In this insightful episode of the B2B SaaS Podcast, we delve deep into the success story of Vivantio, a leading enterprise service management platform, with CEO Greg Rich. Discover the strategies, insights, and metrics behind their remarkable achievement of surpassing $5 million in Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR) by selling $25,000 deals to customer service teams.

Here are the key topics covered,

• Introduction to Vivantio: Greg Rich, the CEO and co-founder of Vivantio, provides an overview of their enterprise service management platform tailored for customer service and support teams.
• Understanding the Market: Learn about Vivantio's target market, predominantly mid-market teams seeking to upgrade from legacy or entry-level case management solutions to a more advanced service management platform.
• Product Differentiation: Greg explains how Vivantio simplified its license model, offering a single platform with customizable features, catering to various service teams across the enterprise.
• Customer Base and Revenue: Gain insights into Vivantio's customer base, serving approximately 400 customers with an average deal size of $25,000, resulting in an ARR exceeding $5 million.
• Growth Journey: Explore Vivantio's growth journey, focusing on strategic investments in SEO, content marketing, and educational initiatives to drive growth and market awareness.
• Sales Cycle and Expansion Strategy: Understand Vivantio's sales cycle, averaging 60 to 90 days, and their expansion strategy, achieving a net retention rate of 110% to 115% by upselling features and expanding usage horizontally and vertically within customer organizations.
• Churn and Retention: Discover Vivantio's customer churn rate and average tenure of approximately six years, indicating strong customer retention and loyalty.
• Team Structure and Vision: Get insights into Vivantio's team structure, comprising sales, marketing, product, support, engineering, and operational teams across the UK and the US, and their vision for future growth, including plans for equity funding to capitalize on the $26 billion market opportunity.

Hello everyone.

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Welcome to the B2B SaaS podcast.

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I'm your host Upendra Varman.

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Today we have Greg Rich with us.

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Greg here is the CEO and co founder

of a company called Vivanteo.

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Hey Greg, welcome to the show.

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GregRich: Yeah.

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Nice to meet you.

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Thanks very much for having me.

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Upendra Varma: Yeah.

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All right, Greg.

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So let's try to understand, right, what

your company and product does and like

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why customers are paying you money.

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GregRich: Why pay this money?

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Okay.

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So Vervancio is an enterprise

service management platform for

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customers, service and support teams.

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Um, so we predominantly sell

into the mid market space.

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So these are typically teams that are

either growing or scaling, um, in terms

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of service and support, and they're kind

of moving away from either legacy or, or,

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um, entry level case management solutions

and looking for the, you know, their next

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evolution in terms of service management.

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Or, uh, it's going to be sort of

enterprise systems that are looking to

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find products and services that can, um,

still allow them to do what they want to

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do from a service and support perspective.

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Um, but they're trying to remove the

burden of management of those systems.

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You know, they, they're typically using

enterprise systems that are difficult

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to maintain, difficult to look after.

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Um, you know, not a great return on

investment from that perspective.

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And they're looking for the new, you know,

a new range of products and services that

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can allow them to do what they want to

do, but at a much more cost effective way.

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Um, yes, that's pretty much it.

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So the types of people, the types of

people that use Vivantio, you know,

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it, it, you know, we predominantly

sold into IT, uh, for, for many,

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many years, but, uh, you know,

Vivantio is a very scalable solution.

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Uh, we have customers, uh,

right across the enterprise now.

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Um, and you know, one of our areas of

focus is in customer service and support.

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So people providing support.

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To external customers, whether that's

MSPs or, um, you know, support for

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customers of their organization.

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And right across the business,

HR, finance, you know, everyone's

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a service team these days.

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Everyone's providing service either

to the business or to customers.

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And they all need a service

management solution like Vivantio.

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Upendra Varma: and, uh, and just one

products like serve everybody is that

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how it is or you've got like sort of

products, you know, serving for various,

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you know, customer profiles that

you have, like, so does your same it

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solution, you know, work well for, for

example, uh, external customer facing

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like customer support team was, you know,

helping out my customers, for example.

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GregRich: That's it.

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So, yeah, it's a very

great question, actually.

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So we, this is something we've

changed relatively recently.

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We did used to have a lot of

products, lots of different solutions.

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And actually what the market was

telling us was that it was too

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confusing, you know, difficult to

understand pricing difficult because

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it's such a comprehensive product to

understand which features they needed.

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Uh, so actually what we did, um,

this, uh, this year was we, we, we,

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we moved away from that completely.

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Uh, we simplified our license model.

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Uh, we just have now a single

platform, a single price that's

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designed to be used across.

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All service teams.

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Um, and the idea of the platform is

that it's a no code, low code product.

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It allows those customers to turn on and

off the features that they need, um, and

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to run it across multiple service teams.

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So through roles and permissions and

things like that, um, everybody can be

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using the same platform, uh, but obviously

have their own, you know, consolidated

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view, um, into their part of the business.

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Upendra Varma: Got it.

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Right.

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And then I have a couple of questions

here, but I'll come to that after a while.

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Right.

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So just want to understand the sense of

your customer base as of today, right?

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Like how many customers are you

serving on your platform today?

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GregRich: Serving on the platform,

hundreds of thousands a day, actually,

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uh, we have several hundred customers,

but you know, if you think about,

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uh, the technology and the types of

customers they're providing service

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and support to, um, you know, these

are large enterprises, um, that, that

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have customers, either thousands of

customers internally or hundreds of

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thousands of customers externally.

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So yeah, we, we have hundreds

of thousands of people using

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Upendra Varma: you talk about these,

like I asked you customers, not users

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in particular, like the customers

who are actually paying you money.

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GregRich: Yeah.

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So we have about 400

customers at the moment.

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Yeah,

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Upendra Varma: And that's a hundred

thousand is approximately the users or

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the, you know, the end users essentially

who will end up, who will end up

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GregRich: right.

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Consuming, consuming those services.

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Exactly.

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Yeah.

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Upendra Varma: And then how big of

a deal are we talking about, right?

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On an average, how, how much

your customer typically pays you?

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Are we talking about a 10, 000

mid market deal or are we talking

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about a 100, 000 enterprise deal?

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Just give us a

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GregRich: Yeah.

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So, I mean, it ranges, as you can imagine

as a, as a product and service like ours,

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you know, we, we have customers, uh,

you know, that are relatively small and

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we have very, very large customers, um,

like, uh, Texas Correctional Institute,

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you know, who have hundreds of thousands

of users actually, in fact, um, our

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average deal size sits around 25, 000.

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Upendra Varma: Makes sense.

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And like, are you comfortable, you know,

letting us know like where you are as

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a company in terms of revenue, right?

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Approximately.

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GregRich: Yeah.

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So we're now, uh, so we're,

we're, we're an old company with

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a, with a new startup mentality.

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So, uh, you know, without getting

into the backstory, you know, we've

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been bootstrapped up until about a

year ago, um, just over a year ago.

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And, uh, you know, that

was for various reasons.

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Uh, we're now sort of

poised for, for growth.

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We see a huge market opportunity,

uh, especially in the service

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and support part of the industry.

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Um, we're sitting at just around 5

million in terms of annual current

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revenue at the moment, a little bit higher

than that in terms of actual revenue.

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Upendra Varma: Got it.

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Right.

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So, and just, just, let's move on to

your growth journey here for a while.

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Right.

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So like, where, where are all of

these customers or enterprises or,

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you know, your deals, like where are

they finding you in the first place?

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Right.

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How does that top of

funnel look like today?

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Over the past 12 months, for example.

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GregRich: So the past 12 months

has been far more predictable

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than the previous 12 months.

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I have to, or the previous,

uh, years, in fact.

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Um, so what we've been doing,

uh, is investing a lot of

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time and effort into SEO.

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So, you know, one of the things

that we've wanted to do, especially

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as it relates to the customer

service and support market is try to

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educate, um, operations teams about.

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What service management has meant

to IT for the last two decades.

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Um, you know, there are

best practice frameworks.

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There are technologies that IT have

been using that really haven't been

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leveraged across the entire organization.

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So we've actually spent the last 12

months, um, releasing white papers, you

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know, putting out tons of blog posts

every week that talk about how, uh.

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Operations teams can elevate

service to their customers.

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Um, looking at service efficiency,

service optimization, um, thinking

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about integrations across the

business and things like that.

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So that has been really the

route that we have taken.

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And that that's where we're seeing

most of our growth at the moment.

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Upendra Varma: And like, was that

like, um, uh, did you invest a lot in

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those past 12 months on SEO or were

you already been doing for a while?

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And like, that's what given you most

of the results over the past 12 months.

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GregRich: Yeah, we've actually been,

uh, yeah, actually it's one of these

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strange things that, you know, we

have a very diverse set of customers,

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you know, everything from education

through professional services,

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through finance, through FinTech, I

mean, it really is a very broad, um,

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Upendra Varma: let me, let me

rephrase that question, right?

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So you've got around 400 customers, right?

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So just like a big chunk of them,

where did they discover you?

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Like, how did you end up?

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GregRich: Yeah.

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So 50 percent of our customer base, we're

actually using Vivantio for external

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customer support, uh, to support end

users of their products and services.

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Um, and, you know, coupled with that

and the fact that we're now seeing

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that, uh, customer services teams are,

uh, are being, you know, looked at

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as profit centers for organizations.

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You know, they really can help

drive growth of businesses.

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You know, they're part of retention.

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They're part of renewals.

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They're part of helping

with upsell and sale.

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Um, And, you know, there's a lot

of demand that's been put on those

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teams, uh, in, in these modern days.

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And so we, we've really seen that

there's an opportunity now to leverage

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that and to make sure that we're, you

know, we're providing tools and services

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to those teams that can really help

them elevate the customer experience.

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Upendra Varma: Oh, sorry, Greg.

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So what I was trying to

understand is where did they

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discover you in the first place?

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Like, how are they finding you?

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Like, is it SEO or is

there something else?

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Are you doing any outbound sales?

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Like what's that first touch

point look like for all of your

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GregRich: Well, you have to

remember we've been around 20 years.

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So of course it's, uh, you know, it has

varied, um, considerably over that time.

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Um, you know, as, as a relative as

well as a small company, uh, you

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know, we've had to be quite nimble.

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We've had to be able to react to, you

know, the market in the early days.

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We were one of the first

adopters of Google AdWords, you

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know, it was fantastic for us.

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And of course, now we can't compete,

uh, in, in that because, you know, our

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enterprise peers, um, you know, dominate

that space and it makes it impossible.

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So, you know, you have to be nimble.

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You have to learn how to kind

of adjust to market conditions.

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Um, but to us, like I said, the SEO

piece is a big one for us because

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it brings people to our site.

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They're inquisitive.

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They want to understand how they

can improve service without spending

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enterprise dollars in order to do that.

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Um, and that's typically what

leads, leads customers to us.

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Um.

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Upendra Varma: essentially SEO is

the one that's really been driving

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most of the growth these days.

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Is that how you can

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GregRich: Certainly.

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Yeah.

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I mean, we, we back it up with, uh,

with, with, uh, you know, we, we think

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about it as a multi channel approach.

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So of course we use LinkedIn, we use

display, uh, uh, you know, advertising

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and things like that, um, and, uh, to,

to try and ensure that we continue to get

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that message across, you know, we don't,

it's not just a fire and forget mentality.

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Uh, obviously we have, uh, email, uh,

marketing sequences that we use to

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keep people informed about, you know,

changes to the product service and

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other white papers that we're releasing.

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So, you know, we have a number

of tactics that surround.

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Our messaging, um, but, but predominantly

it's really that, that education pieces

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is what we're pinning everything on.

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Upendra Varma: And you do any

outbound sales or no today?

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GregRich: So we are doing some,

it's, you know, it's proven, uh,

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positive in the past, and then

it's not proven to work so well.

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Um, but we are fortunate we brought in

an EVP of sales, uh, recently, um, under

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the, uh, remit of our chief revenue

officer, um, who has a ton of experience

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in building out, um, outbound sales teams.

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And it's very new, you know,

we've, we've literally had that

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position in for a few months.

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So, uh, in fact, the first employee, uh,

working under Jim started this, this week.

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So, so again, that, that is something

we're starting to look at now.

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Yeah.

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And again, it's, it's

part of the same thing.

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It's like, how do we get

our message out there?

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How do we actually communicate to people

about what our value proposition is?

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Upendra Varma: Got it.

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Right.

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So yeah, let's, let's move on.

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Right.

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So like I was trying to understand this a

lot more because like at 5 million, right.

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So at 5 million ARR, like what, what

would you, what would you bet on?

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Right.

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Is SEO your primary thing?

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If yes, like how do you, like how much

of your growth is coming from SEO?

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Just, just want to get a sense there.

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Can you just quantify here?

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Like.

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GregRich: yeah.

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Upendra Varma: Just put a number there.

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For example, how much percentage

of your new leads just come from

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GregRich: I would say

it's a large proportion.

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I would probably say 60 to 70%.

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You know, you have to remember that

we're selling into an industry, uh,

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where people are, you know, relatively

tech savvy, um, to a certain degree,

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they kind of know what they want.

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They do a lot of research before they

reach out to someone like Vavanchio

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to look at a product and services.

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Our, our sales cycles are relatively

short, you know, 60 to 90 days because

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of the amount of time that, um, our

prospects have taken to, you know,

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evaluate and investigate solutions, even

before picking up the phone or raising a

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hand or filling out a form on a website.

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Um, so, so by the time they

actually get to us, they're,

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they're pretty well informed.

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Upendra Varma: let's talk

about the sales cycle, right?

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So what happens on somebody discovers

you when somebody did their research

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and they can come to you, right?

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What happens after that?

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Like how do you convince them to

become a paying customer of yours?

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GregRich: So it goes, we go

through a number of stages.

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You know, the first thing we do is we

try and have a scoping call with somebody

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to understand what their pain points

are, why they're looking, you know,

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what are they trying to achieve here?

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Uh, what are they using at the moment?

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Um, what's not working for them and

what's that kind of current future state

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look like, you know, what are, what

are they trying to get to as a business

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and what are their business challenges?

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Um, and based on the back of that, what

we'll then do is we'll customize a demo

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for them that I, you know, showcases

some of the features that we have in

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the product that actually solves those

business challenges that they have.

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Um, so that, that's

typically the second stage.

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Um, and then the third stage really,

uh, it can go one of two ways.

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Oh, sometimes people will ask for

just a trial of the system and

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we're happy to oblige and, you

know, give somebody a 30 day access.

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What we try and encourage them to do is

to actually work with our implementation

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consultants, uh, free of charge to put a.

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Proof of concept in place.

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Uh, we, we find that, um, you know,

having the opportunity to hold their

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hand, uh, you know, just for a couple of

days in implementing, um, certain parts

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of the solution and for them to realize

how simple and easy it is to configure

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and how quickly they can actually start

getting an ROI, um, that that's really

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advantageous both for them and for us,

um, because they really do understand

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the value of the products at that point.

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So, so a POC is really where we try

and, you know, try and steer people if

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they have the time and the willingness

and the capacity to do it, yeah.

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Upendra Varma: And then like it's

it's 60 odd days is that what you're

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saying 60 to 90 days It's is that

how your sales cycle typically takes?

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GregRich: Uh, 60 to 90 days.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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I mean, it can extend beyond that

for enterprise customers, you know,

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uh, those, those, um, that there are

larger buying committees and they

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have to get, you know, procurement is,

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Upendra Varma: Yeah

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GregRich: could be long winded as,

as I'm sure, you know, um, but, but,

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but typically, yeah, for our ideal

customers, typically 60 to 90 days.

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Yeah.

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Upendra Varma: Got it.

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Right.

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So, so Greg, like, so just

give us a sense, right?

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So, I mean, I see a lot of your product

or, you know, your reviews, most of them

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are around, you know, it, you know, it

service management, something like that.

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But I recently also see that you, you

switched on to this external facing

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customer support teams and all of it.

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Right.

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So how's the journey going on?

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Like, when did you make the switch

and like, like, is it like literally

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going from zero to one in terms

of, you know, acquiring this new

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customer base and adapting to them,

adapting them to a product or like,

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how's that journey looking like?

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So, and is that your bet on how

you're going to grow from 5 million

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to let's say your next big milestone?

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GregRich: Yeah.

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So I think in terms of going to, to answer

your first question, thinking about the

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journey, um, as I alluded to earlier, I

think we kind of fell into it to a certain

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degree, 50 percent of our customers

were using it for external support.

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Um, and it wasn't until we started

doing, you know, that market research,

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um, you know, I'm part of the

Gartner, um, CEO startup program.

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Um, so I get access to their analysts

and that's really helpful in terms

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of validating some of the things

that we're seeing in the market.

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Um, and that was a great opportunity

for us to, to really think about where

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we could differentiate our products and

services, you know, the service management

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market is saturated with products.

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I mean, especially on the it side.

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Um, and so, you know, we wanted to

find a way that we could carve a

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niche in that particular market.

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And we believe for us, customer

service and support is that niche.

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Um, so, so that, like I said,

that was really a change in focus.

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So we already have 50 percent of

our customers using it for that.

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Um, but then on the flip side, we're

actually seeing that, uh, you know,

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enterprise service management is also

be becoming a big play, you know, is not

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really thinking about service and support

within a single team, but how can you.

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You know, holistically think about the

way that you're delivering services

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across your entire organization.

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Um, and eventually plays well in,

in, in that, in that area too.

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Um, you know, we do find, uh, more

often than not, that when we land a new

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customer, it's not very long before they

start thinking about adoption across

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the organization, into facilities,

management, HR, finance, uh, governance,

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risk, and compliance, you know.

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All of these teams can make use

of a solution like Financio.

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And there's a benefit in having, uh,

you know, a single service management

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platform across your entire organization.

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When you want to ask, when you want to

start understanding or measuring how

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you're delivering service, both to your

internal and external customers and what,

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what impact that has on the bottom line.

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Upendra Varma: Let's talk about

churn and expansion here, right?

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I think since you've already

touched upon it, right?

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So how does churn look

like for you, right?

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So typically how, like, how long does

a customer stick with you and like,

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what's that percentage look like?

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GregRich: Oh, forever.

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They're here forever.

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No, no, I'm joking.

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So, so typically the customers, our

average tenure is about six years.

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Um, you know, and it, it does vary, uh,

depending on the size of the customer.

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Uh, our ICP customers have been with

us anywhere between nine and 12 years.

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You know, it's a significantly

longer period of time.

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It's a very sticky product when you start

getting into, you know, uh, customers

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that are really understanding and,

and, and, you know, using the value

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of the product within the organization

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Upendra Varma: And how does, and

then talk about that expansion

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strategy you have, right?

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So you, you, you mentioned that, you

know, one team goes on to, you know, yeah.

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So just like, how, how

is that working for you?

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Well, and maybe you can

just quantify that as well.

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GregRich: Yeah, quantifying is easy.

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So our, our, our net retention

is about 110 to 115%.

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So, you know, uh, whilst, whilst we

do lose some customers and obviously

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no, no organization or no company ever

wants to lose customers, but that's just

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the natural order of things that, that

just happens for, for various reasons.

372

Uh, you know, we are, um, you know,

the expansion within our existing

373

customer base is significantly

outweighing what we're, what we're

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losing from, from customer churn.

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Upendra Varma: And which

dimension is this along?

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Is this along the number of users that

they're using or is it along, you know,

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different product line or different, some

other team sort of adopting, you know,

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the platform, like which dimension is

this sort of extract revenue that you're

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generating from an existing customer?

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GregRich: Yeah, it does go in both

directions, actually, both sort

381

of vertically and horizontally.

382

Uh, what we find that, um, you know,

as product teams mature, they start

383

making or turning on features of

Avancio that allowed that team to scale.

384

So that's a big thing for them.

385

They start building out workflows,

automation, um, things like that.

386

So, so that obviously helps.

387

Uh, and like I said, the

other is horizontally.

388

They start looking at how those

service, how that tool can be

389

used to have advantage could be

used across their organization.

390

So they can start delivering the same kind

of service to their internal customers

391

as deliver to their external customers.

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Upendra Varma: Got it.

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So Greg, talk about the team today, right?

394

It's how many folks you have in your team

working and like, what do they work on?

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GregRich: So we have, uh, so as you

can tell from my accent, I'm originally

396

from the UK, uh, and, uh, half of our

team, in fact, more than half of our

397

team, about 70 percent of our team

are back in the UK at the moment.

398

We have about 45, 50 staff today.

399

Um, and like I said, you know, uh, a large

majority of those are back in the UK.

400

Um, uh, mainly, you know, the split

of that is most of our sales and

401

marketing team, uh, here in the U S.

402

Um, and we have some product support, you

know, implementation, um, professional

403

services teams that, uh, that reside

here to support our US customers.

404

And then back in the UK, we have our sort

of, uh, our main, uh, technical support

405

teams, engineering teams, uh, operational

support, DevOps, that, that kind of thing.

406

Yeah.

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Upendra Varma: And like, what's,

what's the vision here, Greg?

408

Like, where do you see your company going?

409

Let's say three to five years.

410

Like what's going to happen?

411

Are you going to raise an external funding

and, you know, pump, you know, pump up

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the growth or like, what's the plan here?

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GregRich: Yeah.

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So we, we, we've already gone

through one small round of funding,

415

uh, at the start of 2022, uh,

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Upendra Varma: how much did you raise?

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GregRich: Yeah, we raised 2

million, uh, in terms of debt, um,

418

and that was to help fuel growth.

419

And like I said, the company has

doubled in size, um, during that time.

420

And we've seen, uh, growth,

uh, of about 20 to 30%.

421

Um, and that the plan is

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Upendra Varma: But you've

423

Is that correct?

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GregRich: that's right.

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Yep, absolutely.

426

And then, uh, we've actually, you know,

we employed a CFO a few months ago,

427

uh, as part of our growth ambition.

428

And, uh, we've been working with

the CFO now, and we will be going

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out to the, to the wider community

at the start of September.

430

Uh, to look at an equity round,

what that number looks like.

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I can't tell you, I don't actually

know because we're kind of working on

432

the financial model now and we're kind

of finalizing that, that, uh, that,

433

that's that, um, the, the, the, the

deck and the, and the, and the sort of

434

go to market that goes along with that.

435

Um, but, but that's, that's

the plan for this year.

436

And then in terms of growth,

you know, um, it's a 26 billion

437

market, uh, which is growing 13%,

uh, year on year at the moment.

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Um, so, you know.

439

We have a huge, there's a huge opportunity

there for us, uh, in, in, uh, in becoming

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what I would from, from my perspective,

you know, I've always considered ourselves

441

to be a customer services organization

that develops service management

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software, not the other way around.

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Uh, you know, my vision is that, uh,

you know, we're seen as that, that we're

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seeing as the leader in terms of like how

our products and services can be used to

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really elevate the customer experience

and what that means to organizations.

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You know, that, that's a big thing for me.

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Um, and, and, and, you know, just.

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Yeah, both in terms of product and

in terms of the way that we, you

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know, we serve as our customers.

450

Upendra Varma: That's great.

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So, all right, Rick, thanks for

taking the time to talk to me.

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Hope you scale your venture

to much, much greater heights.

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GregRich: There's lovely

talking to you too.

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Yeah.

455

Thanks very, very much for your time.