In the world of SaaS—especially in complex verticals like healthcare—the line between Product, Pre-Sales, and Implementation can sometimes feel like a blur. Who owns the customer problem? Who determines the solution? Who ensures it's delivered on time and as promised?

If you’ve ever sat in a room where everyone thinks they're responsible for the same thing—or worse, no one is—you’re not alone.

Let’s take a moment to clarify the distinct (yet interconnected) roles of Product, Pre-Sales, and Implementation, and how organizations can build clear swim lanes to avoid duplication, misalignment, and dropped balls.

1. The Role of Product: Defining the “Why” and the “What”

The Product team is the strategic brain of the operation. Product’s job is to deeply understand customer needs, market trends, regulatory requirements, and technical constraints, and then define what should be built to drive business outcomes.

Key Responsibilities:

• Conduct user research and market analysis

• Define product vision, roadmap, and OKRs

• Translate user problems into clear, prioritized requirements

• Work cross-functionally with design, engineering, marketing, and sales

• Create scalable solutions that meet many customer needs—not just one

Product’s success metric: Are we building the right thing, for the right user, at the right time?

In healthcare SaaS, the product role also often intersects with regulatory needs (HIPAA, CMS, FDA for SaMD, etc.), reimbursement models, and evolving care delivery workflows—making clarity in this role even more critical.

2. The Role of Pre-Sales: Translating Product Capabilities into Value for Prospects

The Pre-Sales team—also known as Solution Consulting or Sales Engineering—is the bridge between sales and product. Pre-Sales’ job is to deeply understand what the product can do today, and how to map that capability to solve a prospective customer’s pain points.

Key Responsibilities:

• Lead technical discovery calls with prospects

• Deliver tailored product demos that speak to client-specific use cases

• Clarify configuration options vs. roadmap items vs. custom builds

• Provide product feedback from the field to the product team

• Build confidence in the prospect that your solution will meet their goals

Pre-Sales’ success metric: Are we effectively articulating product value to close deals that align with what we can deliver?

The best Pre-Sales professionals don’t overpromise. Instead, they partner with Product to ensure alignment between what’s being sold and what’s possible—today and in the near future.

3. The Role of Implementation: Delivering the “How”

Implementation owns the “how”—how we go from contract signature to a fully functioning, configured, and adopted solution. Implementation takes the blueprint and turns it into a home.

Key Responsibilities:

• Develop a project plan with clear timelines, deliverables, and responsibilities

• Configure and deploy the solution (and/or support client teams to do so)

• Manage data integrations, workflows, and permissions

• Train users and administrators

• Act as the quarterback of onboarding across support, product, and client teams

Implementation’s success metric: Are customers going live on time, on budget, and achieving the outcomes they expected?

In many healthcare implementations, this role includes navigating EHR/EMR integrations, third-party APIs, patient identity management, and organizational change management—which adds even more complexity to already nuanced delivery timelines.

Why Clarity Between Roles Matters

When these roles are clear and coordinated, you gain:

• Faster sales cycles with fewer surprises

• Healthier customer relationships built on trust

• Smoother go-lives with fewer escalations

• Stronger product feedback loops for future roadmap planning

But when they’re blurred? You risk customer frustration, internal conflict, scope creep, and broken trust.

A Framework for Alignment

Here’s a simple structure I use with clients to delineate responsibilities:

Owns the...Collaborates With…

(Function) Product

• (Owns the...) Why we build it, What we build

• (Collaborates with...) Pre-Sales (market needs), Implementation (feasibility)

(Function) Pre-Sales

• (Owns the...) How we position what we can do now

• (Collaborates with...) Product (roadmap), Implementation (real-world fit)

(Function) Implementation

• (Owns the...) How we deliver it

• (Collaborates with...) Product (technical capabilities), Pre-Sales (initial promises)

It’s not about building silos. It’s about building clarity, so every team can deliver on its part of the value chain without stepping on toes or missing expectations.

In Closing: Build with Clarity and Intention

Too many SaaS companies suffer from role confusion because they haven’t paused to define these lanes early in their growth. If you're under 100 employees, now’s the time to set this foundation. If you're scaling fast and finding friction—hit pause and realign.

I've seen this play out in the startups I’ve helped build and scale. The ones who got it right? They moved faster, retained more customers, and earned internal trust across departments.