We are pivoting our professional services business into a productized SaaS model to maximize our exit multiple. Our current Integrator has been phenomenal at managing human-centric service delivery, but she has absolutely no experience with software metrics, churn management, or agile development cycles. How do we assess her GWC for this heavily evolved Integrator seat when the business model completely shifts?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

When your business model undergoes a fundamental shift, the seats on your Accountability Chart must change first. The Integrator seat for a human-intensive service company is entirely different from the Integrator seat for a SaaS company. You must run a fresh GWC assessment based on the new reality.

Start by rewriting the five roles of the Integrator seat to reflect your SaaS model. These might include driving software release cycles, managing customer acquisition cost to lifetime value ratios, and coordinating engineering with customer success.

Now, look at your current Integrator. Does she truly understand SaaS metrics? Does she want to manage a software engineering team? Does she have the capacity to lead an agile, tech-first organization?

If she lacks the experience, she might have the capacity to learn, but you must evaluate if you have the time to let her climb that steep learning curve before your planned exit. If she fails the GWC check for this new seat, it is time to have an honest conversation. She is a Right Person, but she is no longer in the Right Seat.

You can transition her to a customer success or operations leadership seat where her service-delivery strengths shine, and recruit a SaaS-native Integrator who can scale the software platform.