite navigation could meet product-specific needs. This new navigation offered product teams new opportunities and elevated the general user experience across the entire suite.
Design explorations demonstrating different approaches for navigating between products
As users would suddenly encounter a larger number of products in the unified suite, I designed different approaches to help them filter and focus on what they needed, reducing potential friction. These approaches would improved task efficiency while helping users gradually adapt to the expanded suite.
Seamless
experience
Play
Near-production prototype demonstrating finalised suite navigation, suite header, and relocation of globally shared features
Informed by the many collaborative work streams, I created a prototype capturing the combined outcome. This helped give direction and clarity to every product team and informed the development and rollout ahead.
Diagrams illustrating the rollout strategy for the new suite
To accommodate each product team’s roadmaps, priorities, and technical constraints, I developed a rollout strategy by breaking the suite into independent phases. This approach allowed teams to migrate at their own pace while ensuring smooth integration of future acquisitions.
Diagram illustrating phase two of the rollout plan for the new suite
Under my direction, the Design Systems team led and coordinated each phase, involving product teams as they became ready. This structured approach ensured an efficient and smooth migration while enabling continuous learning and reuse of insights gained from each step.
Impact
Delivering value for users and business alike
The launch of the unified suite marked an important shift for Brandwatch. It delivered on major business goals while also vastly improving the user experience. Brandwatch could now present itself as a true 360-degree solution, which strengthened our market position and gave sales teams the confidence to promote a single, cohesive offering to customers. For users, the difference was equally profound. What had been a fragmented experience, working across a maze of disconnected products, now felt unified and reliable.
Concept design for Brandwatch One, a new central hub for the suite
To help the organisation see how everything could come together in the new suite, I designed a concept for a new central hub which connected insights, products, integrations, learning, and marketing. This helped build excitement and spark discussions in leadership around possible next steps for the unified suite.
Moving between products was now seamless. Navigation and adoption of new features were easier than ever. This transformation did not just unite 12 independent products. It unlocked further growth and created a strong foundation for integrating future acquisitions. This result came from a deliberate intent to help the company win while ensuring users felt valued, showing that these goals are not competing but mutually reinforcing outcomes.
3
Companies integrated
under one design framework.
16+
Product teams aligned
through design vision & strategy.
4x
Faster integration
of future acquisitions.
Takeaway
Design unites and delivers
This project showed the power of design, not just to solve problems but to turn ambition into reality and build shared momentum around a common vision. As the teams saw the vision take shape and understood its potential, buy-in grew and real progress began. The ability to show the way forward, not just talk about it, is what sets design leadership apart. In this case, it helped unlock alignment and engagement across the organisation, empowering teams to deliver great results together.
“He has a strong understanding of how user experience can have a real impact on broader business objectives and always ensures that his work and his team's work is aligned with the rest of the business”
Nick Taylor
Senior Director of Product Marketing
Situation
A merger, several acquisitions, and a strong market demand for 360-degree solutions
After bringing together several major companies through a merger and multiple acquisitions, Brandwatch was uniquely positioned with a broad product portfolio. However, this also brought a mix of highly diverse product experiences, legacy systems, and varied operational practices within internal teams. Externally, customers demanded comprehensive, accessible, and seamless 360-degree solutions to meet an increasingly competitive market. Internally, teams were still finding their footing in a newly shaped organisation, and it was unclear how to move forward together given this complexity.
Challenge
A unified suite and user experience across 12+ diverse products
The ambition from top leadership was clear: transform Brandwatch into a unified suite of products, and do it fast. Achieving this was business-critical, with the goal of delivering a consistent and accessible experience across more than 12 diverse products in less than a year. For customers, solutions needed to be both seamless and accessible. Yet for users, the daily reality was a fragmented journey, logging in and out of separate systems, navigating different interfaces, and adapting to unique patterns in each product.
Screenshots of legacy products acquired through multiple M&As
Each product with unique design patterns, user models and flows. Assessing and analysing their differences laid the groundwork for defining and creating a unified, seamless experience.
Fixing this highly complex problem was essential to fulfil the company’s vision of a suite. Internally, the organisation was not yet set up to tackle a transformation that spanned so many products, teams, and business units. Coordinating efforts and aligning priorities across such a broad landscape proved difficult for the company, and as a result, progress stalled despite our clear strategic ambition.
Action
Designing the path forward
Recognising that existing operational and organisational structures could not solve a transformation of this scale, I leveraged design to bypass the roadblocks and show the way forward. I created a clear and desirable vision for a unified Brandwatch and, together with my core team, developed a strategy to bring that vision to life. To make the vision tangible, I designed and presented how this could work, prototypes that gave everyone something concrete to rally around and believe in. Together with my core team, I also framed the challenge as “creating an operating system for our products” to make it comprehensible. This gave everyone a shared mental model of the domain, architecture, and navigational frameworks needed to solve the challenge. It allowed everyone to align around a common understanding and move forward together. My intent was to create a guiding vision that looked beyond the immediate user pain points and fragmented UX/UI, envisioning how Brandwatch should deliver lasting value to customers, users, and the business while creating a framework for future acquisitions and growth.
High-level schematic visualising unified companies and their products
To uncover structural differences and dependencies, I instructed every product designer to map their product’s taxonomy and flows while creating the global mapping myself. This process provided essential structural clarity and informed how to safely approach designing a suite which supports every product.
Diagram defining the domain of the suite, the products, and their overlaps exposed over an early concept of a unified suite
I helped bring clarity to the challenge by defining it as creating an operating system. A mental model and effort which had not been addressed consciously until this point. This definition and diagram brought clarity and direction to the entire product organisation.
Play
Early prototype demonstrating suite navigation and global patterns
Drawing on prior insights from product taxonomy, user models, and flows, I designed this prototype for leadership to make the unification strategy tangible and desirable. The prototype was received very positively and became a north star, guiding both strategic alignment and future design decisions across the organisation.
With our direction clear, I worked with my core team and my peers in product and engineering to bring several specialised platform teams across the product organisation into alignment and action to drive the effort. My core team and I took initial responsibility for the core concept and fundamental design, rolling up our sleeves to explore existing insights, user models, user journeys, taxonomy, navigation, and how we could genuinely integrate the products into a seamless experience. We worked closely with all product teams to test ideas, gather product-specific feedback, and further develop the fundamental design into detailed proposals. Since the initiative impacted almost every team and business area across the newly combined product organisation, my core team and I worked across more than 16 product teams and with executives and peers in product, strategy, brand, and marketing to secure alignment and buy-in, managing a wide scope of stakeholders to make it succeed. As the platform teams became more confident in the new direction, my core team and I gradually stepped back, allowing the platform teams to take ownership and drive the work forward.
Rebranding of merged products and major features
In collaboration with Brand, I helped redesigned product logos and major features to appear as part of the same visual system, ensuring each product felt connected yet distinct. This visual alignment helped reinforced a seamless experience across marketing and the product suite.
Design explorations demonstrating how a new shared suite navigation could support and elevate each product
By studying each product and collaborating with each product team, I designed a suite navigation and directed the Design Systems team to explore ways a new shared suite navigation could meet product-specific needs. This new navigation offered product teams new opportunities and elevated the general user experience across the entire suite.
Design explorations demonstrating different approaches for navigating between products
As users would suddenly encounter a larger number of products in the unified suite, I designed different approaches to help them filter and focus on what they needed, reducing potential friction. These approaches would improved task efficiency while helping users gradually adapt to the expanded suite.
Seamless
experience
Play
Near-production prototype demonstrating finalised suite navigation, suite header, and relocation of globally shared features
Informed by the many collaborative work streams, I created a prototype capturing the combined outcome. This helped give direction and clarity to every product team and informed the development and rollout ahead.
Diagrams illustrating the rollout strategy for the new suite
To accommodate each product team’s roadmaps, priorities, and technical constraints, I developed a rollout strategy by breaking the suite into independent phases. This approach allowed teams to migrate at their own pace while ensuring smooth integration of future acquisitions.
Diagram illustrating phase two of the rollout plan for the new suite
Under my direction, the Design Systems team led and coordinated each phase, involving product teams as they became ready. This structured approach ensured an efficient and smooth migration while enabling continuous learning and reuse of insights gained from each step.
Impact
Delivering value for users and business alike
The launch of the unified suite marked an important shift for Brandwatch. It delivered on major business goals while also vastly improving the user experience. Brandwatch could now present itself as a true 360-degree solution, which strengthened our market position and gave sales teams the confidence to promote a single, cohesive offering to customers. For users, the difference was equally profound. What had been a fragmented experience, working across a maze of disconnected products, now felt unified and reliable.
Concept design for Brandwatch One, a new central hub for the suite
To help the organisation see how everything could come together in the new suite, I designed a concept for a new central hub which connected insights, products, integrations, learning, and marketing. This helped build excitement and spark discussions in leadership around possible next steps for the unified suite.
Moving between products was now seamless. Navigation and adoption of new features were easier than ever. This transformation did not just unite 12 independent products. It unlocked further growth and created a strong foundation for integrating future acquisitions. This result came from a deliberate intent to help the company win while ensuring users felt valued, showing that these goals are not competing but mutually reinforcing outcomes.
3
Companies integrated
under one design framework.
16+
Product teams aligned
through design vision & strategy.
4x
Faster integration
of future acquisitions.
Takeaway
Design unites and delivers
This project showed the power of design, not just to solve problems but to turn ambition into reality and build shared momentum around a common vision. As the teams saw the vision take shape and understood its potential, buy-in grew and real progress began. The ability to show the way forward, not just talk about it, is what sets design leadership apart. In this case, it helped unlock alignment and engagement across the organisation, empowering teams to deliver great results together.
“He has a strong understanding of how user experience can have a real impact on broader business objectives and always ensures that his work and his team's work is aligned with the rest of the business”
Nick Taylor
Senior Director of Product Marketing
Situation
A merger, several acquisitions, and a strong market demand for 360-degree solutions
After bringing together several major companies through a merger and multiple acquisitions, Brandwatch was uniquely positioned with a broad product portfolio. However, this also brought a mix of highly diverse product experiences, legacy systems, and varied operational practices within internal teams. Externally, customers demanded comprehensive, accessible, and seamless 360-degree solutions to meet an increasingly competitive market. Internally, teams were still finding their footing in a newly shaped organisation, and it was unclear how to move forward together given this complexity.
Challenge
A unified suite and user experience across 12+ diverse products
The ambition from top leadership was clear: transform Brandwatch into a unified suite of products, and do it fast. Achieving this was business-critical, with the goal of delivering a consistent and accessible experience across more than 12 diverse products in less than a year. For customers, solutions needed to be both seamless and accessible. Yet for users, the daily reality was a fragmented journey, logging in and out of separate systems, navigating different interfaces, and adapting to unique patterns in each product.
Screenshots of legacy products acquired through multiple M&As
Each product with unique design patterns, user models and flows. Assessing and analysing their differences laid the groundwork for defining and creating a unified, seamless experience.
Fixing this highly complex problem was essential to fulfil the company’s vision of a suite. Internally, the organisation was not yet set up to tackle a transformation that spanned so many products, teams, and business units. Coordinating efforts and aligning priorities across such a broad landscape proved difficult for the company, and as a result, progress stalled despite our clear strategic ambition.
Action
Designing the path forward
Recognising that existing operational and organisational structures could not solve a transformation of this scale, I leveraged design to bypass the roadblocks and show the way forward. I created a clear and desirable vision for a unified Brandwatch and, together with my core team, developed a strategy to bring that vision to life. To make the vision tangible, I designed and presented how this could work, prototypes that gave everyone something concrete to rally around and believe in. Together with my core team, I also framed the challenge as “creating an operating system for our products” to make it comprehensible. This gave everyone a shared mental model of the domain, architecture, and navigational frameworks needed to solve the challenge. It allowed everyone to align around a common understanding and move forward together. My intent was to create a guiding vision that looked beyond the immediate user pain points and fragmented UX/UI, envisioning how Brandwatch should deliver lasting value to customers, users, and the business while creating a framework for future acquisitions and growth.
High-level schematic visualising unified companies and their products
To uncover structural differences and dependencies, I instructed every product designer to map their product’s taxonomy and flows while creating the global mapping myself. This process provided essential structural clarity and informed how to safely approach designing a suite which supports every product.
Diagram defining the domain of the suite, the products, and their overlaps exposed over an early concept of a unified suite
I helped bring clarity to the challenge by defining it as creating an operating system. A mental model and effort which had not been addressed consciously until this point. This definition and diagram brought clarity and direction to the entire product organisation.
Play
Early prototype demonstrating suite navigation and global patterns
Drawing on prior insights from product taxonomy, user models, and flows, I designed this prototype for leadership to make the unification strategy tangible and desirable. The prototype was received very positively and became a north star, guiding both strategic alignment and future design decisions across the organisation.
With our direction clear, I worked with my core team and my peers in product and engineering to bring several specialised platform teams across the product organisation into alignment and action to drive the effort. My core team and I took initial responsibility for the core concept and fundamental design, rolling up our sleeves to explore existing insights, user models, user journeys, taxonomy, navigation, and how we could genuinely integrate the products into a seamless experience. We worked closely with all product teams to test ideas, gather product-specific feedback, and further develop the fundamental design into detailed proposals. Since the initiative impacted almost every team and business area across the newly combined product organisation, my core team and I worked across more than 16 product teams and with executives and peers in product, strategy, brand, and marketing to secure alignment and buy-in, managing a wide scope of stakeholders to make it succeed. As the platform teams became more confident in the new direction, my core team and I gradually stepped back, allowing the platform teams to take ownership and drive the work forward.
Rebranding of merged products and major features
In collaboration with Brand, I helped redesigned product logos and major features to appear as part of the same visual system, ensuring each product felt connected yet distinct. This visual alignment helped reinforced a seamless experience across marketing and the product suite.
Design explorations demonstrating how a new shared suite navigation could support and elevate each product
By studying each product and collaborating with each product team, I designed a suite navigation and directed the Design Systems team to explore ways a new shared suite navigation could meet product-specific needs. This new navigation offered product teams new opportunities and elevated the general user experience across the entire suite.
Design explorations demonstrating different approaches for navigating between products
As users would suddenly encounter a larger number of products in the unified suite, I designed different approaches to help them filter and focus on what they needed, reducing potential friction. These approaches would improved task efficiency while helping users gradually adapt to the expanded suite.
Play
Near-production prototype demonstrating finalised suite navigation, suite header, and relocation of globally shared features
Informed by the many collaborative work streams, I created a prototype capturing the combined outcome. This helped give direction and clarity to every product team and informed the development and rollout ahead.
Diagrams illustrating the rollout strategy for the new suite
To accommodate each product team’s roadmaps, priorities, and technical constraints, I developed a rollout strategy by breaking the suite into independent phases. This approach allowed teams to migrate at their own pace while ensuring smooth integration of future acquisitions.
Diagram illustrating phase two of the rollout plan for the new suite
Under my direction, the Design Systems team led and coordinated each phase, involving product teams as they became ready. This structured approach ensured an efficient and smooth migration while enabling continuous learning and reuse of insights gained from each step.
Impact
Delivering value for users and business alike
The launch of the unified suite marked an important shift for Brandwatch. It delivered on major business goals while also vastly improving the user experience. Brandwatch could now present itself as a true 360-degree solution, which strengthened our market position and gave sales teams the confidence to promote a single, cohesive offering to customers. For users, the difference was equally profound. What had been a fragmented experience, working across a maze of disconnected products, now felt unified and reliable.
Concept design for Brandwatch One, a new central hub for the suite
To help the organisation see how everything could come together in the new suite, I designed a concept for a new central hub which connected insights, products, integrations, learning, and marketing. This helped build excitement and spark discussions in leadership around possible next steps for the unified suite.
Moving between products was now seamless. Navigation and adoption of new features were easier than ever. This transformation did not just unite 12 independent products. It unlocked further growth and created a strong foundation for integrating future acquisitions. This result came from a deliberate intent to help the company win while ensuring users felt valued, showing that these goals are not competing but mutually reinforcing outcomes.
3
Companies integrated
under one design framework.
16+
Product teams aligned
through design vision & strategy.
4x
Faster integration
of future acquisitions.
Takeaway
Design unites and delivers
This project showed the power of design, not just to solve problems but to turn ambition into reality and build shared momentum around a common vision. As the teams saw the vision take shape and understood its potential, buy-in grew and real progress began. The ability to show the way forward, not just talk about it, is what sets design leadership apart. In this case, it helped unlock alignment and engagement across the organisation, empowering teams to deliver great results together.
“He has a strong understanding of how user experience can have a real impact on broader business objectives and always ensures that his work and his team's work is aligned with the rest of the business”
Nick Taylor
Senior Director of Product Marketing
Situation
A merger, several acquisitions, and a strong market demand for 360-degree solutions
After bringing together several major companies through a merger and multiple acquisitions, Brandwatch was uniquely positioned with a broad product portfolio. However, this also brought a mix of highly diverse product experiences, legacy systems, and varied operational practices within internal teams. Externally, customers demanded comprehensive, accessible, and seamless 360-degree solutions to meet an increasingly competitive market. Internally, teams were still finding their footing in a newly shaped organisation, and it was unclear how to move forward together given this complexity.
Challenge
A unified suite and user experience across 12+ diverse products
The ambition from top leadership was clear: transform Brandwatch into a unified suite of products, and do it fast. Achieving this was business-critical, with the goal of delivering a consistent and accessible experience across more than 12 diverse products in less than a year. For customers, solutions needed to be both seamless and accessible. Yet for users, the daily reality was a fragmented journey, logging in and out of separate systems, navigating different interfaces, and adapting to unique patterns in each product.
Screenshots of legacy products acquired through multiple M&As
Each product with unique design patterns, user models and flows. Assessing and analysing their differences laid the groundwork for defining and creating a unified, seamless experience.
Fixing this highly complex problem was essential to fulfil the company’s vision of a suite. Internally, the organisation was not yet set up to tackle a transformation that spanned so many products, teams, and business units. Coordinating efforts and aligning priorities across such a broad landscape proved difficult for the company, and as a result, progress stalled despite our clear strategic ambition.
Action
Designing the path forward
Recognising that existing operational and organisational structures could not solve a transformation of this scale, I leveraged design to bypass the roadblocks and show the way forward. I created a clear and desirable vision for a unified Brandwatch and, together with my core team, developed a strategy to bring that vision to life. To make the vision tangible, I designed and presented how this could work, prototypes that gave everyone something concrete to rally around and believe in. Together with my core team, I also framed the challenge as “creating an operating system for our products” to make it comprehensible. This gave everyone a shared mental model of the domain, architecture, and navigational frameworks needed to solve the challenge. It allowed everyone to align around a common understanding and move forward together. My intent was to create a guiding vision that looked beyond the immediate user pain points and fragmented UX/UI, envisioning how Brandwatch should deliver lasting value to customers, users, and the business while creating a framework for future acquisitions and growth.
High-level schematic visualising unified companies and their products
To uncover structural differences and dependencies, I instructed every product designer to map their product’s taxonomy and flows while creating the global mapping myself. This process provided essential structural clarity and informed how to safely approach designing a suite which supports every product.
Diagram defining the domain of the suite, the products, and their overlaps exposed over an early concept of a unified suite
I helped bring clarity to the challenge by defining it as creating an operating system. A mental model and effort which had not been addressed consciously until this point. This definition and diagram brought clarity and direction to the entire product organisation.
Play
Early prototype demonstrating suite navigation and global patterns
Drawing on prior insights from product taxonomy, user models, and flows, I designed this prototype for leadership to make the unification strategy tangible and desirable. The prototype was received very positively and became a north star, guiding both strategic alignment and future design decisions across the organisation.
With our direction clear, I worked with my core team and my peers in product and engineering to bring several specialised platform teams across the product organisation into alignment and action to drive the effort. My core team and I took initial responsibility for the core concept and fundamental design, rolling up our sleeves to explore existing insights, user models, user journeys, taxonomy, navigation, and how we could genuinely integrate the products into a seamless experience. We worked closely with all product teams to test ideas, gather product-specific feedback, and further develop the fundamental design into detailed proposals. Since the initiative impacted almost every team and business area across the newly combined product organisation, my core team and I worked across more than 16 product teams and with executives and peers in product, strategy, brand, and marketing to secure alignment and buy-in, managing a wide scope of stakeholders to make it succeed. As the platform teams became more confident in the new direction, my core team and I gradually stepped back, allowing the platform teams to take ownership and drive the work forward.
Rebranding of merged products and major features
In collaboration with Brand, I helped redesigned product logos and major features to appear as part of the same visual system, ensuring each product felt connected yet distinct. This visual alignment helped reinforced a seamless experience across marketing and the product suite.
Design explorations demonstrating how a new shared suite navigation could support and elevate each product
By studying each product and collaborating with each product team, I designed a suite navigation and directed the Design Systems team to explore ways a new shared suite navigation could meet product-specific needs. This new navigation offered product teams new opportunities and elevated the general user experience across the entire suite.
Design explorations demonstrating different approaches for navigating between products
As users would suddenly encounter a larger number of products in the unified suite, I designed different approaches to help them filter and focus on what they needed, reducing potential friction. These approaches would improved task efficiency while helping users gradually adapt to the expanded suite.
Seamless
experience
Play
Near-production prototype demonstrating finalised suite navigation, suite header, and relocation of globally shared features
Informed by the many collaborative work streams, I created a prototype capturing the combined outcome. This helped give direction and clarity to every product team and informed the development and rollout ahead.
Diagrams illustrating the rollout strategy for the new suite
To accommodate each product team’s roadmaps, priorities, and technical constraints, I developed a rollout strategy by breaking the suite into independent phases. This approach allowed teams to migrate at their own pace while ensuring smooth integration of future acquisitions.
Diagram illustrating phase two of the rollout plan for the new suite
Under my direction, the Design Systems team led and coordinated each phase, involving product teams as they became ready. This structured approach ensured an efficient and smooth migration while enabling continuous learning and reuse of insights gained from each step.
Impact
Delivering value for users and business alike
The launch of the unified suite marked an important shift for Brandwatch. It delivered on major business goals while also vastly improving the user experience. Brandwatch could now present itself as a true 360-degree solution, which strengthened our market position and gave sales teams the confidence to promote a single, cohesive offering to customers. For users, the difference was equally profound. What had been a fragmented experience, working across a maze of disconnected products, now felt unified and reliable.
Concept design for Brandwatch One, a new central hub for the suite
To help the organisation see how everything could come together in the new suite, I designed a concept for a new central hub which connected insights, products, integrations, learning, and marketing. This helped build excitement and spark discussions in leadership around possible next steps for the unified suite.
Moving between products was now seamless. Navigation and adoption of new features were easier than ever. This transformation did not just unite 12 independent products. It unlocked further growth and created a strong foundation for integrating future acquisitions. This result came from a deliberate intent to help the company win while ensuring users felt valued, showing that these goals are not competing but mutually reinforcing outcomes.
3
Companies integrated
under one design framework.
16+
Product teams aligned
through design vision & strategy.
4x
Faster integration
of future acquisitions.
Takeaway
Design unites and delivers
This project showed the power of design, not just to solve problems but to turn ambition into reality and build shared momentum around a common vision. As the teams saw the vision take shape and understood its potential, buy-in grew and real progress began. The ability to show the way forward, not just talk about it, is what sets design leadership apart. In this case, it helped unlock alignment and engagement across the organisation, empowering teams to deliver great results together.
“He has a strong understanding of how user experience can have a real impact on broader business objectives and always ensures that his work and his team's work is aligned with the rest of the business”
Nick Taylor
Senior Director of Product Marketing
Situation
A merger, several acquisitions, and a strong market demand for 360-degree solutions
After bringing together several major companies through a merger and multiple acquisitions, Brandwatch was uniquely positioned with a broad product portfolio. However, this also brought a mix of highly diverse product experiences, legacy systems, and varied operational practices within internal teams. Externally, customers demanded comprehensive, accessible, and seamless 360-degree solutions to meet an increasingly competitive market. Internally, teams were still finding their footing in a newly shaped organisation, and it was unclear how to move forward together given this complexity.
Challenge
A unified suite and user experience across 12+ diverse products
The ambition from top leadership was clear: transform Brandwatch into a unified suite of products, and do it fast. Achieving this was business-critical, with the goal of delivering a consistent and accessible experience across more than 12 diverse products in less than a year. For customers, solutions needed to be both seamless and accessible. Yet for users, the daily reality was a fragmented journey, logging in and out of separate systems, navigating different interfaces, and adapting to unique patterns in each product.
Screenshots of legacy products acquired through multiple M&As
Each product with unique design patterns, user models and flows. Assessing and analysing their differences laid the groundwork for defining and creating a unified, seamless experience.
Fixing this highly complex problem was essential to fulfil the company’s vision of a suite. Internally, the organisation was not yet set up to tackle a transformation that spanned so many products, teams, and business units. Coordinating efforts and aligning priorities across such a broad landscape proved difficult for the company, and as a result, progress stalled despite our clear strategic ambition.
Action
Designing the path forward
Recognising that existing operational and organisational structures could not solve a transformation of this scale, I leveraged design to bypass the roadblocks and show the way forward. I created a clear and desirable vision for a unified Brandwatch and, together with my core team, developed a strategy to bring that vision to life. To make the vision tangible, I designed and presented how this could work, prototypes that gave everyone something concrete to rally around and believe in. Together with my core team, I also framed the challenge as “creating an operating system for our products” to make it comprehensible. This gave everyone a shared mental model of the domain, architecture, and navigational frameworks needed to solve the challenge. It allowed everyone to align around a common understanding and move forward together. My intent was to create a guiding vision that looked beyond the immediate user pain points and fragmented UX/UI, envisioning how Brandwatch should deliver lasting value to customers, users, and the business while creating a framework for future acquisitions and growth.
High-level schematic visualising unified companies and their products
To uncover structural differences and dependencies, I instructed every product designer to map their product’s taxonomy and flows while creating the global mapping myself. This process provided essential structural clarity and informed how to safely approach designing a suite which supports every product.
Diagram defining the domain of the suite, the products, and their overlaps exposed over an early concept of a unified suite
I helped bring clarity to the challenge by defining it as creating an operating system. A mental model and effort which had not been addressed consciously until this point. This definition and diagram brought clarity and direction to the entire product organisation.
Play
Early prototype demonstrating suite navigation and global patterns
Drawing on prior insights from product taxonomy, user models, and flows, I designed this prototype for leadership to make the unification strategy tangible and desirable. The prototype was received very positively and became a north star, guiding both strategic alignment and future design decisions across the organisation.
With our direction clear, I worked with my core team and my peers in product and engineering to bring several specialised platform teams across the product organisation into alignment and action to drive the effort. My core team and I took initial responsibility for the core concept and fundamental design, rolling up our sleeves to explore existing insights, user models, user journeys, taxonomy, navigation, and how we could genuinely integrate the products into a seamless experience. We worked closely with all product teams to test ideas, gather product-specific feedback, and further develop the fundamental design into detailed proposals. Since the initiative impacted almost every team and business area across the newly combined product organisation, my core team and I worked across more than 16 product teams and with executives and peers in product, strategy, brand, and marketing to secure alignment and buy-in, managing a wide scope of stakeholders to make it succeed. As the platform teams became more confident in the new direction, my core team and I gradually stepped back, allowing the platform teams to take ownership and drive the work forward.
Rebranding of merged products and major features
In collaboration with Brand, I helped redesigned product logos and major features to appear as part of the same visual system, ensuring each product felt connected yet distinct. This visual alignment helped reinforced a seamless experience across marketing and the product suite.
Design explorations demonstrating how a new shared suite navigation could support and elevate each product
By studying each product and collaborating with each product team, I designed a suite navigation and directed the Design Systems team to explore ways a new shared suite navigation could meet product-specific needs. This new navigation offered product teams new opportunities and elevated the general user experience across the entire suite.
Design explorations demonstrating different approaches for navigating between products
As users would suddenly encounter a larger number of products in the unified suite, I designed different approaches to help them filter and focus on what they needed, reducing potential friction. These approaches would improved task efficiency while helping users gradually adapt to the expanded suite.
Seamless
experience
Play
Near-production prototype demonstrating finalised suite navigation, suite header, and relocation of globally shared features
Informed by the many collaborative work streams, I created a prototype capturing the combined outcome. This helped give direction and clarity to every product team and informed the development and rollout ahead.
Diagrams illustrating the rollout strategy for the new suite
To accommodate each product team’s roadmaps, priorities, and technical constraints, I developed a rollout strategy by breaking the suite into independent phases. This approach allowed teams to migrate at their own pace while ensuring smooth integration of future acquisitions.
Diagram illustrating phase two of the rollout plan for the new suite
Under my direction, the Design Systems team led and coordinated each phase, involving product teams as they became ready. This structured approach ensured an efficient and smooth migration while enabling continuous learning and reuse of insights gained from each step.
Impact
Delivering value for users and business alike
The launch of the unified suite marked an important shift for Brandwatch. It delivered on major business goals while also vastly improving the user experience. Brandwatch could now present itself as a true 360-degree solution, which strengthened our market position and gave sales teams the confidence to promote a single, cohesive offering to customers. For users, the difference was equally profound. What had been a fragmented experience, working across a maze of disconnected products, now felt unified and reliable.
Concept design for Brandwatch One, a new central hub for the suite
To help the organisation see how everything could come together in the new suite, I designed a concept for a new central hub which connected insights, products, integrations, learning, and marketing. This helped build excitement and spark discussions in leadership around possible next steps for the unified suite.
Moving between products was now seamless. Navigation and adoption of new features were easier than ever. This transformation did not just unite 12 independent products. It unlocked further growth and created a strong foundation for integrating future acquisitions. This result came from a deliberate intent to help the company win while ensuring users felt valued, showing that these goals are not competing but mutually reinforcing outcomes.
3
Companies integrated
under one design framework.
16+
Product teams aligned
through design vision & strategy.
4x
Faster integration
of future acquisitions.
Takeaway
Design unites and delivers
This project showed the power of design, not just to solve problems but to turn ambition into reality and build shared momentum around a common vision. As the teams saw the vision take shape and understood its potential, buy-in grew and real progress began. The ability to show the way forward, not just talk about it, is what sets design leadership apart. In this case, it helped unlock alignment and engagement across the organisation, empowering teams to deliver great results together.
“He has a strong understanding of how user experience can have a real impact on broader business objectives and always ensures that his work and his team's work is aligned with the rest of the business”
Nick Taylor
Senior Director of Product Marketing
Explore
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MitID
How I went beyond the initial requirement to ensure a trustworthy and desirable experience for 5.6M users.
83% user satisfaction
89% user trust
87% weekly active users
Explore
Up next
MitID
How I went beyond the initial requirement to ensure a trustworthy and desirable experience for 5.6M users.
83% user satisfaction
89% user trust
87% weekly active users
Explore
Up next
MitID
How I went beyond the initial requirement to ensure a trustworthy and desirable experience for 5.6M users.
83% user satisfaction
89% user trust
87% weekly active users
Explore
Up next
MitID
How I went beyond the initial requirement to ensure a trustworthy and desirable experience for 5.6M users.
83% user satisfaction
89% user trust
87% weekly active users
Explore
Up next
MitID
How I went beyond the initial requirement to ensure a trustworthy and desirable experience for 5.6M users.
83% user satisfaction
89% user trust
87% weekly active users
Contact
Let’s connect
I enjoy working with companies that want to push boundaries and create outstanding digital experiences. If you're looking to drive results through design and think I might be a fit for your company or have ideas you would like to discuss, please reach out to connect.
jesper@jesperbentzen.com
Contact
Let’s connect
I enjoy working with companies that want to push boundaries and create outstanding digital experiences. If you're looking to drive results through design and think I might be a fit for your company or have ideas you would like to discuss, please reach out to connect.
jesper@jesperbentzen.com
Contact
Let’s connect
I enjoy working with companies that want to push boundaries and create outstanding digital experiences. If you're looking to drive results through design and think I might be a fit for your company or have ideas you would like to discuss, please reach out to connect.
jesper@jesperbentzen.com
Contact
Let’s connect
I enjoy working with companies that want to push boundaries and create outstanding digital experiences. If you're looking to drive results through design and think I might be a fit for your company or have ideas you would like to discuss, please reach out to connect.
jesper@jesperbentzen.com
Contact
Let’s connect
I enjoy working with companies that want to push boundaries and create outstanding digital experiences. If you're looking to drive results through design and think I might be a fit for your company or have ideas you would like to discuss, please reach out to connect.
jesper@jesperbentzen.com