No Touch Delivery

‘No-touch’ operations should be the goal of any B2B service business that wants to scale. Not low-touch. Not self-serve. Not a slick UI hiding a battalion of operators or an offshore project team. Actual no-touch: work that runs on its own once the rules are set.

This is one of the few assets service firms can build that competitors can’t easily copy. And it’s not the same as process efficiency. Process efficiency is good, but even a smooth manual process still requires people and tends toward entropy.

I’ve spoken with enough founders and CS leaders to hear the numerous reasons why no-touch is “impossible.” Some just don’t want to focus on it: what they’ve built is good enough. More often, they feel their current ways of working can’t be streamlined any further. Scratch deeper and you’ll typically hear a variation on “we can’t do it because it will limit necessary flexibility the client ‘needs’“—which is usually a reflection of an underdeveloped operating model, not a real constraint.

There are, presently at least, few consequences to being heavy on the cost side—especially in growth-stage firms where revenue growth is prioritized over efficiency, or in mature businesses where the operational knots have become too tight to untangle. I wouldn’t bet on that lasting.

When I say ‘no-touch,’ I don’t mean DIY. I mean that once the work is set up, it flows through to delivery without someone needing to interpret, double-check, or reroute it. Maximum involvement: validation. No interventions, no handholding.

Processes should be defined and configurable based on client needs and controllable variability—not based on tribal knowledge in someone’s head. Above all, it means being ruthless about removing any step that exists only to catch what the system failed to do.

This kind of operating model doesn’t emerge by accident. It has to be engineered. You do it not just to reduce costs, but because it creates real operating leverage—to move faster, grow more easily, deliver more reliably, and gain margin.

The alternative is to keep throwing bodies at the work until you’re outmaneuvered.