For software as a service (SaaS) companies, implementing new clients to the platform is critical for success. Onboarding — including data migration, new client setup, customization and configuration — is a pillar of the overall customer experience and can present significant obstacles to growth without a streamlined process.
If a client’s onboarding and implementation experience is subpar, it can damage the relationship and affect retention and expansion goals well into the future. Because strategic SaaS products bridge a gap between a customer’s operations and processes, first impressions and interactions with a new SaaS provider are critical to mitigating churn and realizing future revenue opportunities.
Complex SaaS products present even more landmines, especially with sophisticated buyers who want a working product as soon as possible. If you’re fortunate enough to have a high level of success on the sales side, a backlog of customers waiting to be onboarded can quickly build.
Whether you have a complex product, sophisticated buyers, high sales volume, or all three, it may be time to rethink your approach to onboarding, training, ensuring adoption, and managing the account post-implementation.
Employing a strategy that focuses on implementation separate from other product cycles (development, quality assurance, etc.) contributes to the overall success of SaaS programs.
With a distinct strategy, the onboarding and implementation team is free to focus on migrating client data, configuring the system, designing reports, and properly setting up the client environment. Implementations, customer success, and account management can all focus on their specific areas of expertise. By approaching each facet of the customer journey intentionally and individually, the combined elements create a strong catalyst for customer experience and growth.
A Tale of Onboarding Implementation Success
Meet Beth. Beth is a chief executive officer at ACME, an emerging CRM (customer relationship management) SaaS platform for firms in a niche fintech market. Her company has seen rapid growth, and while she’s thrilled with the sales volume, it can be overwhelming to her customer success team.
The ACME product is a complex system and almost infinitely configurable. While its complexity is what makes it so well suited for the specific market ACME serves, implementations can range from several weeks to many months, depending on the size of the customer.
Ensuring onboarding implementations are successful and customer satisfaction remains high is paramount to maximizing client retention and deepening client relationships.
Early on, ACME learned their software engineers that developed the product were more valuable when focused on building new features rather than maintaining and enhancing the platform. Additionally, focusing account managers on revenue targets in the form of renewals and upsells creates more value for the enterprise.
To mitigate high-sales volume, a complex system, and sophisticated buyers, ACME changed the customer success team workflow process, allowing the team to focus on their strengths and reduce the risk of a poor implementation experience for their new clients. Beth decides to outsource the implementation work required to onboard their new clients to a trusted partner with a team of white-labeled implementation specialists.
These specialists receive training in customer management, learn the ins and outs of the platform on which they work, and act in the best interest of the customers as an extension of ACME.
By outsourcing their implementations, ACME limits its internal risks and maximizes the fruitful returns of successful client retention. The benefits of outsourcing for ACME are complementary to their strategic company goals, relieve the burden of recruiting, hiring, training, and retaining implementation specialists, as well as reducing full-time employee overhead during times with less demand.
How Monarch Can Help with Client SaaS Implementation
Monarch excels at performing SaaS implementations and works with some of the biggest names in financial CRM and ERP products, including DealCloud. By coupling fintech and financial services expertise with comparative cost savings through our 100% U.S.-based implementation teams at our Hereshore® centers, we deliver expert and affordable implementation and software development services.
Reach out today to discuss leveraging our knowledge and experience to outpace your growth projections utilizing our implementation experience for your customer onboarding.
