Product Direction - Fulfillment - Purchase

The following page may contain information related to upcoming products, features and functionality. It is important to note that the information presented is for informational purposes only, so please do not rely on the information for purchasing or planning purposes. Just like with all projects, the items mentioned on the page are subject to change or delay, and the development, release, and timing of any products, features or functionality remain at the sole discretion of GitLab Inc.

Fulfillment: Purchase Overview

Purchase, a Fulfillment subgroup, is responsible for our primary e-commerce experience, with the goal of increasing the number of first-orders we receive through our self-service purchase flow and in turn, reducing the need for a GitLab team member to manually intervene.

Vision, Mission, Strategy, and Outcomes

	What does it mean?	What does it look like for the Purchase group?
Mission	Our problem space: what is the mountain we're trying to climb?	Purchasing GitLab online should be flexible, asynchronous enabled, and transparent.
Vision	Our solution concept: what will it look like at the top of the mountain?	Provide a simple, easy-to-use, and reliable purchase experience: we get out of customers' way and get them back to quickly adopting GitLab.
Strategy	How we'll do it: what is the route we'll take up the mountain?	1. Minimize our Footprint: What can we consolidate? What features and flows should we stop supporting? 2. Improve Existing Experience: What have customers, sales, and support told us are the problems with our existing experience? 3. Become a Human: What are the gaps between our online purchasing experience and our direct channel? What features bring us to parity? Note: this does not mean we will build everything that a human can do. Business Necessary Support: Additionally, due to the nature of building global commerce functionality, our team will also need to support compliance, legal, and tax related efforts to safeguard revenue and meet regulations.
Outcomes	How we'll know we've achieved our vision: what signs tell us we've reached the top of the mountain?	Find our performance indicators here.

Feature Overview and Maturity

What features is the Purchase group responsible for and how mature are they?

Legend:

🙂 Minimal: Available and works for a small number of use cases. Some transparency for internal teams.
😊 Viable: Available and works for majority of use cases. Some transparency for internal teams.
😁 Complete: Fully functional for all eligible use cases. Full transparency for internal teams.
😍 Lovable: Glowing review from external and internal users.

Feature	Maturity	Description
SM Web-Direct First Order	😊	First time purchases for our Self-Managed seats. Currently takes place on customers.gitlab.com.
SaaS Web-Direct First Order	😊	First time purchases for our SaaS seats. Currently takes place on gitlab.com.
Purchase CI Minutes	😊	All (first time, add-on) for CI Minutes. Currently takes place on customers.gitlab.com.
Purchase Storage	😊	All (first time, add-on) for Storage. Currently takes place on customers.gitlab.com.
Community Programs - sign up	😊	Complimentary subscriptions to GitLab Ultimate for program participants.

Opportunities

Sensing Mechanisms

What is informing the pain points we are trying to solve and the resulting roadmap?

See the purchase team's sensing mechanisms here.

Opportunity Mapping

Learn more about opportunity mapping here.

Desired Outcome: achieve purchase vision of providing a simple, easy-to-use, and reliable purchase experience:
we get out of customers' way and get them back to quickly adopting GitLab that drives our performance indicators.

graph TD A(Desired Outcome) A --> B(Where: Purchasing from GitLab occurs in one spot making it simple.) B --> D(I don't have to go to multiple spots
to do my purchasing or subscription management jobs.) D---H(Solution: Consolidating purchasing to 1 experience) B --> E(I understand at what GitLab
hierarchy my purchase is occuring.) E---I(Solution: Deprecate purchasing for non-group hierarchies)

graph TD A(Desired Outcome) A --> C(How: Purchasing from GitLab is easy-to-use and reliable.) C --> F(Reliable: I don't run into errors when purchasing.) F---J(Solution: Increase CI Minutes/Storage purchase reliability) J---M(Solution: Enable 3DS for international purchases
to avoid banks blocking purchases) C --> G(Easy-to-use: Purchases are context enabled of where I am) G---K(Solution: Require fields for certain countries making purchases
to enable sanctions screening to allow for purchases) K---L(Solution: Make purchase flows less US-centric) L---N(Solution: Enable address verification and VAT collection)

graph TD A(Desired Outcome) A --> O(Unrestrained: We get out of customers' ways) O --> P(I don't have limited payment options) P---R(Solution: Enable additional payment types) O --> Q(I am able to take advantage of pricing offers) Q---S(Solution: Enable additional promo code iterations)

1-year Plan

Where are we focused over the next 12 months to make meaningful steps towards achieving our vision and increasing feature maturity?

1-year Vision

In a year from now, we hope to have:

Minimized our code-base footprint by deprecating uncessary flows and consolidating our purchase flows, which will allow us to move more quickly in the future
Stabilized our Storage/CI Minutes purchase flows to increase reliability and decrease bug fequency
Implement a number of compliance, legal, and tax related measures to safeguard revenue and meet regulations
Ship our first iteration of coupon code and understand what additional iterations will look like
Support the evolution of our new product offerings to ensure they can be monetized online

Roadmap

What are we building this year?

Legend

Type:
- 💪 Strategic: Work that executes upon our strategy and drives our outcomes to achieve our vision
- 🙌 Business Supporting: Work doesn't necessarily map to our strategy but is business necessary.

What is the work to do?	Type	What strategy are we envoking?	What feature(s) will this work help mature?	What outcomes will this work impact?
1st iteration of enabling promotions with discounts	💪	Become a Human via allowing for online discounting; something that can only be achieved via the direct/partner channel today	1. SM Web-Direct First Order 2. SaaS Web-Direct First Order	Increase count of SMB FO transactions through self-service
Revamp our CI Minutes & Storage flows by decreasing bugs	💪	Improve existing experience via fixing our biggest pain point of our support team	1. Purchase CI Minutes 2. Purchase Storage	Fundamental investment for future growth
Require fields for certain countries making purchases (1st Iteration and 2nd Iteration)	🙌	N/A: Necessary for legal team to mitigate sanctions risk for purchases	N/A: not helping in maturity	Safeguard revenue through implementing compliance measures
Minimize unecessary purchase flows for personal namespaces	💪	Improve existing experience by fixing customer impacting bug	1. SaaS Web-Direct First Order	Fundamental investment for future growth

Possible Future Opportunities

What other work are we considering to include in our roadmap but is not yet planned?

What is the work to do?	Why are we considering it?
Minimize unecessary purchase flows for personal namespaces	Minimize our footprint via ending supporting to low utilized flows while increasing maturity for CI Minutes / Storage
Consolidate purchase flows from 2 (CustomersDot and gitlab.com) to 1	Minimize our footprint via not having to maintain purchasing flows on GitLab.com and CustomersDot an allowing us to increase developer productivity
Unify naming conventions for CI Minutes purchase flows	Business necessary support to support monetization of our product
Support '3D Secure' (3DS) authentication for credit card payments from India and Europe	Improve existing experience via fixing our biggest pain point of our support team
Address Validation	Business necessary support: Safeguard revenue through implementing compliance measures
VAT	Business necessary support: Safeguard revenue through implementing compliance measures
Evaluate Purchase Flows for Global Inclusiveness	Improve existing experience In order to make our experience less US-centric
Support additional payment types	Become a Human via allowing for multiple payment methods; something that can only be achieved via the direct/partner channel today
2nd iteration of promo code	Become a Human via enhancing online discounting functionality

Work We're Not Doing

Become a Human: list of functionality that non-online channels offer that we do not plan on building. List may not be exhaustive.

Custom terms
Multi-year deals

Key Links

Performance Indicators
Internal Handbook Page
Roadmap
- Find our roadmap here.
- We also have Fulfillment FY24 Plans and Prioritization (Not Public), that internal team members can reference to track all planned initiatives by theme.