Next Identity Platform

When I joined Next Reason in early 2023, the company was primarily a professional services provider in the CIAM (Customer Identity and Access Management) space. Its internal tool supported one large enterprise client but wasn't ready to serve a broader market. The challenge was bold: transform this service-based tool into a SaaS platform capable of competing with established CIAM players.

My initial work at Next Reason focused on evolving the existing professional services tool into a SaaS-ready platform. This meant designing core enterprise-grade features such as:

• Identity Management to support 30,000+ customer profiles
• Roles & Permissions for secure access control
• Feature Adoption functionality to track the adoption of security features by application teams
• Provider Connection flows enabling scalable integrations

To ensure the platform was user-driven, I also participated in and often led bi-weekly sessions with users, conducting discoveries, presenting prototypes, and running usability tests. These activities were key to validating the product direction and guaranteeing adoption readiness.

Following an in-depth competitor analysis, it became clear that to gain market share, the platform needed to shift its target from large enterprises to small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs). Together with the Head of Product, I organized and facilitated a vision workshop to align on the long-term strategy and define the next steps.

Based on this work, we created a tiered experience within the same platform: enterprises continued to access the full set of features, while SMBs were offered a streamlined interface with adapted layouts and simplified flows. This approach combined feature gating and persona-based UX, ensuring that both enterprises and SMBs could rely on the same underlying platform while benefiting from experiences tailored to their specific needs.

My contributions included:

• Mapping the customer journey from awareness to trial, supported by extensive benchmarking and research on best practices
• Designing the onboarding, checkout, and upgrade experiences to reduce friction and accelerate adoption
• Ensuring the platform's overall design was accessible and right-sized for SMBs while maintaining enterprise-grade reliability

This phase ensured the platform was SaaS-ready while also evolving with a clear focus on SMBs, aligning product capabilities and user experience to their specific needs.

My work helped shift Next Reason's positioning from a professional services model to a SaaS-ready platform in the cybersecurity and CIAM market. By building enterprise-grade features, designing end-to-end customer journeys, and co-creating a SaaS vision with leadership, I contributed to the company's evolution toward scalability and competitiveness against established players.