Let’s face it – many B2B SaaS companies treat their delivery organisation as a burden, not as the customer’s strategic entry point to the organisation. As an uneven step to the front porch, not as a chauffeured drive to a comfy club.
It’s underfunded and tactical. An issue to fix, not an opportunity to leverage.
So where can the chauffeur take us, or in other words – what strategic goals can the delivery teams help us achieve?
- Unlock upsells – team members that spend more quality time with the clients get to better understand their business needs and find new opportunities. They are not expected to become sales people, but to be trusted by the client and sometimes uncover additional value, for the client and for the SaaS business.
- Reduce churn – clients that realise value from the implemented SaaS solution are not usually at risk of cancelling. Clients that see early value are less likely to question their buying decision or get frustrated with long running projects.
- Create a body of knowledge – delivery team members see across multiple client implementations, learning business best practices from each, documenting them, and becoming subject matter experts. Clients, in turn, benefit from access to wider domain knowledge. The same benefits apply internally, where this knowledge feeds back into the product.
Others may raise more points, but the main point stands – the value is derived from focusing on outputs rather than on the next set of Jira tickets (and no, don’t stop working on these tickets). And when focusing on outputs and value, they need to be perceived as such by the clients first and foremost, so delivery actually have another goal – agree with the client on what’s valuable.
I am not saying that delivery should become chauffeurs. Let’s reframe slightly – delivery are the orchestrators, the chauffeurs are the processes and systems and AI agents.
The club was always the destination, treating delivery as a strategic asset just helped them create a smoother ride.