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 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.

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.

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H1 Roadmap

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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.

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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.

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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.