B-Business:
From Fragmented SME App
to Industry-Leading Usability

Context

An SME app that scored worse than the industry average

Bereke Bank's B-Business app was the SME-facing product of one of Kazakhstan's largest banks, and the usability data showed it: SUS score of 52, well below the 68 industry baseline. Conversion on key flows was below internal targets. Users described the app as "feels like five apps stitched together."

Diagnostic work revealed the cause: the app had grown by feature accretion. Each new product line had been added as a separate flow, with its own pattern, language, and visual treatment. There was no shared spine.

Brief: rebuild the experience around a coherent system, lift conversion, and push SUS into industry-leading territory.

Approach

Audit, benchmark, redesign, validate

• UX audit of the existing app surfaced 40+ inconsistency points across primary flows — different icons for the same action, different copy for the same state, different layouts for the same data type
• Competitor benchmarking of leading SME banking apps in Europe and Southeast Asia identified the patterns that consistently outperformed in usability testing
• Redesigned core flows: onboarding, payment initiation, account management, settings — all rebuilt against a shared component and language system
• Pre-launch usability testing with target SME users, validating SUS gains before release

Results

From bottom-quartile to industry-leading usability

• SUS 52 → 78 — a 26-point lift, moving the product from below-average to industry-leading
• +24% conversion on primary flows
• Reduced inconsistency points from 40+ to under 5 in post-redesign audit
• Faster handoff to engineering thanks to a unified component system

Why It Matters

SUS gains come from system, not screens

A 26-point SUS lift doesn't happen by polishing screens. It happens by giving the app a shared spine — consistent components, language, and patterns — so users learn the system once instead of relearning it on every flow.

This case is the proof point that SME banking UX is mostly a systems problem disguised as a screens problem. The visual redesign got credit at launch. The system underneath did the actual work.