DEFINING PRODUCT DIRECTION FOR US PIVOT
FileInvite were re-platforming after success in the Australian mortgage market and preparing to enter the US commercial lending space. But the team lacked a shared understanding of what how product should evolve. The US market was more complex, competitive, and heavily regulated. FileInvite’s existing workflows weren’t fit for large lending institutions
As the sole designer, I took ownership of shaping the new product vision and conceptual architecture, bridging design, strategy, and research. I partnered with leadership, product, engineering, and sales to co-design what would become the foundation of FileInvite’s US expansion.
COMPANY
KEY ACTIVITIES
Customer and Market Research, Conceptual Design, Product Vision Development, Pricing Strategy, International Field Research, Solution CoDesign, Cross-Functional Collaboration
INDUSTRY
FinTech | US Commercial Lending | SaaS | B2B
DELIVERABLES
Product Strategy, Conceptual Product Architecture, Prototypes, Sales Pitch Slides
Problem Landscape
FileInvite’s growth ambitions collided with a market full of mature lending systems. The company needed to reimagine its vision to survive and grow.
• DISCONNECTED ROADMAP ITEMS
The existing backlog was a disconnected list of features with no overarching product story or vision. The leadership and wider teams needed a clear, visual way to understand how FileInvite could scale.
• WORKFLOW TRANSFERABILITY
US commercial lending deal workflows involved multiple departments and very long lifecycles unlike simpler mortgage workflows.
• BOHEMETH LEGACY COMPETITION
More established market players like nCino and Fiserv were deeply intrenched in lending team workflows, but document collection support was lacking. The aim was not to be a LOS or Banking system, but to be complementary.
• UNSCALABLE ARCHITECTURE
The existing architecture couldn’t support enterprise demands like multi-team access, layered permissions and large file collections.
Original architecture
Lending workflows are long and document intensive, with some Invites housing up to 80 document requests needing to be supplied by up to 10 recipients (up to 800 documents returned). This was unsustainable for the infrastructure and the overall product performance.
Approach
I approached the project as both a research initiative and a storytelling challenge. The goal was to translate scattered insights into a coherent vision and technical structure that everyone, from engineers to executives, could rally behind.
• FRAMED THE VISION CREATIVELY
Sketched the first version of the “Product Evolution” during a late-night burst of ideas, inspired by the stages of a Pokémon evolution. The concept helped visualise how each phase of FileInvite’s growth could build naturally on the last.
• GROUNDED DIRECTION IN RESEARCH
Conducted over 20 interviews with US commercial lending teams across the US, mapping workflows to uncover gaps between current product capabilities and enterprise needs.
• BRIDGED COMMERCIAL AND TECHNICAL GOALS
• BUILD ALIGNMENT AND STRUCTURE
Developed the “Product Evolution” framework linking FileInvite’s three growth pillars: Acceleration, Collaboration, Integration, and designed the conceptual architecture of Invites → Projects → Portfolios to enable scale.
Updated architecture
Each phase of the loan could reasonably be mapped to an individual invite (Loan origination, servicing etc) and all invites related to a deal needed to be grouped together – Projects. A future look could see enterprise customers unlocking Portfolios (collections of multiple Projects) defined by their own criteria e.g. "<$500,000 USD loans", "Loans being serviced".
What Shipped & Why it Matters
The new architecture and vision reshaped how the business thought about its product, guiding both delivery, monetisation and sales strategy.
• CUSTOMERS AT THE HEART
The current strategy was informed by interviews with over 20 lending teams across various types of Commercial Lending. Validating the reusability and scalability of the architecture.
• ROADMAP CLARITY
Realigned roadmap and design priorities around scalable architecture that unlocked new revenue rather than incremental fixes.
• ONGOING FEEDBACK LOOPS
I co-created visual materials and pitch desk assets to help Sales and CS communicate the new direction to customers, as well as get continuous feedback on our direction at both the macro (strategy) and micro (feature) levels.
• IMPROVED TEAM MORALE
Visualising and communicating the new vision reinvigorated our team. Prior to my employment there was uncertainty into the future direction of the product. Now we could point to where we were going and understand what problems it was solving for our customers.