Breaking the $30M ARR Ceiling

Client Overview

A growth-stage SaaS company providing supply chain management software to mid-market manufacturers and distributors. With 180 employees and $28M in ARR, they had grown rapidly but were hitting operational constraints.

The Challenge

Despite strong market demand and a differentiated product, the company found their growth rate declining as they approached $30M in ARR. Internal systems and processes designed for a smaller organization were breaking under the increased scale, creating bottlenecks and inefficiencies throughout the company.

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Key issues included:

Manual workflows consuming excessive employee time
Delayed financial reporting affecting decision-making
Cross-departmental handoffs frequently dropping
Increasing customer support backlog
Technology infrastructure struggling with increased user load
Leadership team spending majority of time on operational issues rather than strategy

Our Approach

We implemented our comprehensive Scalability Engineering program across the organization:

Operational Assessment:
- Conducted end-to-end process mapping across all departments
- Identified critical bottlenecks and failure points
- Analyzed resource allocation and utilization
- Measured cycle times for key business processes
Strategic Redesign:
- Developed process optimization roadmap prioritized by impact
- Redesigned critical workflows for automation and scalability
- Created cross-functional alignment through standard operating procedures
- Established data governance framework for improved reporting
Systems Implementation:
- Deployed workflow automation for high-volume processes
- Implemented financial operations platform for real-time reporting
- Enhanced CRM configuration for improved handoffs
- Upgraded infrastructure for performance at scale
Organizational Alignment:
- Restructured teams around core business processes rather than functions
- Implemented metrics-driven performance management
- Created capacity planning model for proactive resource allocation

The Results

Within 10 months of implementation, the company achieved:

Operational costs reduced by 28% relative to revenue
Team capacity increased by 2.5x without proportional headcount growth
Financial close time reduced from 18 days to 6 days
Customer support resolution time improved by 64%
System performance improved by 35% under peak load
Leadership time on operations reduced from 65% to 30%
ARR growth accelerated to 67% year-over-year, breaking through the $30M ceiling

The operational transformation enabled the company to scale efficiently past $40M ARR within 18 months and positioned them for sustainable growth toward $100M ARR.

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