Technology
Grow without losing what your company knows.
Modern systems and AI for technology companies, with your people in charge of the product, the customer and the code.
Technology
Check what sales promised against the signed contract.
Anything promised in sales emails that is not in the contract is flagged before onboarding starts, so it gets settled before the kickoff call.
Illustration: a handover compares what sales promised in emails with the signed contract, and flags the one promise that is not in the contract.
Illustration. Names and details are invented.
What we hear
Where the work gets stuck
Four problems we hear from founders, operators and finance leads of growing technology companies.
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What the company knows is scattered.
Answers live in tickets, chat threads, old documents and a few long-serving heads.
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Engineers lose hours to slow tools and processes.
Engineers spend hours a week searching, waiting on answers and working around old code.
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Customers get lost between sales and onboarding.
Between the sale, onboarding and support, what was promised gets lost, and customers repeat themselves.
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Too many tools, no clear owner.
Each team buys its own software and AI tools. Costs climb, and no one can say who sees what.
The insight
Where the week goes
More than two in three developers say they lose a working day a week. Sales reps spend most of their time on work that is not selling.
Sources: Atlassian with DX and Wakefield Research, State of Developer Experience 2024 (more than 2,100 developers and managers); Salesforce, State of Sales, 6th edition, 2024 (5,500 sales professionals). Also: Stack Overflow, 2024: 61% of developers spend more than 30 minutes a day searching for answers.
Read this chart as a list
Two bars. A developer’s 40-hour week: 8 hours or more lost to inefficiencies (one working day), leaving 32 hours or fewer. 69% of developers say they lose 8 hours or more a week (Atlassian, 2024). A sales rep’s time: 30% selling and 70% on admin, meeting preparation and other non-selling tasks (Salesforce, 2024).
The numbers
What is at stake
Every figure is from the named public source and year. Select a source to read it.
69%
of developers say they lose 8 hours or more a week. Most blame technical debt or poor documentation.
61%
of developers spend more than 30 minutes a day searching for answers or solutions.
70%
of a sales rep’s time goes on tasks other than selling, reps report.
152
software-as-a-service apps, on average, at companies with up to 500 employees. Across all companies Zylo tracks, SaaS spend averages $4,830 per employee.
Stage by stage
Where company work slips
Choose a stage to see what slips today, where AI can help and what your people decide.
Stage 1 Sell
- What slips today
- Reps spend most of their time on work that is not selling.
- Where AI can help
- Pull account notes, usage and past emails into a short brief before each call.
- Your people decide
- What to offer, and at what price.
70%
of a rep’s time goes on tasks other than selling. Salesforce, State of Sales, 2024
Stage 2 Hand off to onboarding
- What slips today
- What was promised in the sale gets lost on the way to onboarding.
- Where AI can help
- Draft a hand-off brief from CRM notes, call notes and the signed contract.
- Your people decide
- The onboarding plan the customer sees.
What it looks like
Onboarding starts knowing what the customer was promised. The account owner corrects the brief first.
Stage 3 Build the product
- What slips today
- Engineers lose hours searching for answers and working around old code.
- Where AI can help
- Answer “why did we build it this way?” from your own tickets and notes, with links to the source.
- Your people decide
- What changes in the code, through your usual review.
61%
of developers spend more than 30 minutes a day searching for answers. Stack Overflow Developer Survey, 2024
Stage 4 Support customers
- What slips today
- Customers repeat themselves between sales, onboarding and support.
- Where AI can help
- Give each support person the account’s full history in one place.
- Your people decide
- The answer, and any promise to the customer.
What it looks like
The support lead sees the contract, the onboarding notes and past tickets before replying.
Stage 5 Renew
- What slips today
- The warning signs sit in usage, tickets and billing, and are seen too late.
- Where AI can help
- One weekly view of the accounts that need attention before renewal.
- Your people decide
- What to do, and who calls.
What it looks like
The customer-success lead can see at-risk accounts well before the renewal date.
Stage 6 Run the tools
- What slips today
- Each team buys its own tools, and customer data spreads.
- Where AI can help
- Keep one list of tools and AI services, with an owner for each and who can see what.
- Your people decide
- Which tools stay, and who has access.
152
software-as-a-service apps, on average, at companies with up to 500 employees. Zylo, SaaS Management Index, 2025
Where we would start
Three places to start
Each one uses information you already have. Your people make the decisions.
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Answers from your own records.
Engineers ask a question such as “why did we build it this way?” and get an answer drawn from the company’s own tickets, documents and decision notes, with links back to the source. Changes to the code still go through your usual review.
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A clean hand-off from sale to onboarding.
When a deal closes, a hand-off brief is drafted from the CRM notes, call notes and the signed contract. The account owner checks and corrects it before the customer sees a plan.
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Early warning on renewals.
One weekly view brings together product usage, support tickets and billing, and flags the accounts that need attention before renewal. The customer-success lead decides what to do and who calls.
- Your tools today: Support tickets, CRM, Chat and Billing
- One account history, owned by your firm
- Your people decide
The difference
What changes with Joan
- Engineers can spend more of the week building and less of it searching.
- New people can find answers in the company’s own records, so they get up to speed sooner.
- The hand-off carries what was promised, so customers need to repeat themselves less.
- Each tool and AI service has a clear owner, you can see who has access to customer data, and what your team knows stays the company’s.
Client work
Already at work in Technology.
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Plug and Play Tech CenterAI operations and sales go-to-market for high-growth startups: workshops for founder cohorts, and one-to-one mentoring.Read the Plug and Play Tech Center story
Security and compliance
What your compliance officer will ask
Three plain answers. Joan builds the controls; your firm decides how they meet its own obligations.
Will this help with our customers’ security reviews?
We write down the controls we build, so your team can describe them in its answers: named sign-in, access lists, approvals, read-only access where it matters and an audit trail.
Is our customers’ data used to train AI?
Joan does not train or fine-tune AI models on client data. When we set up AI for your team, we use business plans such as Microsoft Copilot or Claude Team. Their terms say your data is not used to train the provider’s models unless your organization chooses to share it.
Where does our data go when AI answers a question?
When AI answers a question, the request is processed by the AI provider you use, such as Microsoft, Google, Anthropic or OpenAI, under that provider’s business terms. We build in your own cloud and business accounts wherever we can, so the systems and records stay yours.
Keep reading
Useful for every firm
- How to keep your firm’s know-how when you change AI modelsModels are rented. What your firm knows, and how it works, should not be. Read the article
- Deciding which work goes to AI, and who checks itBuying AI licenses is the easy part. The value comes from deciding which work goes to AI, and who checks it. Read the article
- What your AI is allowed to accessThe useful question is what your AI can reach when it gets something wrong. Read the article
Next step
Tell us where the work gets stuck.
Tell us what slows your teams down. Please leave out customer data and credentials.
Start a conversation