Build a roadmap

Strategic Context & H1 Focus

Fernhill’s H1 north star is cutting independent restaurant monthly churn from 2.4% to 1.6%. Independent restaurants represent 82% of our accounts and 61% of revenue. Exit interviews clearly highlight the churn driver: administrative burden on deliveries and invoices.

Currently: * 56% of accounts use desktop receiving, but 71% write deliveries on paper at the door and re-type them later. * 76% of accounts upload invoices, but matching is entirely manual.

To reach our churn target, H1 execution is dedicated to eliminating manual reconciliation at the back door and in the back office. Calder Group ($186k ARR) is critical, but dedicating 12 squad-weeks to a custom report builder would derail the core churn goal and still risk missing their May renewal date. We address Calder with a targeted integration release and proactive commercial management.

---

H1 Roadmap

---

Squad Breakdown & Sequencing

#### Squad 1 (Receiving & Data) — 20 Squad-Weeks 1. Mobile Receiving (8 wks, Q1): Build a mobile-optimized receiving flow allowing kitchen staff to check off line items directly on their phone at the loading dock. Eliminates paper double-entry (71% of receiving workflows today). 2. Flag Short Deliveries at the Door (3 wks, Q1–Q2): Extends mobile receiving to instantly flag missing quantities, take a photo, and generate a shortage log directly linked to the order. 3. Automated ERP Export (4 wks, Q2): Scheduled and manual CSV/ERP data pipeline (FR-303, FR-339). Delivers automated raw financial/operational extracts before Calder’s May renewal. 4. Buffer & Mobile Rollout (5 wks, Q2): Ensures smooth adoption in noisy kitchen environments with flaky Wi-Fi.

#### Squad 2 (Invoicing & Finance) — 20 Squad-Weeks 1. New Invoice Parser (5 wks, Q1): Modernizes parsing infrastructure to extract line items, taxes, unit costs, and invoice numbers reliably. 2. Automated Invoice Matching (9 wks, Q1–Q2): Automatically matches invoice line items against purchase orders and received delivery logs. Discrepancies are flagged automatically. 3. Credit Note Tracking (3 wks, Q2): Pairs short-delivery logs generated in Squad 1 with incoming vendor credit notes, stopping suppliers from overcharging for missing goods. 4. Accounting Export with Credits (2 wks, Q2): Exports matched invoices and net credit adjustments directly into standard general ledgers. 5. Buffer & Edge Cases (1 wk, Q2): Absorbs parser edge cases and vendor invoice layout variations.

---

What We Are NOT Doing (and Why)

1. Custom Report Builder with Pivots (12 weeks): * Why: At 12 weeks, this would consume 30% of total H1 capacity for a single account. It cannot ship and stabilize before Calder's May renewal, and standard report daily usage is already healthy (212 accounts, Calder included). 2. 5-Level Approval Chains & Site-Level Permissions (10 weeks combined): * Why: Pure enterprise overhead. Does not solve the operational time sink driving 82% of accounts to churn. 3. Dark Mode & Multi-Currency (Non-core): * Why: Zero correlation to churn reduction or operational savings. 4. Catalogue Bulk Tools & Expansion: * Why: Catalogue usage is 100% saturated. The friction point is not creating items; it is receiving and paying for them.

---

What We Tell Calder Group

#### 1. Commercial Reality Check (Internal) Calder’s usage is up 20% year-over-year, and they use Standard Reports daily. Their threat to leave originated from an Account Manager conversation, not Customer Success or executive escalation. We will not over-index engineering capacity on an AM negotiation bluff.

#### 2. External Messaging (Fernhill VP of Product & Head of CS to Calder Exec Sponsor in March) * Lead with High-Value Clean Data: “A reporting tool is only as good as the input data. By shipping Mobile Receiving and Automated Matching in Q1, Fernhill ensures every invoice, delivery quantity, and supplier credit across all Calder sites is 100% accurate and audited in real time.” * Deliver the ERP Export (Ships April, ahead of May renewal): “Rather than forcing your finance team into a proprietary, rigid reporting UI inside Fernhill, we are releasing the Automated ERP/CSV Data Export in April. This allows Calder to stream clean, site-level operational and invoice data directly into your central ERP/BI stack (PowerBI/Tableau/Excel) with your custom formulas and pivot models.” * White-Glove Support: CS will construct scheduled, bespoke standard reporting extracts tailored to their multi-site leadership team during renewal discussions.

H1 decision: remove delivery-to-invoice admin

Prioritise the independent-restaurant workflow: receive once, capture shortages, match invoices, track credits, export without rework. The company outcome is monthly churn falling from 2.4% to 1.6% in the segment representing 82% of accounts and 61% of revenue.

The evidence supports this over enterprise reporting: - Receiving has 640 active accounts; 71% of uses involve desktop entry followed by retyping from paper. - Invoice upload reaches 870 accounts, but matching remains manual. - These workflow requests account for 33 log entries from 32 distinct non-Calder customers. That shows breadth, although we must verify which are independent restaurants. - Calder’s 14 entries represent one $186k account, not 14 independent demand signals. Duplicate requests and inconsistent ARR entries must not inflate priority.

Roadmap and capacity

Assign stable ownership: Squad A—Receiving & Integrations; Squad B—Invoice Automation. Dates are planning targets, subject to initial technical validation.

Capacity: each squad uses 10 weeks per quarter; total 40. This comprises 30 weeks of core feature work, four conditionally held for ERP export, and six for instrumentation, adoption and contingency. No hidden third squad or assumed spare engineering capacity.

Matching should start with high-confidence suggestions and explicit review of exceptions—not unattended financial decisions. Credit tracking follows completed matching; accounting export follows credits. Mobile receiving precedes shortage capture. The squads should agree shared delivery/invoice identifiers early, without inventing an additional prerequisite for matching.

Outcomes and decision gates

In January, baseline independent-restaurant admin time, receiving completion, matching effort and cohort churn. Recruit restaurants doing significant delivery/invoice work, including recently disengaged accounts—not just enthusiastic requesters.

Proposed release-success thresholds, to validate against those baselines: - Receiving: at least 30% less median time per delivery, including subsequent re-entry. - Invoices: at least 30% less manual reconciliation time, with no increase in material errors. - Adoption: at least half of pilot accounts repeatedly use the relevant workflow within four weeks.

Use a staggered rollout with comparable restaurant cohorts to assess improvement, rather than attributing every churn change to launches. Review workflow outcomes monthly and segment churn throughout H1; June churn alone may not capture the full effect of later releases.

If matching or mobile receiving slips, protect the core sequence: release the conditional ERP allocation first, then move later scope rather than bypassing quality checks.

ERP gate: by end-January, PM, CS and the account manager meet Calder’s actual users and renewal decision-maker. Confirm the job, current workaround, required fields, renewal significance and whether the four-week estimate covers acceptance criteria. Commit only if this is a valuable, bounded export—not a disguised report builder. Otherwise redirect those four weeks to core-workflow quality and adoption.

What we are not doing

• Custom report builder, pivots, site dashboards, scheduling and custom PDFs: insufficient breadth and weaker connection to the churn goal. The builder alone costs 12 weeks; it cannot fit alongside the core programme even if all ten non-core weeks were reclaimed.
• Approval chains, permissions, SSO and custom order fields: defer pending demonstrated retention, security or contractual necessity; none is established here.
• Catalogue expansion, bulk SKU tools, dark mode and multi-currency: defer. Catalogue’s universal usage does not establish that these additions reduce admin-related churn. Unestimated requests are not free extras.

What we tell Calder Group

“You’re important to Fernhill, and we want to understand what reporting prevents you from doing today. We are not committing to a custom report builder before your May renewal. Our H1 investment is delivery and invoice automation. We will assess whether a bounded ERP export or existing standard reports can meet your immediate need, and return with a written scope and credible timing.”

CS owns the renewal plan, with a January discovery meeting and an April executive checkpoint. Daily report usage and 20% overall usage growth do not prove safety—but an unverified “might leave” does not justify displacing the company’s retention strategy.

H1 roadmap: remove delivery and invoice admin

Prioritise the receiving-to-invoice workflow, not a general reporting platform. Our goal is to reduce independent-restaurant monthly churn from 2.4% to 1.6%. These customers represent 82% of accounts and 61% of revenue; their leading exit reason directly names delivery and invoice admin.

The evidence supports this choice: - Invoice upload reaches 76% of accounts, but matching remains manual. - Receiving reaches 56%, with substantial paper-to-desktop re-entry. - Mobile receiving, invoice matching and shortage flagging attracted requests from 9, 8 and 7 customers, respectively. - Calder’s multiple requests represent one $186,000 account, not repeated incremental ARR. Its renewal risk warrants investigation, but the report-builder threat is currently second-hand and usage is growing.

Sequenced delivery plan

Squad names below describe their H1 ownership. Estimates are squad-weeks; each squad has ten per quarter.

Capacity: committed feature builds total 30 of 40 squad-weeks. The other ten are explicitly allocated to rollout, quality, adoption and contingency—not assumed available for an extra large feature. Each squad stays within its quarterly limit.

The two squads must agree early on delivery-line identifiers, received quantities and discrepancy states. Invoice matching must still handle ordinary deliveries without waiting for shortage flagging.

Success measures and checkpoints

The primary measure is independent-restaurant monthly churn, tracked monthly against the 1.6% goal. Report results by adoption cohort, while recognising that adoption alone does not prove causation.

In the first two weeks, baseline: - Admin minutes per delivery and invoice. - Paper/re-entry frequency. - Manual matching effort, match accuracy and exception rate. - Credit resolution time.

Set numerical improvement targets after that baseline, rather than inventing savings from request counts. Confirm pilot customers include independent restaurants; the request log does not establish every requester’s segment.

At the Q1 review, assess mobile adoption, time saved and parser readiness. During Q2, expand releases only when accuracy and support burden are acceptable. If adoption is weak, spend the reserved capacity removing friction before widening scope.

What we are not doing

• Custom report builder this half: 12 weeks would take the selected feature programme to 42 weeks before rollout or contingency. Standard reporting has 19% penetration; Calder’s daily use makes its needs worth understanding, but does not establish broad demand for a builder.
• ERP export: four weeks is feasible in isolation, but is not presently justified ahead of workflow adoption and reliability. Revisit only with verified renewal requirements and an explicit capacity trade-off.
• Approval chains, site permissions and SSO: defer; they do not directly address the leading churn reason.
• Custom dashboards, scheduled reports, custom PDFs/fields, SKU tooling, more suppliers, dark mode and multi-currency: no H1 commitment. Several lack estimates, and universal catalogue usage is not evidence that catalogue enhancements will reduce churn.

What we tell Calder Group

Hold a joint PM, CS and account-manager conversation early in Q1—not just before May. Validate who requires the builder, which decisions it supports, and whether renewal actually depends on it.

Tell them:

> “Our H1 investment is reducing delivery and invoice administration. A custom report builder is not committed for this half. We want to understand your specific reporting gaps and test whether existing reports or a bounded export can meet them before renewal.”

Agree a written reporting-gap assessment and a pre-renewal checkpoint. Any newly verified retention requirement triggers a leadership trade-off decision—not an uncosted promise or a quiet roadmap diversion.