Possible blockers for the capability building process

All interviewees raised up concerns related to the dynamic capability building and high- lighted blockers that can prevent the case company from developing such capability re- lated to customer success. These blockers are divided into two second-order themes. First, the customer success is not realised to be important for the business and thus is not con- sidered as a high priority in the company. Second, the growing complexity of the SaaS platform prevents the sensing and seizing capabilities from being efficient. Figure 2c il- lustrates the data structure of the potential blockers of the capability building processes. Figure 2c. Potential blockers of the capability building processes.

Aggregate dimension 2nd_order themes 1st_order concepts Blockers of the building process

Customer success will not be considered as a high

priority

The complexity of the SaaS platform

Lack of commitment from the company Lack of overview and vision

Inefficient value communication Potential added value can’t be reached

Customer success will not be considered as a high priority: Multiple interviewees highlighted the lack of commitment from the company as one of the primary blockers for the capability building. It was seen as a common problem that in a SaaS company sale operation gets overemphasized priority because that is the leading source for growth, es- pecially for young SaaS companies. However, the interviewees described that when op- erating with a recurring revenue business model reducing customer churn becomes quickly important source for growth. Developing customer success process was felt to be the main way for a SaaS company to reduce customer churn. Thus it should be a high priority for a recurring revenue SaaS company. One customer team manager summarised this in his comment:

"First of all, it's going to be important that the whole company acknowledges that this is something that we need to do, from leadership to AMs and engineers we need to understand the importance of customer success development. Otherwise this development will never properly start."

The second blocker that was highlighted is the lack of overview and vision related to customer success. The interviewees described how currently in the case company no-one is responsible for the building the process of customer success and there is no prior expe- rience of customer success development. The interviewees were concerned that this can lead to a situation where the customer success development will not happen, or it happens but without a vision guiding it to the right direction. One customer team manager dis- closed this as follows:

"Practically speaking, it requires its own team. A team that sees the overall view, what is actually happening in the company and a team that can from a prober vision for the customer success development. Vision that can be communicated throughout the company so that everyone would know where we are heading. Currently we are just stumbling in the dark with this."

The complexity of the SaaS platform: Case company’s product is getting increasingly complex and this raised concerns among the interviewees. The complexity is seen as a blocker especially for the seizing capability because there have already been cases where the SaaS products value could not be communicated to prospects due to the complexity of the offering. The interviewees felt that if the complexity increases further, it will be increasingly hard to keep customers and prospects aware of the value the SaaS product brings to different customers. One functional team manager commented on this as fol- lows:

"The problem is more about that we are not communicating that value creation clearly enough. Our tool is really complex and it’s getting more and more complex all the time and our value communication just can’t follow this development cur- rently. We should aim to keep the product understandable and focus on communi- cating the value better."

Further, the interviewees raised up concerns related to the value delivery in case of in- creasing product complexity. If the value cannot even be communication to a prospect due to the complexity, the interviewees were asking how could it be then delivered either? Customer cases were already described where customers churn because they could not reach the added value even though they understood the possibilities of the SaaS platform.

The interviewees explained that these cases happened because customers did not see ex- tensive efforts to learn the complex tool or they did not have required knowledge level to unveil the potential added value. If the product complexity grows, it was felt that these customer cases will become increasingly common and can prevent sensing and seizing capabilities from being efficient. One functional team manager described this blocker in his comment as follows:

"It seems that even if we have been able to communicate our value well enough during the trial there still are many cases where this value can’t be delivered because the onboarding of a client doesn’t work out. Our tool is too complex and requires too much time and knowledge from the client so that the onboarding pro- cess fails and the client churns."

These were the main blockers of the dynamic capability building process underlined by the interviewees.

4.2 Important social and technical elements of knowledge man-