Case study · Martech SaaS
A $30M ARR Martech SaaS had strong revenue but a reactive product organization: feature decisions came from stakeholder opinions, not strategy. I codified the product strategy, built outcome-based roadmaps with evidence gates, and instrumented delivery. Over nine months strategy-aligned work rose from 35% to 90% and NRR from 102% to 112%. The method transfers to any organization shipping without evidence.
30 minutes. No pitch, no deck.
Two numbers moved, both of them tracked by the company before I arrived. Each tile states the metric, the reading before and after, and what was being measured over which period.
Net revenue retention
102% to 112%
+10 points +10 pts
$30M ARR Martech SaaS. Net revenue retention across the existing customer base, measured over a nine-month engagement.
Strategy-aligned work
35% to 90%
+55 points +55 pts
Roadmap items aligned with the stated business strategy, same nine-month window.
Figures from the client's own analytics. Before readings are the trailing period prior to the engagement. Nothing is modeled, estimated or rounded.
Four facts, so you can decide in five seconds whether this is your company. If three of the four match, the rest of the page is worth your time.
Stage
$30M ARR, strong revenue and profitable, but growth was slowing.
Product
A global media and Martech company. The company name cannot be revealed due to NDA.
Team
Three product managers and four engineering squads, over a nine-month engagement.
The bottleneck
Only 35% of roadmap items were aligned with the stated business strategy.
01
Only 35% of roadmap items were aligned with the stated business strategy. The remaining 65% reflected individual stakeholder requests, legacy commitments, or undocumented assumptions. The team was shipping features without evidence that any of them moved the metrics that mattered.
When I joined this global media and Martech company as Fractional CPO, their success had created a hidden challenge: growth was slowing because product work had become reactive. Feature decisions were largely driven by stakeholder opinions rather than strategic alignment.
The result was a bloated backlog, competing priorities, and limited visibility into how shipped work actually impacted revenue. A strong, profitable team lacked a clear connection between strategy and execution, leading to "output over outcomes."
The company needed a systematic way to connect business strategy to product execution, prioritize based on evidence rather than opinion, and measure whether shipped features actually drove retention and expansion revenue.
02
As a fractional CPO, unlike an interim CPO, I led the transformation from reactive feature delivery to strategy-led product management. The engagement was structured to build lasting capability, not just deliver a plan and leave.
Decisions I owned
I worked directly with three product managers and four engineering squads over a nine-month engagement.
03
The transformation addressed four layers: making strategy explicit, connecting roadmaps to outcomes, gating initiatives with evidence, and instrumenting delivery health.
Move one
Defined the business strategy clearly, then derived a measurable product strategy directly from it. Every roadmap item could now be tested against a documented "why."
Move two
Built quarterly roadmaps focused on outcomes, not just features, with strict capacity guardrails. Each quarter started with the question "what metric must move?" rather than "what should we build?"
Move three
Introduced gates for initiatives: every project had to link to KPIs like NRR, ARPU, or activation before getting resourced. No link to a business metric meant no engineering time.
Move four
Instrumented feature-level analytics and DORA metrics (deployment frequency, lead time, change failure rate) to track delivery health and connect velocity to business value.
04
Strategy-aligned work moved from 35% to 90% and NRR from 102% to 112% over a nine-month engagement.
Within nine months, the product organization shifted from reactive feature delivery to a strategy-led operating model with measurable outcomes across retention, efficiency, and expansion revenue. Deployment frequency doubled.
Feature waste fell 30%, a reduction in low-use features. Effective R&D capacity rose 20% and expansion revenue grew 15%.
The full figures are in the results card above and come from the client's own analytics.
Three principles from this engagement that hold outside Martech software. They are the part worth stealing whether or not your product looks anything like this one. The same evidence discipline is what makes a go-to-market plan and a revenue forecast hold up outside the roadmap.
01
Codifying the strategy first means every roadmap item can be tested against a clear why, and without that anchor prioritization is just politics.
02
Requiring every initiative to link to NRR, ARPU or activation stops the loudest-voice-wins dynamic, because stakeholders learn to bring data rather than opinions.
03
Deployment frequency and lead time together show whether a team is shipping faster and smarter rather than only one of the two, because velocity without direction is waste.
Let's discuss how a Fractional CPO can turn feature delivery into measurable growth.
30 minutes. No pitch, no deck.
Thirty minutes with Sivan Kadosh. Bring the number that is not moving and I will tell you what I would do about it, whether or not you hire me.
Book a Product Strategy SessionClient references are published at /references/, and further references are available on request.
