Challenge
A FinTech SaaS company had just closed a $32M Series B. The pitch deck promised they'd take NRR from 108% to 125% over the next 18 months. The board's first follow-on questions surfaced a gap: there wasn't an operating model behind that number, just a forecast and a hope.
The CS function was three CSMs, all reporting into the founder, with no segmentation, no shared playbooks, no health-score model, and a comp plan built around retention only. The Implementation team was two engineers wearing project management hats. No CCO, no VP of CS. The founder was running it personally on top of being CEO.
The founder had two constraints: she couldn't spend three months hiring a full-time VP of CS before showing the board a credible plan, and she didn't want to over-hire too early and have to unwind it in 12 months.
Approach
We started with a focused two-week scoping engagement (a customized Health Check, given the specific board-deadline pressure) and then ran a 10-week Project engagement with a Fractional StratX leader embedded part-time during the build.
The diagnostic and design covered:
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Org design. A two-pod model: Onboarding (Implementation + dedicated CSMs, first 90 days) and Steady-State CS (segmented by ACV), designed to scale to the 18-month forecast. JDs written for the eventual VP hire and three senior ICs.
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Comp model. Net retention-based comp with expansion accelerators, modeled against the existing book and stress-tested against three planning scenarios.
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Operating cadence. Weekly renewals sync, monthly QBR reviews, quarterly executive reviews. Reporting layer built in their existing Salesforce + Looker stack.
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Tech stack recommendation. Light CS platform (Vitally) plus tighter Salesforce reporting, not a Gainsight build, sized to the company's stage, with clear triggers for when to revisit.
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12-month operating plan. Quarterly hiring plan, board reporting templates, and a defined path from where they were to the NRR forecast in the deck.
A senior StratX operator served as Fractional VP of CS for the engagement and ran the function operationally during Q4 of the build year while the full-time hire was recruited.
Outcomes
Six months from engagement start:
- Board materials at the next board meeting led with the new operating model. No questions about retention defensibility, for the first time.
- First full-time VP of CS hired against the JDs we wrote; she started the month the Fractional engagement transitioned out.
- NRR trending toward the forecast track: 112% at month six, on plan to hit 118% by month twelve.
- Onboarding TTV down from "no measurement" to a tracked metric: 38 days at the cohort baseline.
- The founder reported, in the 90-day retro, that the most valuable single deliverable was the JDs for the full-time hire and the 12-month operating plan that put context around them.
Engagement model
- 2-week scoping engagement ($10,000)
- 10-week Project engagement (Operating Model Build) ($45,000 fixed)
- 6-month Fractional Leadership engagement (1.5 days/week) ($12,000/month)
- Hand-off to full-time VP of CS at month 7
Total engagement: ~$127,000 across nine months. The full-time-equivalent cost of running this build internally (a temp VP at market rate plus consulting fees) was modeled at ~$280,000.