Scaling up B2B SaaS client onboarding is easy, just do everything faster and better, right?
(warning – long post approaching)
In my experience there are 3 main approaches to scaling up a delivery organisation – throw more bodies at it, introduce efficiencies as you grow, or a big(ish)-bang programme of change with clear outcomes to align with company goals.
Personally, I am a big fan of isolating time and focus to change things. Define goals, analyse issues, threats, and opportunities, right-budget it, and manage it like the change programme that it should be. And if it goes together with ongoing improvements this is a good place to be.
When defining the change, we need to focus on the following pillars:
- Delivery processes and handshakes
- Documentation
- People and organisational structure
- And growth KPIs
From a wider organisation perspective we also need to make sure that our products/solutions are ready, and that the sales pipeline is kept up to date and is trustworthy.
Let’s break this down a bit more:
- Under delivery processes we include standard project plans for each product or service, a predefined list of mandatory milestones, scope and change control, time logging, reports and dashboards… and we do not forget handshakes and handovers.
- Preparing documentation to a more streamlined operation means ready-made documents that are embraced by both Sales, Product, and Dev/Engineering, including scope templates, capabilities matrices, SOW templates, etc.
- I will break the next point into 2 parts –
- Defining the target org structure requires us to put aside corporate politics and focus on finding the structure that will allow the smoothest operation. Consider items such as SMEs spread across the teams Vs centres of excellence Vs a combination. Consider also how we plan to balance workload, and how knowledge becomes available where it’s needed.
- People be people and they don’t all like change, the ones that don’t mind it don’t like it dictated. They need to be brought along on to this journey. Team members have a lot to contribute and we all lose if they don’t.
- The last point here is about monitoring the success of the change, and whether we are heading towards our goals, and about sustaining the growth mindset. The OKRs and KPIs should be agreed during the initiation phase of the growth programme, and should be shared with management on a regular basis.
Having written all of this, a decision to scale up client onboarding starts with the organisational realisation that a change is required, and some budget allocated to support this change. No free lunch.
I included a number of “…” and “etc.” above, the lists are long and a bit boring for a LinkedIn post, but send me a note and I will be happy to share some of my lists and templates.