How Xelix took its services team from configuration work to consulting and kept implementation CSAT above 4.8

Xelix is an AI-native accounts payable automation platform. Built from the ground up with AI embedded across every layer of the product, it has grown consistently year on year since its founding. The company completed a Series B with Insight Partners last year and continues to expand its global customer base across complex, multi-ERP environments.

Aliya joined as VP of Services and Support to professionalise and scale an organisation that had been managing implementation informally. When she arrived, the services team numbered four people. Eighteen months later it stands at eighteen, with 80 percent of the team holding Python engineering skills alongside either project management or support consulting responsibilities, a deliberately technical profile that gives the team end-to-end control over every implementation.

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The Roadblocks Before Rocketlane

When Aliya joined as VP of Services and Support, Xelix was at an inflection point. The business had grown rapidly, and with that growth came a natural opportunity to formalise and scale the way the services team operated. Her focus from day one was on building the structure, tooling, and methodology that would support the team through the next stage of expansion.

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Establishing a shared methodology

The team had been using monday.com for project management, and while it served its purpose, each project manager brought their own structure to how they organised their plans. For a growing team that included Python engineers working alongside project managers, creating a consistent baseline would give new joiners a clear starting point and free senior staff to focus on delivery rather than setup.

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Bringing customers closer to the project

Project updates were shared through emails and SharePoint, which worked well for straightforward engagements. As projects grew in complexity, Aliya saw an opportunity to give customers a more connected experience  a single, always-current view of their project rather than relying on documents shared at intervals.

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Building a data foundation for decisions

Without a time-card system, the team had limited visibility into how capacity was being used across billable and non-billable activities. Aliya wanted to put in place the data infrastructure that would allow her to make confident decisions about resourcing, headcount, and team performance as the organisation scaled.

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How Rocketlane changed the way the team works

Aliya had first encountered Rocketlane through an invitation to Propel, a professional services community event. When she began evaluating PSA tools after joining Xelix, her non-negotiables were clear: reporting, resource management, and project management in one place.

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A methodology that scales without depending on individuals

Xelix's implementation methodology, covering initiation, design, development and integration, training and testing, go-live, and hypercare, now lives in Rocketlane as a set of structured templates. Each phase maps to the modules Xelix sells, with tasks assigned to internal roles (project manager, technical consultant, project management support) and to customer-side contacts including the AP lead, IT contact, and customer PM. When new hires join, the template tells them exactly what is expected at each step.

"The one thing they don't have to worry about is the project steps they need to take. You're not figuring things out. You're not setting up a project plan from scratch. It exists already."

The role structure has also proved practical when team composition shifts. When Xelix hired a cohort of junior PMs who could support but not lead projects, Aliya added a "project management support" role in the system, updated the templates, and the scope of those new hires' responsibilities was immediately visible to everyone on the project.

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Customer visibility that removes ambiguity

The Rocketlane customer portal replaced the cycle of emailed updates and versioned spreadsheets. Customers can now see the live project timeline, compare it against the original baseline, review status reports, and filter down to the tasks assigned specifically to them. Project sponsors who want a quick read on health and progress can access it any time without needing to contact the Xelix team.

"There's no hiding behind 'I didn't have the latest project status.' It's all just a web page. As long as we're keeping our project plan updated, they are kept updated as well."

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The coach demo: an adoption practice borrowed from Rocketlane's own onboarding

During Xelix's own onboarding to Rocketlane, Aliya went through a "reverse demo", presenting back what she had learned before going live. She found the interaction genuinely useful: it surfaced what she knew, flagged what she might need later, and gave her confidence as the tool's internal administrator. She adapted the approach for Xelix's own customer implementations, renaming it the "coach demo" after early feedback that "reverse demo" sounded confrontational.

The coach demo is now a mandatory part of the Xelix go-live checklist. A customer subject matter expert walks the Xelix project team through how they would use the software, and sign-off is contingent on it being completed. No customer has refused. The added benefit: it identifies who the product champion is in the customer organisation, which gives the support team a clear point of contact when tickets come in post-go-live.

"We basically say: we'll sign your go-live. It's a part of the sign-off. It's in our checklist that the coach demo has been done."

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Time-card data as an operational foundation

The team logs time against both billable project activities and non-billable work, including pre-sales support,, account management assistance, post-go-live customer activities. This data now informs headcount planning (if everyone is at capacity in April and the pipeline is set to double the customer base, hiring decisions get made earlier), utilisation rate analysis, and the team's bonus structure, which Xelix introduced last year and which required reliable activity data to calculate fairly.

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What comes next

Xelix's growth targets remain ambitious, and the services team is expected to scale further as the customer base expands. Aliya's current focus is on building line management capability from within the team rather than importing external managers, giving high-performing individual contributors a structured path into leadership. The data Rocketlane already surfaces on capacity and utilisation will be central to making the resourcing case as that growth accelerates.

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