What Is SaaS Implementation Management?
SaaS implementation management is the process of incorporating a new software solution or feature into a company’s existing tools, systems, and workflows.
Why SaaS Implementation Management Is So Important
Often viewed as one of the most critical phases of the customer journey, SaaS implementation management is the process of incorporating a new software solution or feature into a company’s existing tools, systems, and workflows.
When establishing your implementation processes and assembling an implementation technology stack, it’s imperative to build an experience that benefits both you as a vendor AND your newly signed customer. A poorly run implementation has massive consequences for both.
What’s at Stake for SaaS Vendors During Implementation
1. Failure to Launch Churn
Implementation is one of the easiest phases in the customer journey for a new customer to pull the ripcord if it looks like there’s signs of trouble ahead. If no one gets paid before go-live, a botched implementation has an immediate material impact.
2. Lagging Retention & Pressure on New Deals
Your implementation and onboarding experience sets the tone for what it’s like to work with you as a software vendor. A poor experience this early on in the relationship can cause customers to quickly question their buying decision, resulting in churn. An onboarding problem leads to a churn problem, and your sales team has to continue to fill a leaky bucket in a down market.
3. Poor Customer Engagement & Product Usage
A bad implementation will negatively impact how and when customers use your platform. For smaller teams and newer products especially, low usage data will give your team less insight into trends and development opportunities to improve your product. If you add customers who churn or don’t use your product, your product team will continue to make decisions based on assumptions instead of data.
What's at Stake for SaaS Customers During Implementation
1. Their Problem & Reason They Purchased Your Software in the First Place
Let’s say I buy a digital asset management software to organize my brand assets, ensure my teams are utilizing the right collateral at the right time, and gain more visibility into usage. I’m six months into my contract, my team doesn’t understand the software, and I spend multiple hours a troubleshooting while my team reverts back to their old ineffective ways of managing assets. The problem I wanted to solve is still a problem.
2. There’s Little to No Value in the Investment
On average, companies spend 13 cents of every dollar on software. No matter the economic climate, most companies don’t have the luxury of burning an eighth of their budget to shelfware.
3. Wasted Time
Time is a luxury – especially in the world of SaaS. The great promise of most digital platforms is to automate your manual processes to help you save time and give you that ability to do more with less. Teams purchase tools to make their day to day lives and work easier. A bad implementation misses the mark on delivering value and impedes your customer from delivering value to their customer.
What Is a SaaS Implementation Management Platform?
Implementation is the most critical phase of the SaaS purchase cycle, and you need the right plan and solution to ensure everything runs smoothly and your new customer relationship begins positively.
A SaaS implementation management platform is a project management software that is purpose-built to handle the unique nuances of complex SaaS implementation projects. Many companies adopt implementation management solutions to help their customers realize revenue quicker and continue to drive efficiencies with each new project.
How SaaS Implementation & Customer Onboarding Solutions Work
The implementation phase of the customer journey will set the tone for your relationship with each new customer. Adopting a SaaS implementation solution will help you ensure this experience leaves a positive first impression.
Unlike typical project management tools and static spreadsheets, a purpose-built SaaS implementation management solution will help your team establish efficient and repeatable implementation processes that yield predictable outcomes and improve the overall implementation experience for everyone involved.
A purpose-built SaaS implementation solution will include unique features designed to help you:
Standardize
Disjointed implementations kill deals. SaaS implementation management software will allow your team to build customizable project workflows and reusable templates that ensure a consistent and quality implementation experience for every customer.
Accelerate
By utilizing a SaaS implementation management solution that can integrate with your existing systems and automate most manual tasks, teams can cut go-live times in half.
Collaborate
Ensuring clean handoffs across teams and organizations is critical to every project’s success during implementation. Adopting an implementation management solution will give key stakeholders real-time visibility into project status and provide a centralized location to share important documents and easily communicate across teams.
Measure
Managing your implementation projects in a single location unlocks unprecedented data insights that drive better decision-making. In-depth project insights and audit trails allow teams to track trends, prevent delays, and proactively identify and resolve existing and potential risks and communication problems.
Scale
Whether you’re scaling alone or with partners, utilizing an implementation management solution helps teams add capacity & visibility. Standardizing and automating manual tasks will help you gain 5:1 operational leverage and improve productivity and resource allocation.
Do You Need a SaaS Implementation & Customer Onboarding Solution?
Great software firms succeed and stay successful by always looking for ways to improve. If you’re wondering if your organization (and your customers) could benefit from an implementation management solution, first ask yourself the following questions:
Does your team have a set process in place for every implementation project?
If project timelines and tasks are set by each individual implementation manager on your team and projects often kick off without a formalized plan in place, an implementation management solution could streamline and standardize this process. And help with quality control!
Is your team bogged down with endless back and forth and meetings just to check on the status of their projects?
An implementation solution can help you avoid bottlenecks and delays by providing all key parties centralized access to real-time data and task- and project-level insights.
Do you need to track team bandwidth and improve resource management?
Managing your implementation projects in a purpose-built solution will help you track trends and gain insight into department and individual performance and bandwidth across your entire services organization to improve productivity and resource allocation.
Are handoffs across internal teams and with external clients slowing your projects down?
An implementation management solution will help prevent communication breakdowns and improve team alignment and cross-org collaboration with automated outreach, responses & alerts. Bonus: When you integrate an implementation solution with tools like Salesforce, Jira, and Hubspot, you can help ensure all of your internal teams remain up-to-date on project status without adding additional steps.
If your answer to the above questions was a resounding ‘yes,’ an implementation management solution could positively impact your implementation experience.
4 Benefits of Adopting a SaaS Implementation Solution
1. Quality control! You’ll establish efficient and repeatable implementation processes.
Utilizing a purpose-built SaaS implementation management solution will allow you to ensure every implementation project successfully crosses the finish line. With automated workflows and reusable project templates, you’ll accelerate time-to-value, improve engagement, and ultimately ensure a positive customer experience.
2. Seamless collaboration and real-time visibility.
By giving key stakeholders real-time visibility into project status and providing a centralized hub to complete tasks and share important project information, an implementation-specific project management solution will help your organization avoid roadblocks and improve both collaboration and accountability.
3. Avoid data silos and centralize key project information.
SaaS implementation platforms act as a centralized system of record for internal teams and external clients. Managing all of your projects in a single location will allow your team to leverage project trends and audit trails to streamline project handoffs and identify opportunities for process improvements.
4. Eliminate duplicative data entry and automate project alerts and approvals.
Utilizing a SaaS implementation management solution that can automate communications and integrate with your team’s existing tech stack will help cut down on tedious back-and-forth communication. Eliminate duplicative tasks and avoid additional inbox clutter by adopting a platform with automated communication, reminders, and alerts.
Who Uses SaaS Implementation Management Solutions?
Implementation and customer onboarding software doesn’t just benefit your implementation team. For executives, contributors, and customers, a centralized solution will provide seamless workflows and unmatched visibility into the entire implementation process – helping teams streamline handoffs and improve collaboration.
Customer Success & Implementation Teams
This one’s obvious. CS and implementation teams will utilize implementation project management software most often. They’ll utilize the solution to communicate and set realistic expectations with customers, track project status, and report on important project- and task-level metrics.
Professional Services Teams
Professional Services teams will also be heavy users of your implementation software. Often responsible for the technical delivery of a solution, these teams will typically utilize an onboarding tool to review project insights and audit trails to track trends, prevent delays, and proactively identify and resolve existing and potential risks and communication problems.
Sales & Revenue Teams
Your Sales & Revenue teams is typically the first point of contact a prospect speaks with when considering purchasing your product. Once a deal closes, the handoff from the AE to the implementation manager must go smoothly. This team will utilize the implementation management solution to streamline the handoff process and ensure each newly signed implementation project crosses the finish line.
Your Customers
Successful implementations rely heavily on both internal teams and the external client who made the purchase. Your customers will utilize an implementation solution to understand role assignments, complete task assignments, share important documents, and view project status.
How These 3 Companies Utilize Implementation Management Solutions
Built Technologies
Committed to adding new levels of efficiency to the construction finance industry, Built leverages Baton’s implementation solution to streamline processes and heighten client engagement during onboarding.
Since adoption, Baton has helped Built’s team move away from overly complex project management tools and embrace a more agile client onboarding experience that has been well received by clients.
"When looking for a tool to support Built’s Implementation team it was important to find something that not only works for Built but also for our clients. In addition, we wanted a way to have transparency to all implementation projects in flight. Baton provides this and so much more."
Sight Machine
Manufacturing data platform, Sight Machine, choose Baton’s implementation management solution to create a standardized implementation & onboarding structure.
Since using Baton, Sight Machine has been able to create reusable project templates that can be easily tailored to unique customer needs.
“When I’ve inherited another manager’s project, it’s helpful to view a history of what’s been completed and understand the current state of the project in Baton. It’s a nice checklist to go through when transitioning active projects over.”
LoadStop
Relatively new to managing software implementations, Alexander Paris, LoadStop’s Project Manager of Client Services, was in search of a simple and easy-to-use tool that could help systematize and enhance their customer experience from end to end.
After researching several solutions, Alex and the LoadStop team found the “perfect fit” with Baton.
An easy to use solution that was simple and streamlined enough to complement a small, early-stage company, yet flexible and technically powerful enough to support LoadStop through the coming stages of growth and scale.
Since implementing the Baton, LoadStop has cut implementation times from an average 2 months to 4 weeks AND reduced customer onboarding-related churn to <1%.
Is a SaaS Implementation Management Solution Right for Your Team?
From mid-market SaaS to at-scale unicorns, the industry’s fastest-growing companies have utilized Baton’s implementation management solution to add efficiency and improve their customer experience. To learn more, download our free implementation guide or schedule a 1:1 call with a Baton implementation expert.
