A SaaS company aligns to $1B growth
$2.4M
The company reduced year-over-year spending by $2.4 million, with better cross-sell capabilities.
50%
Customer experiences improved, with only three contacts per account compared to six or more contacts before.
$1B
The new platform-based product launch now has a clear plan to achieve its $1 billion topline growth target.
At a glance
Client
PE-backed SaaS company
Industry
Technology
Our role
Align the organization for growth
Our solution
A customer-centric path to success
Align the organization for customer growth
Scenario
A SaaS company was planning to launch a platform-based product, but its marketing, sales and support were fragmented.
Approach
Grant Thornton assessed the company’s strategic intent and helped design and implement a future-state go-to-market organization and operating model.
Result
The company saved $2.4 million year-over-year and clarified a plan that aligned to its $1 billion topline growth target.
Scenario
A disjointed customer pipeline
A PE-backed SaaS company was planning to launch a new platform-based product, targeting $1 billion in topline growth. However, a series of individual product acquisitions had left the company with fragmented marketing, sales and support processes. This fragmentation limited cross-sell capabilities and created a disconnected customer experience.
“There were some legacy ways of working that hadn’t been integrated on the sales side, there was some slowing demand for solutions, and there was an expectation that they were going to launch a new solution into market,” said Grant Thornton Growth Advisory Managing Director Mark Owens. “When you wrap those three challenges together, they really needed someone to help the CEO, CFO and CEO’s chief of staff drive a customer experience transformation.”
“The CFO spoke about the rule of 55,” Owens said, “with 40% EBITDA profit margin, plus a 15% compound annual growth rate for revenue as the vision.” To align the organization for that growth ahead of the product launch, the company needed to ensure its organizational structure and operating model were designed to deliver on that ambition.
Approach
Organizational alignment
The Grant Thornton team assessed how the company’s operating model aligned with its strategic intent. The assessment synthesized “inside-out” stakeholder interviews with “outside-in” research that tested nine hypotheses and validated best practices for the company’s industry context.
The project’s primary sponsor was the company’s CEO, with leadership from the CFO and the CEO's chief of staff. “We needed to think through the sales organization of the future — how it should look, the number of roles and the responsibilities associated with those roles,” Owens said.
The company needed to focus this future sales organization on its customers. “You need to consider nuance across large, medium-sized and smaller potential customers, having leaders examine the experience each type of account should have,” Owens said. “From there, our market information and competitive intelligence gave us the ability to create a demand-led sales organization — from a data analysis and experiential desire standpoint. For example, if 20% of your large potential customers represent 80% of the growth opportunity for you, you need to index your sales organization to drive victory in those opportunity accounts. You need to over-index your sales organization, from a capacity and customer experience standpoint, to deliver against that."
“That's the kind of sales architecture from which we built the sales model,” Owens said. “It starts with understanding your customer base, where the opportunity for growth resides, and the experiences required to actually win those accounts.” That analysis informed the roles needed for account executives, sales development representatives, sales operations and more.
The team used its assessment insights to inform a series of client facilitations, outlining directional future-state designs. The team then refined these designs with a structured gap analysis of the company’s key organizational capabilities, including a customer success organization to support the company’s go-to-market motion and enhanced customer experiences. “Establishing a customer success organization empowered the marketing and sales teams to work more cohesively, delivering enhanced customer experiences and a significant boost in renewals,” said Grant Thornton Growth Advisory Managing Director Sam Salha.
Finally, the team developed a set of prioritized and sequenced strategic initiatives to successfully align and achieve the reorganization.
Result
Accelerated results
The initiative aligned the company’s operating model, integrated sales and support processes, boosted cross-sell capabilities and enabled a $2.4 million reduction in year-over-year spending. It also simplified the customer activity map and enhanced customer experiences by reducing long-term customer points of contact per account from more than six down to a maximum of three.
“It was about effectiveness,” Owens said. “The expectation was that it was going to be an investment into the future.” However, the team’s analysis showed that there were potential savings paired with a better customer experience.
“Implementing a customer success organization transformed the approach to customer engagement, helping the company deliver exceptional service that not only retained clients but also attracted new business through positive customer impact," Salha said. “Having a dedicated customer success team drove a remarkable increase in renewals, as customers felt more supported and valued. That leads to long-term loyalty and increased revenue.”
“The account satisfaction improved, as well as the orchestration between sales and the implementation team,” Owens said. “The way we designed the sales organization was to create greater continuity and ownership on the part of the seller, Now, it’s not just that sellers close, move on and leave customers with the back-office support team. It’s really a hand-to-hand orchestration and delivery of solutions to the client.”
To design this continuity, the Grant Thornton team worked closely with the company’s leaders. “There was a significant level of partnership and collaboration,” Owens said, “working through the facilitated sessions, with individuals from across the organization, and really putting them in the position to map the customer experience needed by segments.”
The transformation has streamlined the customer experience — and prepared the company for its platform-based product launch, with a clear path to achieving the $1 billion topline growth target.
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David Koppy
Principal, Business Consulting
Grant Thornton Advisors LLC
David Koppy is a Principal within the Grant Thornton Business Consulting practice focused on growth strategies.
Bellevue, WA
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