Six months into 2025, one thing is clear:
The shifts we planned for didn’t land — and the ones we didn’t plan for are now defining the year.
At the start of January, many SaaS marketing and operations teams had their priorities locked: adopt AI, scale in-house creative, move faster, reduce agency dependence. But somewhere between strategy and execution, the terrain shifted.
Now, Creative Ops and Marketing teams inside SaaS organizations are juggling a new set of realities — creative bottlenecks, slowed delivery, and mounting pressure to produce more, faster, across more channels. And when those systems start to strain, Chiefs of Staff and PMOs are the ones who feel the ripple effects across sales, growth, and customer experience.
Here’s what’s actually happening — and how high-functioning SaaS teams are adjusting mid-year to stay competitive.
1. AI Is Everywhere, But Outcomes Are Elusive
AI has been widely adopted across SaaS marketing stacks — from automating campaign copy to speeding up design variations. But the sweeping transformation many teams expected hasn’t materialized.
Creative quality still needs human oversight. Brand compliance still matters. And leadership is rightly cautious about shipping content that doesn’t meet standards.
Most SaaS teams are now realising what should have been obvious from the start:
The common-sense approach is incremental improvement — not sweeping change.
Instead of eliminating work, AI has introduced a new layer of management. Instead of solving operational drag, it’s raised new questions about control, governance, and workflow integration.
AI is helping — but it’s not the answer to scale on its own.
2. In-House Creative Expansion Hit a Wall
The internal resourcing trend was strong coming into 2025. SaaS companies — especially at Series C and beyond — aimed to reduce agency spend by expanding in-house teams and centralising creative.
But by Q2, many are hitting a ceiling.
Headcount is frozen. Priorities have shifted. And teams that were already at capacity are now trying to do more with less.
What started as a bid for control has turned into a logistical jam.
Assets aren’t going out. Campaigns are late. Sales enablement is lagging.
The work didn’t disappear — the capacity to deliver it did.
3. Velocity Isn’t Improving — It’s Slowing Down
Despite more tools, clearer briefs, and project management upgrades, content velocity in many SaaS orgs is lagging.
Multichannel campaigns get stuck in review loops. Localization is delayed. Creative feedback piles up across Slack threads, Asana tasks, and Jira tickets.
SaaS companies move fast — but only when content keeps pace with product, sales, and growth. When internal creative stalls, the whole system slows down.
4. Creative Ops Is Becoming a Leadership Discipline
This is one shift that is accelerating — and it might be the most important.
In leading SaaS orgs, Creative Operations is stepping out from under the PMO and becoming a strategic function in its own right.
No longer just about “making things happen,” Creative Ops is now about owning the system: workflow visibility, resource alignment, tooling, approvals, delivery.
This is especially true in SaaS — where go-to-market speed, brand governance, and campaign volume all intersect.
Creative Ops is no longer a support role. It’s leadership infrastructure.
5. External Partners Are Back on the Table — But the Ask Has Changed
Earlier this year, the mandate was clear: reduce agency spend, keep more in-house. But as volume increased and timelines slipped, many SaaS leaders have quietly re-evaluated.
They’re not re-engaging for ideas or strategy. They’re re-engaging for structured delivery — with external partners who can absorb overflow, move quickly, and maintain brand consistency at scale.
In SaaS, velocity is everything. And the right external partner doesn’t slow things down.
They stabilise delivery when the internal system is under pressure.
The New Constant Is Uncertainty. Build for It.
Change didn’t arrive in the form we planned for — but it’s happening faster than ever.
At the 2025 Creative Operations Summit in London, one message came through clearly:
Creative velocity is rising — and the pressure isn’t just to do more. It’s to do more, better, faster.
Dave Greene, Head of Creative Operations at Perpetual, captured it well:
“As the volume of content accelerates, SaaS teams are having to rethink what stays in-house, what moves out, and how process and data support the entire flow — not just the output.”
Solving for volume and multiple touchpoints is no longer just a workflow challenge — it’s an organizational one.
And the answer lies in structure: integrated systems, clear accountability, and partnerships that bring momentum, not friction.
You don’t need more vision.
You need creative delivery that still works when the plan doesn’t.
Perpetual works with SaaS creative teams to restore momentum, deliver at scale, and stay flexible through change.
Talk to us today about how we can support your team.
