Build a roadmap

Strategic Overview

Our H1 goal is to reduce independent restaurant churn from 2.4% to 1.6% per month. Independents represent 82% of our accounts and 61% of our revenue. Exit surveys point to one glaring issue: "too much admin; didn't save us time on deliveries and invoices."

Usage and request data confirm this friction: * Deliveries: 56% of accounts use the desktop receiving checklist, and 71% of those print it on paper and manually re-type it later. * Invoices: 76% of accounts upload invoices, but 100% of matching to orders/deliveries is manual. * Demand: Out of 40 feature requests from independent restaurants in the last six months, 33 are for Receiving and Invoicing workflow improvements.

We have 40 squad-weeks across two squads in H1. We will dedicate one squad to Invoicing Automation and the other to Mobile Receiving, with a small allocation in Q2 to protect the Calder Group renewal without derailing our core strategy.

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H1 Roadmap Table

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Execution Plan & Sequencing

#### Squad A: End-to-End Invoicing (19 of 20 weeks) Squad A will spend the entire half building a seamless, automated invoicing pipeline. 1. New Invoice Parser (Q1, Weeks 1–5): Required foundation. 2. Automated Invoice Matching (Q1 Week 6 – Q2 Week 4): Our second most-requested feature by independents (8 requests). Automatically reconciles uploaded invoices against delivery records. 3. Credit Note Tracking (Q2, Weeks 5–7): Requested 5 times. Ensures restaurants actually recover money when suppliers shortchange them. 4. Accounting Export with Credits (Q2, Weeks 8–9): Requested 4 times. Pushes clean, reconciled data into their accounting tools. Week 10 is reserved as buffer for edge-case supplier invoice formats.

#### Squad B: Receiving & Strategic Retention (20 of 20 weeks) Squad B will solve physical delivery admin first, then pivot to a targeted retention play. 1. Mobile Receiving (Q1, Weeks 1–8): Our #1 most-requested feature (9 requests). Lets kitchen staff check off deliveries on their phones at the back door, killing the clipboards-and-retyping workflow. 2. Flag Short Deliveries at the Door (Q1 Week 9 – Q2 Week 1): Requested 7 times. Allows staff to log missing items on their phone during check-in. (Bonus: This creates the exact data needed for Squad A’s Automated Invoice Matching and Credit Note Tracking). 3. ERP Export CSV Variant (Q2, Weeks 2–5): Delivered by early May ahead of Calder Group’s renewal. 4. Workflow Polish & Onboarding (Q2, Weeks 6–10): Shipping features doesn't lower churn unless customers use them. Squad B will spend the final 5 weeks removing friction from mobile/invoicing onboarding to ensure we hit the 1.6% churn target.

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What We Are Not Doing (and Why)

• Custom Report Builder (12 wks) & Reporting Add-ons: Only 19% of accounts use standard reports today. Spending 30% of our H1 capacity here starves our core receiving/invoicing workflows and guarantees we miss our churn goal.
• Enterprise Admin (Approval chains - 6 wks, Site permissions - 4 wks, SSO - 3 wks): Zero independent restaurants asked for these. Building them turns us into bespoke enterprise software at the expense of 82% of our user base.
• Catalogue Additions / Bulk SKU Tools: Catalogue already has 100% usage and isn't driving churn. Our Ops team can handle urgent supplier catalogue additions manually.
• Dark Mode & Multi-Currency: Low request volume (3 total) and zero impact on admin time savings.

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What We Tell Calder Group ($186k ARR)

The Reality: Calder’s usage is up 20% YoY, they use standard reports daily, and they haven't complained to CS. The renewal risk is likely an Account Manager hedging their bets. However, $186k is significant, so we shouldn't ignore them entirely.

The Pitch (Delivered jointly by Product, CS, and the AM): 1. Lead with Operational Value: Show them Mobile Receiving and Automated Invoice Matching shipping in Q1/early Q2. Across their multiple sites, eliminating paper receiving and manual invoice reconciliation will save their site managers hundreds of hours a month. 2. Solve the Underlying Reporting Need: Explain that we are not building a custom pivot-table builder inside Fernhill this half because we are focused on core operational automation. Instead, we are building their requested Custom ERP CSV Export in April (before their May renewal). This allows them to pull granular, site-level data directly into their existing ERP/BI tools (or Excel) to build whatever custom pivots and dashboards they need. 3. Bridge the Gap with CS: Have Customer Success set up a weekly manual email of their daily standard reports so they don't have to pull them manually.

Fernhill H1 Roadmap: Receiving and Invoicing First

The call

Both squads spend most of the half on the two jobs independent restaurants say we don't save them time on: checking deliveries and reconciling invoices. That accounts for 30 of our 40 squad-weeks. Of the remaining 10, 8 go to Calder Group's two most concrete asks (ERP export and site-level permissions) and 2 stay in reserve. We are not building the custom report builder this half.

Why

• The goal is independent-restaurant churn, and the exit reason is admin on deliveries and invoices. Those two themes make up 33 of the 53 requests in the log, from about 30 accounts across support, sales and in-app feedback:
• Mobile receiving: 9 requests
• Flag short deliveries: 7
• Invoice matching: 8
• Credit notes: 5
• Accounting export with credits: 4
• Usage shows where the admin sits.
• 56% of accounts use the receiving checklist, but 71% of those checks are re-typed from paper.
• 76% upload invoices, and every one is matched by hand.
• Standard reports, the nearest thing to a report builder, are used by 19%.
• Calder's 14 requests come from one person: their account manager. Calder hasn't raised the report builder with Customer Success. Their usage is up 20% and they use standard reports daily. "Might leave" is a signal worth acting on, but it doesn't justify 12 squad-weeks (30% of the half) and pushing back a churn lever. ERP export is the one Calder ask that appears twice in the log (FR-303, FR-339), and it costs 4 weeks.

Order of work

I'm assuming calendar quarters (Q1 Jan–Mar, Q2 Apr–Jun) and May as the renewal month.

Squad A (Receiving) 1. Mobile receiving (weeks 1–8). This is the biggest single fix for paper re-typing, and flag short deliveries depends on it. 2. ERP export for Calder (weeks 9–12, finishing about mid-April). It goes before short-delivery flags so it lands before Calder's May renewal rather than during it. 3. Flag short deliveries (weeks 13–15). 4. Site-level permissions (weeks 16–19). This is the default. If the Calder working session (below) surfaces something cheaper that matters more to them, such as scheduled report emails, we swap it in. Report scheduling was asked for twice but hasn't been sized yet. 5. 1 week buffer.

Squad B (Invoicing) 1. New invoice parser (weeks 1–5). 2. Invoice matching (weeks 6–14). 3. Credit note tracking (weeks 15–17). 4. Accounting export with credits (weeks 18–19). 5. 1 week buffer.

Squad B's chain is strictly sequential, so any slip pushes everything after it. The 1-week buffer is thin. If the parser runs long, we drop the accounting export to H2 rather than squeeze matching.

How we'll know it's working

Churn moves slowly, and the big items ship mid-half, so we won't get all the way from 2.4% to 1.6% from features alone by June. We'll track leading indicators monthly:

• Receiving: share of checks started on a phone, and share re-typed from paper. Target: re-typing down from 71% to under 30% by June.
• Invoicing: share of uploaded invoices auto-matched, and time from invoice upload to approval.
• Churn: monthly churn among accounts using mobile receiving or matching, compared with those that don't.

What we're not doing, and why

• Custom report builder, custom dashboards per site (Calder). 12+ weeks for one account. It would push invoice matching into H2. The low usage of standard reports doesn't suggest wider demand. We'll first find out what Calder actually needs.
• Approval chains with 5 levels (6), SSO (3), custom fields on orders, custom PDF invoices (Calder). Single-account asks with no link to the churn goal. We'll revisit in H2 with Calder's input.
• Bulk SKU import v2 and bulk edit for SKUs (Calder). Not sized and single-account. We'll size them in H2 if Calder confirms they matter.
• More suppliers (3 requests). Not sized, and not tied to the churn reason.
• Dark mode (2) and multi-currency (1). Low demand and off-goal.

A data note: Customers 553 and 294 each appear with two different ARR figures. It doesn't change any decision here, but RevOps should fix it.

What we tell Calder Group

The account manager and Customer Success should go together, in the first two weeks of Q1, well ahead of May. Customer Success needs to be in the room because Calder hasn't raised any of this with them. The message:

> "You've asked for a lot through your account manager, and we want to get the important things right before your renewal. Two commitments this half: ERP export in your format by mid-April, and site-level permissions by end of June. We're not building a full custom report builder in this period, and we'd rather tell you that now than slip it later. You use our standard reports every day, so we'd like a working session with your team to see the reports you run and the questions you can't answer yet. Scheduled report emails or saved views may get you most of the way sooner, and what we learn shapes our H2 reporting plans."

We don't promise a report builder date. If Calder makes it a hard condition of renewal after that session, it comes back to me and leadership as an explicit trade: the 12 weeks would come out of credit notes, the accounting export and short-delivery flags, which would weaken the churn goal.

Roadmap table

Fernhill roadmap, Q1 and Q2

The call: Both squads go to the company goal: deliveries and invoices, the top reasons independents give for leaving. Calder gets a bounded share of capacity, not the roadmap. Calder's report builder can't ship before May, so we tell them that directly and commit to a scoped plan.

Why this split: - The receiving and invoice chains (30 of 40 squad-weeks) serve 32 different non-Calder accounts. Mobile receiving and flagging short deliveries touch 16 accounts. Invoice matching, credit notes and the accounting export touch 16. - Calder has 14 of the 53 requests, but they come from one account. Every Calder-only item totals 29 squad-weeks (report builder, ERP export, site permissions, SSO, approval chains). Taking all of it would consume 73% of the half. - Usage backs the sequence. 56% of accounts use the receiving checklist, but 71% of uses start on a desktop and get re-typed from paper, so mobile receiving removes that step. Invoice matching is manual for the 76% of accounts that upload invoices.

Capacity: 2 squads × 10 squad-weeks per quarter. The plan uses 40 of 40, with a 1-week spike per squad left at the end of Q2 for report builder scoping.

Dependencies are the risk. Item 2 gates the invoice chain. If the parser slips, items 3, 6 and 7 slip with it, and the invoice outcome misses the half. I'd rather flag that now than hide it inside the plan. If the parser runs over, the first move is to pull the Calder-only site permissions work (item 8) back into the buffer.

Measures: Time per delivery receipt and percentage of invoices auto-matched, tracked per cohort. Independent-restaurant churn (2.4% → 1.6% a month) is the outcome. We won't claim the roadmap alone moves it.

What we're not doing, and why

• Full custom report builder (12 weeks). It's 60% of one squad's half, for one account, and the earliest it ships is around the May renewal with no slack. We do a scoping spike and commit to a decision date, not a build date.
• SSO (3) and approval chains with 5 levels (6). Calder only, and the 5-level approvals request is a niche configuration. H2 candidates, to be revisited with Calder.
• Custom PDF invoices, custom order fields, per-site dashboards, bulk SKU import v2 and bulk SKU edit. All Calder-only, none estimated. Not in H1.
• Dark mode (2 accounts), multi-currency (1 account), more suppliers (3 accounts). Low demand, no estimates. Parked, not rejected.
• Scheduled reports by email (Calder, 2 requests). Not estimated. It goes into the spike as a candidate for a smaller Calder deliverable.

What we tell Calder Group

1. Customer Success calls them this week, not the account manager alone. They haven't raised the report builder with CS, and "might leave" is the kind of risk that surfaces too late.
2. Be direct about the report builder: it's a substantial build, it won't land before May, and we won't promise a date we can't keep.
3. What they get in H1: the ERP export in the format they asked for, shipping around early May, and site-level permissions by the end of June.
4. The report builder: we scope it with them in June, and we commit to an H2 decision date by the end of June. We don't commit to a build date until the spike returns.
5. Ask them two things: which reports they run daily (we know they use standard reports), and what minimum output would cover them until the full builder ships. Their answer decides whether scheduled email reports move up.

Asks for leadership: confirm Calder's renewal status and ARR before the CS call, and approve the spike's two squad-weeks. If Calder won't engage on the scoped plan, we should know before the roadmap is shared externally.