How a Vertical SaaS Company Built the Operations Manual They Needed to Sell Their Business — and Kept Using It to Run It Better Every Day
A SaaS company preparing to sell — with everything in people's heads and nothing documented
This client runs a vertical SaaS platform that provides end-to-end website hosting, content management, domain services, and personalization to affiliates of a large national nonprofit organization. With around 300 active client websites to maintain and new clients coming on regularly, the business runs a complex set of ongoing operations — all with a small, fully remote team of three people, each covering multiple roles.
The CEO came to us with a specific goal: she was preparing to sell the business, and she needed an operations manual that would make the handover possible. The buyer needed to be able to run the company with limited technical knowledge — following documented processes that reflected the quality of service clients had come to expect. Without that documentation, a sale couldn't realistically happen.
But the manual wasn't just for the buyer. In the meantime, it needed to serve as a working resource for the team — capturing every process, workflow, and guideline in one place so the day-to-day stopped depending on whoever happened to know how something was done.
A comprehensive operations manual built across 10 sessions — covering every role, process, and system in the business
We built a complete operations manual from scratch in Notion over 10 sessions, including two offboarding sessions — totalling 70 hours of knowledge extraction calls and 83 hours of BPC work. The manual has over 100 documented SOPs across all areas of the business and took five months to complete given the complexity of the operation.
The manual covers:
The business overview documents who they are, what they offer, their full tech stack, and how the three-tier structure of the organization they serve operates — giving any new team member or future owner immediate context for the business they're running.
Because the team is small and everyone covers multiple roles, the org chart and job descriptions were built to reflect that reality — documenting each person's roles separately so that SOPs stay role-specific rather than person-specific. That separation is what makes the manual usable for future hires or a new owner, regardless of how the team is structured at the time.
The SOPs hub is the core of the manual, structured around the full client journey and every function the team performs: client journey workflows from first contact through acquisition; setup project SOPs covering onboarding, site setup, go-live, and step-by-step completion; post-setup support SOPs for helpdesk ticket handling, user lockouts, DNS records, and knowledge base updates; client relations SOPs including newsletter and promotion campaign workflows and handling demanding clients; news track SOPs for posting workflows and broadcast platform guidelines; plugin and feature SOPs covering WordPress updates, troubleshooting, and custom feature guidelines; systems and network SOPs for server logs, Zapier, accessibility, network troubleshooting, and information security policy; and management and admin SOPs covering hiring, onboarding, billing, and Stripe payments.
Each role also has a dedicated responsibilities table — a structured database listing every responsibility, its frequency, and a direct link to the relevant SOP. This makes it immediately clear what each role owns and where to find the process for it.
The agendas and templates section was built to cover every communication and meeting the team needs: demo meeting, daily stand-up, kick-off, and final walkthrough agendas; email templates for every client-facing and internal situation; and a full set of forms including a demo request form, contact form, helpdesk ticket form, and support token form.
The tutorials and training section centralizes all learning resources: internal video tutorials, a staff code wiki, external tool documentation, and links to knowledge bases and help centers for every platform they use — Notion, MailChimp, WordPress, Gravity Forms, Calendly, Freshdesk, Smartsheet, Stripe, Cloudflare, Wordfence, and more.
The company directory was built in three parts: internal team contacts, a directory with key contacts at the national organization they serve, and an external partners directory covering their attorney, CPA, and other service providers.
New hire onboarding quizzes were built inside Notion with both a frontend for new hires and a backend for editing — allowing the team to verify knowledge before hands-on training begins and to keep the quizzes updated as the manual evolves.
Custom KPI trackers built in Notion — so the business can measure what matters
Several months after the operations manual was complete, the client came back for a second project: building KPI trackers for the whole team.
We started by reviewing the operations manual, identifying and proposing KPIs for each role — covering what to track, how frequently, and how each metric would be calculated. We reviewed the proposed KPIs with the client, refined them, and built the final tracker in Notion.
KPIs were built for every role: CEO, digital content creator, customer service rep, client relations manager, project manager, main programmer, and systems admin. For each KPI, we built a Notion database where the team can input data at the relevant frequency, and the trackers automatically calculates the KPI value and displays it in a chart.
The trackers covers metrics including monthly recurring revenue, new affiliates signed, affiliate churn rate, email campaign open and click-through rates, first response SLA, resolution SLA, affiliate interaction frequency, and average setup cycle time — among others.
A business ready to be sold — and a team running more consistently in the meantime
The team now has a single place where all their procedures, processes, and guidelines live — and they're actively using it day-to-day. The manual is structured to work for the current team and for any future owner: role-specific rather than person-specific, clear enough to follow with limited technical background, and thorough enough to cover every function of the business.
The business is now ready to be sold. The operations manual gives a prospective buyer everything they need to understand how the business works and run it from day one. The client is currently in active negotiations.
KPI trackers gives the team visibility into the metrics that matter — by role, automatically calculated, and tracked over time — so performance isn't just felt, it's measured.
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