Summary:
Client onboarding in a B2B SaaS platform is a challenging process, especially when the revenue per month is below $60. Shorter onboarding time helps clients realise the product benefits soon and reduces early stage client attrition. B2B SaaS companies currently follow a single person onboarding process, where one product specialist onboards a client from start to end. This reduces the friction, but increases the cost of onboarding. Most SaaS onboarding teams are under utilised as they wait for customers to respond. This article explores ways to increase utilisation without impacting the quality of onboarding.
Client onboarding in a B2B SaaS platform is a critical and challenging process. Onboarding is usually consists of 5 high level steps
- Policy or process review
- SaaS product configuration to match client process/policy
- Data migration
- User training
- User acceptance testing and sign-off
The number of steps and timelines increase if there are code level product customisations to be done for this client.
All the steps with the exception of product configuration requires client involvement, hence there is an element of wait time for every step. There is also an element of continuity and context to be maintained by the onboarding team. Hence most onboarding processes assign a single SPOC to handle a client end to end. The single SPOC method seems to reduce friction ( at least theoretically) but definitely has other problems.
Problems of single SPOC model:
- The single SPOC model assumes every onboarding specialist to be good at all the five steps. The five steps require different skill sets as shown in the table below. Finding a person good at all the five steps or training a new recruit on all five steps is a costly and time consuming process. It is definitely not scalable especially for products with revenue per month less than $60.
| Step | Skill |
| Policy or process review | Domain specific process knowledge |
| Product configuration | Product knowledge & process solutioning |
| Data migration | Excel expertise |
| User training | Webinar training |
| UAT & sign off | Account management |
- Each onboarding SPOC handles multiple accounts that are at different stages of onboarding, hence reviewing progress and identifying risks becomes difficult
- High dependency on client response leads to under utilisation of onboarding specialists as they are mostly waiting for data or time from clients. Hence capacities are defined empirically which leads to higher costs of onboarding
Some follow a two layered approach, where a single SPOC does the account management and coordinates with specific specialists for the other tasks. The two layered model increases onboarding delay due to time conflicts of specialist resources. However if aided by the right project management tool it can reduce the cost of onboarding drastically as well as provide good visibility of risky projects.
Capacity calculation:
The normal approach is to measure the average time taken to onboard a customer and then use it to calculate the capacity per week or per month. This method grossly understates the real capacity and thereby increases the onboarding cost. This method also hides the inefficiency in the system and does not lend itself well to continuous improvement.
The more methodical approach is to do a time and motion study and arrive at the actual time taken to onboard a client and then decide the capacity. The capacity calculator that uses total time for each step will give a better estimate of capacity but will still underestimate actual capacity. The reason for the anomaly is the difference between active time and total time.
Active time is when the onboarding person is actively working on the case. In case of the single SPOC model, time spent on performing each step as well as time spend on coordinating with the client ( emails, phone calls etc.. for setting up interactions) is classified as active time. Active time in most onboarding processes is likely to be 30-50% of the total time to onboard, so we can get a minimum of 15-30% additional capacity if we plan the work load basis active time instead of total time.
In the two layered model since the coordination work is done by a different individual we can increase utilisation of specialists to 80% of their available work time thereby reducing costs further. As a rule we should plan only for 80% utilisation of any human resource involved in onboarding or customer success roles to avoid burnouts.
The above calculator provides a theoretical available capacity. How do we manage the work to realise close to 90% utilisation of the theoretical capacity? It can be done by utilising 50% or more of the available work time on the critical step of the onboarding process. The step that has the highest active time is the critical step.
90% utilisation can be achieved in the following manner depending on the operating model
- In case of single SPOC model, manage the work pipeline for each SPOC in such a way that he/she spends 50% of the time on critical step of the onboarding process
- In case of two layered models, ensure the available work time of specialist performing the critical task is 100% utilised.
The above approach is focused on maximising the throughput of the whole system instead of trying to optimise at each step. This is one application of the theory of constraint in a service process.
When we start tracking the number of projects entering and exiting the critical step every day, projects that are not moving and not entering the critical step will get highlighted and hence will get solved.
