Rebuilding Infobase CMMS's brand positioning and digital presence.

Published on:

23-September-2025

Written by:

Mohana Prabhakar

Reading time

10 minutes

Table of contents:

Infobase CMMS is a maintenance platform provider for mid-market and enterprise organisations.

During this 2-year project, I redesigned their website, revamped the messaging, migrated from WordPress to Wix Studio, and updated their site cmms.co.in to infobase-cmms.com. The result is a clean and simple website experience with uniform branding and messaging across all pages.

The playlist

Before we jump into the whole journey, I’m adding the playlist I was jamming while working on this project. It’s a mix of songs in many languages and emotions because who isn’t peppy, weepy, happy and all together at once while working on more than a year-long project 😛

The need

When I started my role in August 2023, Infobase’s sales focus was predominantly outbound (direct sales and referrals), and they wanted to experiment with inbound channels. Therefore, they needed a fresh look for the website, as the messaging, value proposition, features, and benefits were not properly explained.

The challenge

One of the most interesting things I’ve witnessed in growing companies is the lack of structure and process in documenting knowledge and having a base somewhere, either on Google Drive, Notion, or Dropbox. Sometimes it’s scattered everywhere, or it’s not documented at all, and Infobase was in category 2!

In the first 5 months, I had to interview the sales, CS, executive team and a few customers, to document everything:

Jobs to be done, value proposition, USPs
Journey maps
Buyer personas
ICPs
Pricing
Business model
Sales cycle
Implementation and onboarding timeline + process
Current messaging and positioning
Review current sales decks, training materials, and product sheets
Competitor analysis
Customer feedback and analysis

Mind you, I had other projects on the side, too!

The research

Month 6 (Jan 2024) started with in-depth research on information architecture, keywords, and website design ideas. I was also looking at the product reviews and case studies of competitors to identify differentiating factors that can be highlighted on our new website.

Interestingly, what I found is that legacy maintenance software providers have insanely long sales and implementation timelines, which are expensive and resource-consuming. Their pricing structure is either subscription-based or a complete package with multi-year contracts that include unnecessary features, ending up as shelfware.

The plan

Based on the findings, I split the project into five overarching parts:

Revamping positioning and messaging (2 weeks)
Revising the pricing (1 week)
Updating the branding elements (1 week)
Writing the website copy (3 weeks + 1 week for revision)
Designing the site (4 weeks)

And the planning didn’t go as planned!

The ideation & execution

For each task, the ideation and execution happened quite simultaneously, as we were experimenting, reviewing and changing as we progressed.

Positioning & messaging:

It all started with a simple question, “What can be the idealistic scenario in needing, purchasing, implementing and using a maintenance management platform?” Most of the legacy software companies talk about streamlining, optimising, maximising and minimising “the technical terms,” but when we interviewed our customers, they cared about something entirely different: saving money, time, other resources, and most importantly, not losing time with family by doing extra work while an asset breaks down!

So, we positioned the platform having many facets of maintenance management: CMMS, TPM, Work Permits and Material Gate Passes, under one roof. These individual products have multiple modules, and customers can purchase whatever modules they need and only pay for that, unlike legacy software, where they have to buy the whole platform. The purchased modules will be combined and customised into a white-labeled platform that customers can implement in 2 weeks, IF they have all the maintenance data ready, which is a BIG IF, by the way.

To convert this into a messaging framework, we debated using before-and-after Infobase or problem-solution approaches. We finally settled with the problem-solution approach as there were multiple problems, and we had the opportunity to address each in the solution part.

Pricing:

With positioning and messaging sorted, I thought the pricing strategy could be done quickly, too, but how wrong I was. The maintenance software industry is quite crowded and competitive, so I had to explore a lot of competitors, their pricing structures, and had to a full-blown analysis. Since cost was a key make-or-break factor, we had to revise our pricing into a modular structure, and we wanted to be transparent about the additional costs if the customer wished for heavy customisations.

We have four products and 11 modules in total, where two of the products can be considered modules or products, depending on how the customer chooses to purchase them. Our offering includes a seat-based structure with an onboarding and implementation fee to keep customers accountable, plus a yearly maintenance fee depending on how the platform is deployed, either cloud-based or on-premises.

For instance, if an enterprise FMCG organisation like Unilever with 100+ factories want to purchase only the CMMS and TPM products, all nine modules included, then they will be paying for those nine modules, plus the onboarding and implementation fee for how many factories they want the platform to be installed at, with X number of users and the yearly maintenance fee. While this might seem like a lot, it is only a fraction of the cost that customers invest compared to the hidden pricing structures of legacy maintenance software companies. The management team did push back on being so transparent, but I pushed back harder, saying this will be a huge differentiating opportunity!

Updating the branding elements:

After a tumultuous battle with pricing elements, working on the branding elements was quite refreshing. The previous site’s branding and the visual elements were quite dark and moody, which was the complete opposite of the vibe that we wanted the customers to feel about us. The team wanted clean, simple, yet visually pleasing elements, so I kept the color palette and fonts minimalistic, including white for the background, black for the headings, charcoal gray for the paragraphs, light grey for the borders, off-white for the bento grids, and purplish-lavender as the highlighting color used in buttons. For the font, I chose Marcellus for the headings to showcase the richness and Questrial for the paragraphs, the typical Serif and Sans Serif pairing.

While working on these, the actual debate happened with the company name: Infobase Systemms vs. Infobase CMMS. The company name didn’t actually explain their offering, and the domain (cmms.co.in) was limited to the Indian Subcontinent region. To move away from that, while the name itself explains the offering, we chose Infobase CMMS and redirected to the domain infobase-cmms.com. Also, with the logo, I retained the gear wheel while changing the colors to match the color palette.

Writing the website copy:

Since I was reading and documenting a lot of data and copy while working on the previous tasks, mapping the site map and information architecture for each page was relatively more straightforward, resembling a typical SaaS site. Here’s the snapshot of the site map:

Writing the website copy was a bit easier, as we had plenty of content that just needed polishing and a clear structure to follow. The biggest mistake I made was to use AI to polish it, and it was TOO formal and uptight. I didn’t realise this until we ran it through a couple of customers.

Building the website:

After scouting through Dribbble, Behance, Pinterest and competitor websites, I began sketching the wireframes for each page. One of the significant aspects of wireframing the website is that the personas actually don’t care much about the design or any cool transitions. All they need is relevant information quickly to make informed decisions. Therefore, I had to showcase all details on the homepage itself and then branch it to specific pages.

The biggest challenge was realising that wireframing using pen and paper vs. directly working on Wix Studio was drastically different. Since I was not a traditional designer and underestimated my skills, I quickly gave up on the inspirations I had and stuck with templated SaaS sites available on Wix Studio. I took sections from multiple templates, mixed and matched them to create a flow that tells the story, outlines offerings, benefits, how-tos, and concludes with a final CTA in a sequential manner. Here's the snapshot of the homepage's IA:

Another challenge was to showcase the pricing, because every module has a different price. Therefore, I had to use a tab design just to show the pricing. If I look back at those designs, I’m horrified at how bad it was!

How foolish I was to underestimate myself because I built my portfolio exactly a month later, after version 1 of this website was released, and it got a lot of ‘Wow’s!”. But that’s another story (check it out later!).

Designing the dashboards:

While wireframing the website, I also explored how to design product dashboards, as we planned to showcase them on both desktop and mobile devices. The Infobase platform resembles the Windows 95-era design aesthetic, i.e., it appears outdated in terms of current design standards. So, I had to be careful not to exaggerate any of the product dashboards. You might ask why customers buy it - because IT WORKS!

The boring part:

While planning, writing, sketching and designing seem like the cool parts of this project, there were two major pains in the back: alignment of content for different devices - not just desktop, tablet and mobile, but including every different pixel ratio. Move one inch, and I’ll be pressing Ctrl+Z all day.

On top of that, copy-pasting the content into respective fields and grids, and realising some of them need to be shortened or entirely rewritten because it’s not fitting the aesthetic. So, there were a lot of minor elements that needed more attention than I anticipated and planned.

Releasing V1

With everything going on in a bit of a dramatic mode but on track, we were gearing up for the launch. But a month before the release date, we realised our outbound pipeline was so packed that the team wasn’t ready to focus on the inbound. However, as planned, we did a soft launch of the site during the first week of June 2024. At that time, I felt I had done something remarkable, because this was the first project of my career where I did everything: branding, designing, strategy, copywriting, graphics, testing, and launch! Now, I just cringe at the sight of my previous work 😂

A 12-month gap

After the release of V1, the subsequent releases of content, ROI calculators, knowledge base, and case studies were put on hold, as our sales cycles are quite long (12-14 months) and with a full pipeline, I needed to focus on creating personalised sales enablement and customer training materials. It was a bummer to see a project come to a sudden halt!

The (embarrassing) reality check

More than a year flew by while managing other aspects of marketing, and this project was still on the back burner. Finally, after an intensive discussion, we planned to repackage the use of the website as a central hub for platform-related information, instead of just using it for inbound. Because, honestly, our outbound is solid enough to bring in a decent revenue rather than breaking our heads with a new channel, why not focus on improving the existing ones?

But here's the thing - I looked at that 20-page website and realised I had overcomplicated everything. The personas who "just need relevant information quickly" definitely didn't need 20 pages of content to make a decision.

So I did what any sane marketer would do: started over.

The re-do

When I got more bandwidth in September 2025, I planned a two-week redo project to revamp the site. This time, I condensed everything into six focused pages: home, pricing, and four product pages that actually served our users' needs instead of showcasing every possible feature and benefit.

In terms of the design, I had to redo every page from scratch. For the copy, I wrote the first draft and then used AI tools as a feedback provider. With that, the content was more direct, focused and easy to grasp.

For the homepage and product pages, the previous designs had a cool bunch of animations that increased the scroll length, especially on mobile devices. Therefore, I had to use designs that take up horizontal space than vertical ones, like tabs, double-columned bento grids, cards, etc.

The pricing page also got a new design and content again in a tab format, showcasing the cost in INR for India & SEA regions, and in USD for other countries. Each tab has the starting price and what’s included when purchasing any combination of modules. The detailed pricing is listed in a table inside a lightbox, which gets displayed if you click the button “View detailed pricing.”

The relaunch

On 15 September, we released the new site and have witnessed a slight increase in organic traffic from Google and Bing; before that, it was predominantly LinkedIn. It’s been only 10 days since the launch, and it’s hard to add the quantifiable numbers, so stay tuned!

Reflections

If I get a time turner and go back to August 2023, I’d do a couple of things quite differently:

Do not try to give too many details, which can lead to an elaborate website map and complex information architecture. Keep it simple and straightforward.
Practice designing directly on Wix Studio or Figma before finalising the design elements and sections, especially when it’s a skill issue, not an ideation one.
Align project outcomes and timeline to business priorities. The crowding of the outbound pipeline wasn’t a surprise since a handful of deals were going on back and forth, but that shouldn’t have impacted this project at all. I should’ve pushed back harder on showcasing the website as a central hub and digital footprint rather than focusing on the inbound aspect.
Use AI, not to replace creativity and critical thinking, but as a feedback provider and content reviewer.
Lastly, never underestimate the skill of practice and preparation. An amateur can definitely move past the beginner level!