I often hear SaaS founders mention the exciting journey of scaling up fast, immediately followed by the reflection that it is also a tough one. Indeed, growing fast brings new complexities. A supportive structure for that increased volume will help the teams cope. Drawing from my experiences, this article offers practical steps to address such challenges. Tasks that were once straightforward, become exponentially more complicated during rapid growth. As an example, converting leads, bringing new customers on board, maintaining a good service for your existing customer base, or hiring and onboarding new people all become tougher. Additionally, the impact of service hiccups and roadblocks enlarges as well.

Without efficient workflows, supporting the volume of work and the occasional problem, things can rapidly start feeling chaotic. This in turn will create an impact on your capability to deliver and your customers will feel that. In my experience organizing work with service value and continuity in mind is a good initial step to resolving such issues.

As a fast-growing scale-up, your popular service effectively solves a problem for many customers. That also means that you truly understand the customers’ perception of the value you create for them. If your people have that same level of understanding and act accordingly, your value stream will flow smoothly.

To tackle such scaling issues, my recommendation would be to

• Structure workflows around the value stream, where each step incrementally adds something to the end product (= your value created). I typically a fast version of value stream mapping, splitting the workflow into small activities, which makes it easier to optimize the outcome of each activity.
• Include a level of agility as part of your workflows, enabling the teams to act quickly on changes driven by e.g. market complexity or shifting customers’ value perception. Feedback from your customers as well as your people, will be crucial.
• Formally organize teams and their responsibilities to optimize value stream flow. The flow smoothens out when teams are as little as possible dependent on one another to deliver their responsibilities, the same for individuals.
• Measure what matters (= outcome, value created) and share a real-time dashboard with your teams. It will help keep on track, highlighting blockages, and setting targets.
• Empower your teams and individuals to drive the service forward, make decisions, and escalate issues when needed.
• Hire collaborative leaders to support the value stream and your teams

While the focus of this article is on customer value, your company generates value for various stakeholders, such as investors, your staff, and the public, to name just a few. As your market impact grows, their opinions can increasingly influence your success.