Sherpa Case Study

6 growth hacks to scale your (international) business

Customer

PAAL15

About Paal15
Paal15 is an independent strategic business consulting and go-to-market agency working for technology companies such as global-SI’s, ISVs and regional service providers. With employees operating from Amsterdam, London and Sydney and customers in over 25 countries, including the likes of Microsoft, Accenture and Telstra, they had to transform certain aspects of their business operations to keep a competitive edge and set them up for growth.
We asked Paal15 to explain each step of their growth journey and tell us about the changes with the most significant impact.
1

One Paal15. Choose your operating model

Aligning an international team based out of three locations with different time zones and various departments requires a standardised way of managing internal operations. Together with Sherpa, we introduced new processes supported by centralised project management and communication tools, cloud-only and always-secure. Planning is vital if you want to deliver on-time and get it right the first time. At the same time, these tools help us communicate effectively both internally and with our clients, wherever people may work at a given time. Together with centralised asset reviews, we ensure every stakeholder can provide feedback on our work digitally and on time.

We also saw the need to change the way we scope and sell our projects. We needed to move from time and resources to a deliverable-based way of working, leading to more straightforward scopes and quotes, and ensuring our customers receive the quality of work they expect while protecting our bottom line.
key highlights
A full digital communication experience, leading to a high customer satisfaction score and smoother internal communication.
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We switched from email + Skype to a highly structured Microsoft Teams environment with Team channels for customers, projects and other operational purposes. This caused internal email to decline by 95% and people are actively discouraged from emailing. All internal systems will push notifications to Teams channels and interactive message cards allow for follow-up directly from Teams.
technology used
Microsoft Teams
Changed from time and resources to deliverable-based working.
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Instead of running projects on an hourly rates basis, we offer customer clear deliverables that are priced upfront. This helps in easier scoping of projects, guarding the scope throughout the project and setting internal (time-based) budgets for efficient project management. Besides, it provides a clear end-point for projects, preventing projects from dragging along.
2

Removing customer complexity from
the equation

From customer on-boarding to project delivery and payment collection, managing the different aspects of our commercial relationship with customers is complex, and it initially was full of manual and time-consuming tasks. Not only internally, but also for a lot of our customers’ because they either have different ways of working or deal with a large organisation and complicated internal processes.

Our obsession with delivering a fast and smooth experience to our clients took us to change our on-boarding process drastically. Now, getting all the information we need into our different systems, like the signing of NDAs, contracts and quotes, is automated and guided from start to finish. This automated process creates a pleasant and seamless experience for our clients and drastically decreasing the time it takes from the first quote to the beginning of a project.
key highlights
Fully automated digital customer onboarding.
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We provide each customer with an interactive webform (Typeform) to provide us with all the information we need in order to get 1) the quote signed and 2) the invoices processed as quickly as possible.
Typeform linked to Dynamics CRM to store all the collected info.
Customer is asked to agree with the General Terms.
If the customer requires an NDA, they get a PandaDoc signature request after completing the form. The NDA will already contain all the details they have just provided. Once the NDA is signed, it will be stored in Dropbox automatically.
technology used
Typeform
Dynamics CRM
PandaDoc
Dropbox
Decrease in time from quote to start of a project.
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Questions in our onboarding form that reduce time:
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  • Formal business address, including registration and VAT number. This tackles tax compliance issues before they can occur.
  • Finance contact details including PO.
    • Prevents invoices from going to the wrong department, greatly speeding up invoice payment times.
    • Collect the PO beforehand or start the discussion about getting the PO asap. Minimises the chance that the project cannot start because there is no PO.
  • Authorised signer details.
    • Greatly reducing legal risk by making sure quotes are signed by the authorised person.
    • Speeding up the quote signature process, by making sure the quote goes to the right person straightaway.
  • Integrated NDA signing.
    • If required by the customer, they can sign a mutual NDA within the onboarding process, removing another hurdle and speeding up the process.
3

Find your niche. Focusing on a specific segment or industry will amplify your efforts.

A niche approach together with a smart way of managing our sales operations, has been key to our success. We needed to align our entire systems and workflow to this approach.
Our email and CRM are now fully integrated, allowing for zero effort tracking of opportunities with a near-perfect pipeline prediction. We have also developed standardised and ready-to-send customer proposals that reduce administrative work and enable global pipeline monitoring.
key highlights
Zero effort tracking opportunities and sales.
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Customised Dynamics views allow for easy opportunity tracking. Paal15’s personalised sales process ribbon in D365 makes sure that all the required fields are completed, including expected closing date, while the revenue is weighted automatically according to the opportunity stage. This allows for great pipeline overview and revenue predictions.
technology used
Dynamics CRM
Fully integrated CRM and communication channels.
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Dynamics and Outlook are integrated, so email conversations are automatically linked to contacts, making sure that all salespeople are aware of the latest status. Pipeline dashboards (PowerBI) are integrated into Microsoft Teams, making sales meetings highly efficient.
technology used
Dynamics CRM
Outlook
PowerBI
Microsoft Teams
4

Growth is expensive.
Never forget to protect your bottom line.

As a professional services business, we are all about protecting the bottom-line. So that meant we had to focus firmly on optimising our financial processes from start to end:  
  • Offer a wide range of (multi-currency) payment options to lower the payment barrier.
  • Digital quote signing, including paper trails and logs to prevent legal issues.
  • Automatically generate PO numbers and SOWs to ensure accurate overviews.
  • Reducing overhead by automating as much as possible, almost running it like a software company. Implementing zero manual work on invoicing and bookkeeping, and creating debtor systems that allow for friendly, yet automated, payment reminders.
key highlights
Decrease in overhead by automating financial processes.
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Dynamics opportunities contain deliverable based line items, making sure they can be automatically converted into digitally sign-able quotes with PandaDoc.

Signed quotes are turned into Dynamics Orders, providing Paal15 with a watertight sales order overview. In addition, careful integration allows for (parts of) orders to be converted into invoices in Exact Online at the click of a button.

All incoming invoices are forwarded to the bookkeeping automatically. Yarado RPA is used to process creditcard statements automatically and sync them to the bookkeeping overnight.
technology used
Dynamics CRM
PandaDoc
Exact Online
Yarado RPA
Decrease in time from invoice to payment for international invoices.
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Transferwise allows us to offer payment in multiple currencies, so our customers can make domestic payments instead of international. This greatly speeds up the payment process, while reducing transfer cost at the same time.

By integrating Mollie with Exact Online, we are able to offer creditcard payment options on our invoices. This means invoices can be paid immediately and, in some cases, customers can directly expense our invoices as cost instead of going through the lengthy corporate process of acquiring a PO.
technology used
Transferwise
Mollie
Exact Online
5

Keep an entrepreneurial mindset but validate it with data to make the right decisions.

Having an entrepreneurial mindset and an agile approach is one of our main differentiators. Hence, we need to have real-time access to a single source of truth based on accurate data so we can accelerate decision making and make better decisions overall.
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Now we have the peace of mind that all our systems are up to date and we have access to real-time insights that we track against KPIs and goal –helping us with pipeline prediction, planning and financial performance.
key highlights
A single source of truth with real-time insights tracking KPI’s and goals.
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All business reporting – financial (Exact Online, Dynamics) and operational (JIRA) – feed numerous PowerBI dashboards that provide (near) real-time insight into the business’ performance. By integrating these dashboards into Teams, we make sure that everybody is looking at the same data, at the same time.
technology used
Dynamics CRM
JIRA
Exact Online
PowerBI
Microsoft Teams
6

Don’t do it alone. Find the right growth partner to set it all up.

Sherpa was the critical guiding light that helped us to set up these leaner business operations. By combining a deep understanding of our business, all the processes involved, and the technology needed to streamline them, we’ve been able to lay the groundwork for our future growth.
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