Sprint scenario

A Nordic SaaS company has built a successful CRM platform for mid-sized businesses. Growth has been strong, customers are loyal and the product has steadily expanded around the everyday needs of sales teams.

But AI is beginning to change the SaaS landscape. New AI-native competitors are emerging, established capabilities are becoming easier to replicate and expectations of what software should actually do are changing quickly.

Ahead of an upcoming board discussion, investors are becoming increasingly cautious. They want management to answer a simple question: How is the company positioned for an AI-shaped market?

The company doesn't need another list of possible AI features. It needs to understand where customer value is moving—and what that could mean for the future of the platform.

That becomes the challenge for the Sprint.

Meet Faroud

Faroud is one of the fictional archetypes in the AI Business Council, representing an experienced entrepreneur and investor now building his third venture. His challenge provides the starting point for this AIBC Lab sprint.

The challenge

What should our platform become as AI changes what customers can do for themselves?

Find the opportunity

Where is customer value moving?

We start outside-in, using market intelligence to explore how the jobs, pains and expectations of sales leaders and sales teams are changing as AI becomes more capable.

The CRM already gives customers enormous amounts of information: contacts, activities, pipeline stages, previous interactions, forecasts and performance data.

But one tension begins to stand out. Sales teams don't necessarily need more information about what has happened. They need greater help understanding what should happen next.

We explore that need across different sales situations. Which opportunities deserve attention? Where is momentum disappearing? Who is missing from the buying conversation? What could increase the probability of moving an opportunity forward?

That suggests a different role for the platform. Could the CRM move from recording sales activity to actively helping salespeople make their next move?

That becomes the opportunity we take forward.

Bring the opportunity to life

What could the CRM do differently?

We turn the opportunity into a simple concept: an Opportunity Coach. The idea is to explore what could happen if the CRM moved beyond documenting the sales process and started helping salespeople understand where to focus and what to consider doing next.

We bring the concept to life through a few realistic sales situations and explore it from different customer perspectives.

Would salespeople find this genuinely useful? Where could it add value to the existing CRM experience? And what would make them trust the recommendations?

The objective isn't to design the finished product. It is to make the opportunity tangible enough to explore whether it could represent a meaningful future direction for the platform.

From CRM as a system of record towards CRM as a system of recommendation.

Prepare the next move

Is this where the platform should move next?

We bring the concept back to the original investor question.

Does the company have the data, customer relationships and product capabilities to credibly move in this direction? Which existing assets become more valuable in an AI-shaped market? What new capabilities would be required? And which assumptions need to be validated before committing significant product investment?

The Sprint doesn't attempt to define the company's complete AI strategy or build a new feature.

Instead, it turns a broad concern about AI disruption into one tangible opportunity management can evaluate, discuss and potentially develop further.

Potential sprint outcome

Market Opportunity

An outside-in perspective on how AI is changing sales expectations and where customer value may be moving.

Future Product Concept

An initial proposition showing how the CRM could evolve from recording sales activity towards helping users decide what to do next.

New Title

AI Readiness Decision Case

A recommendation on whether the opportunity merits further development and which capabilities and assumptions should be explored next.

More sprint challenges