01 CPQ Case Study
Proposify
Proposify is a B2B SaaS application for sales proposals and quotes. In 2025, I was a part of the team that shipped a 4–5 month CPQ program to enable mid-market quoting complexity and overcome existing library limitations. The core team consisted of one PM, four engineers, and me as the only product designer. I was involved in discovery, feasibility, UX architecture, and implementation until the end of Phase 1 release.
My Role
Product Designer:
- Partnered with engineering on feasibility for external pricing integrations
- Led user research (customer interviews + support ticket mining)
- Designed quoting workflows, catalog architecture, and pricing configuration UX
- Delivered flows, wireframes, high-fidelity prototypes, and implementation support
- Contributed to rollout and post-launch evaluation
The Problem
However, the legacy fee library backed only trivial reusable pricing elements and did not satisfy fundamental CPQ functionalities such as bundling, conditional discounts, volume tiers, approvals, and syncing prices to external systems.
Spreadsheets were the main tool that customers used, which was potentially risky and inefficient. Quoting via spreadsheets led to pricing drift, promiscuous discounting, and longer quoting times. According to industry estimates, ~88% of spreadsheets have errors. Such errors can lead to discrepancies in financial results and quote.
Discovery & Research
To gather insights, we spoke with power users and administrators in various customer accounts and examined support data.
Key themes:
- Heavy spreadsheet dependency for bundling and price calculations
- Template and pricing drift across sales teams
- Fear of automation without visibility or control
- Demand for tiered pricing, automated discounts, and CRM/accounting integrations
Users wanted to make sure that automation can replace the manual effort they are putting in, while allowing them to remain in control and having visibility.
Design Principles
From research, we defined four guiding principles:
- Keep it simple rather than make it complex - Amplify the current quoting cognitive frameworks - Extend existing quoting mental models
- External source of truth - Existing pricing business process support - Support existing pricing ecosystems
- Clarity and Autonomy - No stealthy automation — No silent automation
- Trust via fail-safes - Alerting, locking and predictable behavior - Locking, alerts, and predictable behavior
Prototype
Key UX Solutions
Product Catalog Replacement
Substituted the existing flat fee list with a hierarchical catalog that enabled categorization, search, inline editing, and bulk import. Established scalable pricing and relationships between products.
The configuration for Product detail page was introduced for:
External Pricing Imports (Read-Only Source Model): Structured imports with mapping previews and duplicate detection based flows. Database is trusted source while external systems are source of truth – reduced data fuck-ups while increasing trust.
Transparency and Field Mapping: Users have access to pricing source metadata and override history on a per line item basis. Admin mapping previews cut down import errors and increase certainty.
External Pricing Imports (Read-Only Source Model): Long term trust and risk reduction through mapped previews, dupe detection, and structured import flows. External systems as source of truth to reduce sync risk.
Quote Locking at Send: Quotes are locked when sent automatically to maintain the pricing state. This ensures that changes from the catalogue or integration do not affect the quote visible to the client.
Approval Rules (Phase 1): Basic approval thresholds (e.g. discount levels) created governance, reduced financial exposure and set the stage for future rules engine development.
Approval Rules (1st Stage): Core approval thresholds (e.g. discount boundaries) offered governance and minimized financial risk while positioning the organization for further enhancement of its rules engine.
This project also provided further insight into the criticality of designing for system trust in B2B financial workflows, where transparency, auditability, and user control correlated with elevated rates of adoption and confidence.
Early feedback showed meaningful operational improvements:
Reflection
Overall, the project re-emphasized the value of designing for system trust in B2B financial workflows for two-sided markets. More system transparency, auditability and user control resulted in higher adoption and trust levels.
It also strengthened my systems thinking - balancing data architecture, business rules, and usability - and validated the value of incremental delivery when solving complex enterprise problems.
Product Catalog Replacement
Substituted the existing flat fee list with a hierarchical catalog that enabled categorization, search, inline editing, and bulk import. Established scalable pricing and relationships between products.
The configuration for Product detail page was introduced for:
External Pricing Imports (Read-Only Source Model): Structured imports with mapping previews and duplicate detection based flows. Database is trusted source while external systems are source of truth – reduced data fuck-ups while increasing trust.
Transparency and Field Mapping: Users have access to pricing source metadata and override history on a per line item basis. Admin mapping previews cut down import errors and increase certainty.
External Pricing Imports (Read-Only Source Model): Long term trust and risk reduction through mapped previews, dupe detection, and structured import flows. External systems as source of truth to reduce sync risk.
Quote Locking at Send: Quotes are locked when sent automatically to maintain the pricing state. This ensures that changes from the catalogue or integration do not affect the quote visible to the client.
Approval Rules (Phase 1): Basic approval thresholds (e.g. discount levels) created governance, reduced financial exposure and set the stage for future rules engine development.
Approval Rules (1st Stage): Core approval thresholds (e.g. discount boundaries) offered governance and minimized financial risk while positioning the organization for further enhancement of its rules engine.
This project also provided further insight into the criticality of designing for system trust in B2B financial workflows, where transparency, auditability, and user control correlated with elevated rates of adoption and confidence.
Early feedback showed meaningful operational improvements:
- Quote prep time reduced significantly (e.g., ~45 → 15 minutes for some teams)
- Reduction in pricing errors
- Increased confidence in quote consistency
- Faster approval workflows
Reflection
Overall, the project re-emphasized the value of designing for system trust in B2B financial workflows for two-sided markets. More system transparency, auditability and user control resulted in higher adoption and trust levels.
It also strengthened my systems thinking - balancing data architecture, business rules, and usability - and validated the value of incremental delivery when solving complex enterprise problems.
01 CPQ Case Study
Proposify
02 Reimagining an Editor Case Study
Proposify
03 Online Home Buying Case Study
Ownly
04 Throughout My Role
Bolster (formerly CostCertified)
Calgary, Alberta
Canada