NEWITY
Reimagined member portal dashboard enables loan servicing startup to scale and become one-stop-shop for small business services
Review Summary
- Digital Loan Origination and Servicing Fintech, Financial Services, Small Business Online Services
- UX/UI Design, Design and Integration Strategy, ClickModel Prototyping, Implementation
- Member Dashboard
- 115,000 Small Business Members
- Illinois, USA
“It’s an intuitive platform that provides limitless scalability to support American small businesses. We’re thrilled that our new dashboard enables us to provide our members with access to top-tier, trusted business service partners and SBA loan solutions – all in one place. I look forward to continuing to work with Praxent to constantly improve our member experience.”
Bryan Hallene—EVP, Head of Business Operations, Newity
Emerging from the COVID-19 pandemic with a redeveloped portal dashboard, a PPP loan origination and the servicing firm launched an online marketplace, providing SBA loans as well as accounting, insurance, marketing, and legal services to small businesses owners.
Summary
Based in Chicago, Illinois, NEWITY (formerly ACAP) connects entrepreneurs with affordable loan solutions and trusted business services—such as online managed accounting, business insurance, marketing, and legal services—by leveraging technology and partnerships.
NEWITY was founded in 2020 to service Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans. During PPP’s initiation, the federal government relied upon the Small Business Administration (SBA) and banks to disburse $522 billion to businesses throughout the US. This placed a massive burden on banks that were not readily equipped to process, fund, and service these loans, despite banks’ desire to help their small business customers. Recognizing this challenge, NEWITY began to acquire PPP loans from banks and service them at scale, utilizing their knowledge of the product, focus on customer service, and technology-forward approach.
After purchasing and originating $11.3 billion PPP loans, NEWITY saw an opportunity to expand its offerings to better serve the primary beneficiaries of the PPP: small businesses. These small business owners had limited access to affordable financing and critical services like accounting, insurance, and legal. NEWITY began building partnerships with trusted service providers to launch an online marketplace, but they quickly realized they would need to upgrade their member dashboard, called the Smart Portal. In addition to increasing functionality and enhancing the user experience, NEWITY also sought to improve the portal design and build new features and integrations into the platform.
NEWITY engaged Praxent to reimagine, redesign, and redevelop its Smart Portal; design and implement multiple integrations; and introduce new features and functions to accommodate its new users and services. With the launch of Smart Portal 2.0, in addition to business loan solutions, NEWITY now offers managed accounting, insurance, marketing, and legal services to its Members. The new dashboard offers an intuitive user experience and has enabled NEWITY to serve more users, scale its partnerships, and onboard new product offerings. Third-party integrations provide a seamless, automated, self-serve experience for NEWITY members. Finally, NEWITY’s Member Services team has seen a significant decrease in support requests related to the portal, which has freed them to focus on the Members’ overall experience.
For a project of this magnitude and complexity, there’s a significant number of integrations, expectations, design work, and more. Working with Praxent was fantastic because they brought their whole team – the developers to implement the vision, project managers to oversee the project, delivery leads to ensure items were implemented on-time, and the product designers to help with the overall feel. It was a 360-degree view of the build, rather than a focus on web development. That’s what sets Praxent apart — their holistic view of the project helped form a unified vision.
Luke LaHaie—Co-Founder / Co-CEO, NEWITY
The Problem
Along with a fresh rebrand in the summer of 2021, NEWITY sought to improve its customer experience and scale its product offerings, transforming from a loan servicer to a fully integrated technology platform. To do that, NEWITY needed to redesign their existing Member dashboard, called Smart Portal, as well as add functionality, features, and integrations.
While they had the capability to manage processing and servicing the new marketplace, NEWITY needed a specialized technology partner to focus on designing and building the platform while providing consulting insights. From the first interaction, NEWITY felt Praxent was the only partner that truly understood their business and mission. They chose Praxent because of Praxent’s relevant industry experience and demonstrated interest in driving the project to success.
Praxent was very prepared for our first call. They researched our business, asked specific business-related questions, and quickly evidenced their ability to add value beyond the tech build. They’re very knowledgeable about the space and understood the depth and breadth of our project. From our perspective, we couldn’t have asked for a better partner – Praxent was the right choice for us.
Bryan Hallene—Chief Operating Officer, NEWITY
How We Helped
Praxent’s focused on the design and integrations for NEWITY’s Member dashboard to help scale their fast-growing business, reduce operational risk, accelerate loan income, and improve access to funds for small businesses through a digital single-sign-on hub.
Praxent capitalized on the room for improvement in the technology stack and UX. NEWITY’s technology portfolio included a custom-developed application that was improved by incorporating additional context on the PPP process and NEWITY’s capabilities.
Finally, Praxent provided a seamless experience. By integrating with third parties, they helped reduce or eliminate manual data loads and assisted in improving the ease of use of the platform for customers by building a fast, flexible, and scalable solution.
Praxent focused on technical design to deliver needed integrations and gain alignment for the new dashboard based on the existing product. The approach included:
Technical Design and User Experience
Front-End Integration Analysis and Design: Produced technical designs to enable the seamless end-user handoff between applications and the tracking of inbound and outbound referrals
Back-End Integration Analysis and Design: Analyzed available APIs and designed the back-end integrations between NEWITY’s dashboard and other in-scope systems
Data Modeling and Migration Preparation: Modeled the necessary data structures and migration approaches for both the NEWITY’s dashboard and the HubSpot customer data repository
Deployment Architecture and Development Plan: Designed the deployment architecture and create a detailed plan to inform development including a budget, timeline, and staffing
Design Thinking Workshop & Journey Map: Facilitated sessions designed to gather different opinions and ideas to align around common goals, outputs, and expectations for the user experience
User Journey Research: Documentation of customer and user journey insights, videos, tags, and analysis in one place
Site Map: Deliverables such as sitemaps helped define information architecture
User Interface Design: Branding and visual design applied to wireframes for key flows which are used to harvest reusable digital styles.
Results
Over the course of a few months, Praxent redesigned the UI/UX of NEWITY’s Smart Portal Member dashboard to be more robust with enhanced capabilities to allow new Members to register and access various business services. Praxent presented a technical product design that aligned so well with what NEWITY wanted, they decided to engage Praxent for the product implementation as well. In the end, NEWITY was able to migrate its member base and connect its partner businesses to the fully integrated platform.
Since launching the new dashboard, NEWITY’s Member Services team has noted a decrease in support tickets related to issues with log-in, registration, password reset, business processes, PPP loan services navigation, etc. NEWITY leadership is thrilled with its ease of use as well as the new functionality and scalability it provides.
NEWITY will continue to partner with Praxent, rolling out new feature enhancements for its members every two weeks.
It’s an intuitive platform now. Beyond its self-serve capabilities, the Smart Portal is just easier to navigate, which provides a better overall experience for anyone who’s in the Smart Portal.[In terms of scalability,] the platform is limitless in terms of increasing our small business reach. For our referral partners, consisting of banks, credit unions, and various organizations, the portal allows us to be nimble launching our partnerships. From a product standpoint, we’re able to onboard new, vetted products quickly.
Bryan Hallene—Chief Operating Officer, NEWITY
Key Features/Deliverables
Designed four front-end and eight back-end integrations for Biz2Credit and inbound/outbound marketing affiliates by analyzing existing technical solutions, reviewing available API documentation, and producing a written specification and interaction diagram
Data modeling and migration to produced schema for the next version of NEWITY’s dashboard database, as well as recommendations for HubSpot record configuration and data remediation
UX research and design conducted to define the user experience of the new dashboard
Deployment Architecture and Development Plan before development phase by making key hosting decisions, producing an epic-level agile product backlog
Borrower Dashboard Development to provide better support for loan origination and loan servicing and a new marketplace for non-banking services
Client Testimonial
Background
“Rewind to the summer of 2020. We developed the business specifically around the purchasing and servicing of Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans. The Paycheck Protection Program was the federal government’s response to helping small businesses navigate the financial complexities of the Coronavirus. The PPP program, which was administered by the Small Business Administration (SBA), enlisted the help of SBA-approved lenders throughout the United States to lend funds quickly to small businesses for payroll and other operational expenses to keep their businesses running. Due to the complexities of the PPP program, we quickly realized there was an opportunity to acquire PPP loans at scale. Utilizing our knowledge of the product, technology, and customer service-forward approach we could help PPP loan holders navigate a complex process while saving banks the time and money it would require to service PPP loans properly.
“We quickly stood up a servicing platform that enabled our Members to quickly and easily apply for forgiveness of their PPP loan while providing us the capability to review their applications.”
“Fast forward to the summer of 2021, we at NEWITY experienced an aha moment internally. The vast majority of our small businesses Members were sole proprietors or had ten or fewer employees. These businesses have historically been underserved with business financing options, most are very expensive and often force businesses to trade equity for capital. Concurrently, many banks don’t have an outlet for their small business clients in need of capital. Additionally, small business owners face a significant administrative burden running their business day-to-day, thus, reducing the amount of time spent on strategic business projects. The largest administrative initiatives for small business owners include accounting, tax, insurance, marketing, and legal. At the same time, business owners must keep track of multiple service providers, passwords, contacts, payment requirements, and vendor terms. Thus, we set out to develop a fully integrated technology platform offering affordable loan solutions and online business services to small business owners throughout America. This platform will be a one-stop-shop for business owners to source and manage their various administrative needs, while providing an outlet for banks and trade organizations to refer their small business clients to.”
Bryan Hallene—Chief Operating Officer, NEWITY
The Problem
“Our vision morphed from a loan servicer to a fully integrated technology platform that offers affordable end solutions and trusted business services to a traditionally underserved segment of the economy: small businesses. We quickly realized there were a lot of features and integrations that we needed to be enhanced – including our borrower dashboard. Our marketing firm helped us identify a shortlist of candidates to meet to help us build the Smart Portal. We interviewed and spoke with three or four different groups. Ultimately, we chose Praxent.”
Bryan Hallene—Chief Operating Officer, NEWITY
Why Praxent
“Praxent was very prepared. They researched our business and asked a lot of specific business-related questions. They’re very knowledgeable about the space and understood the depth and breadth of the project. From our perspective, we couldn’t have asked for a better partner. Praxent was the right choice for us.”
Bryan Hallene—Chief Operating Officer, NEWITY
The Solution
“Our initial portal environment was focused on PPP servicing and limited Members’ ability to edit business information, add new businesses, and other functions. This initial helped streamline PPP, but limited NEWITY’s ability to provide additional loan solutions and business services to its members. The recent launch of the Smart Portal enhanced the platform in nearly every aspect of the user experience. Beyond our initial Smart Portal release, we continue to work with Praxent to integrate updates and new features for Members every two weeks.”
Bryan Hallene—Chief Operating Officer, NEWITY
Results
“Anecdotally, we’re seeing large reduction of Member support tickets. The vast majority of questions surrounding log in, registration, password reset, navigation and account management have been resolved.”
“Smart Portal 2.0 is more intuitive. Beyond the self-serve features, it’s easier to navigate. Smart Portal 2.0 provides a better overall experience for anyone who’s in the portal. The new platform is limitless in scaling our small business outreach. From a product perspective, we can onboard new, vetted service providers quickly.”
Bryan Hallene—Chief Operating Officer, NEWITY
Project Management
“For a project of this magnitude and complexity, there’s a significant number of integrations, expectations, design work, and more. Working with Praxent was fantastic because they brought their whole team – the developers to implement the vision, project managers to oversee the project, delivery leads to ensure items were implemented on-time, and the product designers to help with the overall feel. It was a 360-degree view of the build, rather than a focus on web development. That’s what sets Praxent apart — their holistic view of the project helped form a unified vision.”
Luke LaHaie—Co-Founder / Co-CEO, NEWITY
“The project was broken into different phases. The first phase focused on UI and UX. After sketching our ideal Smart Portal, we discussed various aspects of the design and its features with both [Praxent’s] technical delivery team and their product design delivery team. These conversations, with numerous perspectives, helped us refine our vision and keep on track. Then, Praxent delivered wireframes that integrated exactly what we had discussed. After we approved the wireframes, Praxent helped us navigate the implementation design – providing options and various improvements along the way. Once the design was complete, Praxent ensured early January 2022 delivery – which they met, without delays. We’re still actively working with Praxent to continue to enhance our portal and experience for Members, even after the launch of Smart Portal 2.0.”
Bryan Hallene—Chief Operating Officer, NEWITY
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