Hi!

As you know we've had a lot of changes going on lately. When we made these changes we sent out an email which covered a lot of the reasons for making them, but didn't go into the effects that they have on the way we plan to approach our system and how that involves and effects you.

Goodbye to an old friend.

You may have also noticed some changes starting to appear within Peppersuite on your build site and we're here to explain why.

Peppersuite has been around for quite a while, pre-dating the extension of our CMS into an Ecommerce platform around 14 years ago. The name and the platform has served us well for that time. We've always been proud of the fact that we develop our own platform, that it drives our sites and gives us the flexibility to move fast and provide complex custom functionality. It also allows us to integrate as closely as possible with third-parties that can provide value to our clients, all without being reliant on temperamental plugins that we have no control over.

We have however, always had a difficult balance of sitting somewhere between a product and an agency world. While we have always worked hard to deliver a good user experience when working on tasks and adding to Peppersuite, the customer facing front-end and experience of the websites has often ended up being the priority in terms of deliverables with the Peppersuite modules developed simply existing to service managing products, content or functionality for that front-end.

We realised a while ago that your experience of the site through using the admin area is equally as important as the customer facing experience, as it can effect your day-to-day work. To date, this hasn't been able to get the attention that it deserves. We've seen some great results in both time saved and more efficient processes when we've collaborated with clients and seen how they use our solutions, bringing everyone on the journey as we figure out what works and what doesn't.

The aim with the switch to Cody is to lean into this way of working more.

And hello to a new one.

By the end of the month Peppersuite will become Cody. Don't worry, you'll still have access to all the functionality you currently use and our platform values do not change. Cody will always aim to be customisable, flexible and scalable to our clients requirements. A new look and feel for the login and navigation functionality is just the first step in our product transition.

Why Cody I hear you say?

There were a few reasons we felt a fresh brand was needed to kick this process off.

Primarily, we were looking to shift away from the name Peppersuite in hopes to start with something fresh that aligned better with where we're headed with our new business structure. To us, Peppersuite existed as a by-product of our main focus, but we see Cody as a product in its own right and want that to be clear internally and externally as soon as anyone hears our platform name.

We're also not sure that many people really knew what to call Peppersuite. We've heard a few variations of the name along the way, in meetings, on phone calls and in emails: Blackpepper admin, Blacksuite, the CMS and occasionally Peppersuite :). This really showed us that the product is probably undervalued and misaligned with what we're trying to do.

On top of that, we felt the brand just needed some life and needed to move away from the time when the platform was first developed, where software tended to be a bit more serious and to be honest, probably named by developers. We wanted to create something fun, that had personality and some friendliness.

The name Cody doesn't have a secret hidden meaning behind it. It isn't a clever acronym. It is simply our way of personifying and giving independence to something we work really hard on all year round as we continue to do that.

Other than a name, what changes here?

Really the biggest change of all is our approach and process to our platform work. With Cody, we aim to make this a far more collaborative and user-centric process. We'll be working with you, our clients, to help identify opportunities and existing pain-points within our platform. Using the insights we develop through interviews, workshops and usability testing, we will drive and prioritise our product road map as we iterate to regularly improve existing and deliver new functionality.

Soon we'll be sharing a product road map so that it's nice and clear what we're working on, what is coming up and what we're thinking about doing. Plus giving you the ability to add to this and vote so that we can see what really matters to you.

We hope that you enjoy the switch over to Cody and the new processes as they start to roll out. We're excited to work with you and our mate Cody on this.