SaaS Buyer’s Guide – Choosing the Right Vendor
As companies continue to adopt SaaS, they need to start thinking about the technology procurement differently. Conducting due diligence on the software vendor should be the foremost consideration.
SaaS Buyer's Guide - Technology Considerations
Technology, Ecosystem and the Architecture are the key considerations when evaluating a SaaS solution. Ease of use, user training, integration are dependent on the technology being used.
SaaS Buyer's Guide: Governance Controls
SaaS adds some twists to the already challenging compliance mandates that companies have to contend with. To address those needs best, clauses in your SaaS subscription contract need to be carefully thought out.
SaaS: Data Security - Should I be concerned?
Going with SaaS comes with a set of concerns around Data Security. Intrusion Detection, Prevention and Penetration Testing should allay those fears to a large extent.
SaaS Vs On-Premise: Sales Strategies
SaaS delivery model brings with it a variety of benefits to customers. The financial benefits of going with SaaS becomes a key focus point during the Sales cycle. Some are obvious some are not so much. Here are some strategies to adopt to drive home the advantages of SaaS
SaaS Sales Strategies
Selling a SaaS solution requires a different perspective when compared to traditional software sales. Online-marketing, customer acquisition cost, metered billing, return-on-investment are all key. In fact, it is a whole lot different from traditional software sales you might have made so far. Here are some strategies to adopt.
SaaS: Value based Selling
SaaS solutions have traditionally being sold by highlighting the cost benefits that come with it. But with competition increasing, companies should be highlighting the value they deliver.
Reducing SaaS Cost of Implementation
Rapid Implementation, Quick ROI and Lower Total Cost of Ownership are the key tenets of SaaS. But until the product matures challenges abound. Here are five strategies to address them.
Is SaaS making Open Source irrelevant?
Open Source software and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) represent the two real disruptions in the arena of enterprise software. Are they colliding?
On-Premise to SaaS: Road Less Traveled
As SaaS comes of a successful year, large software companies with large on-premise customer bases continue to pursue their elusive SaaS vision.Sales
Channel Strategy for a early stage software company
Channels have long been a staple of software sales. To meet the global and industry specific needs, software companies have relied on channels to reach the elusive customers. As luck would have it, I was involved in two instances, last week, where a channel strategy was being adopted as a predominant sales strategy, albeit in [...] Continue Reading
Sales
What to look for while interviewing sales people in a startup
As a Marketing lead or an executive that is not directly responsible for Sales, you must have been called to interview a sales candidate frequently. I have had my share of those interviews. Sales is one skill that I don’t profess to have any expertise on. The ability to create new relationships, manage them on [...] Continue Reading
SaaS
Oracle acquires Taleo – reactionary or strategic acquisition?
Uncle Larry is at it again!!. First he threw a left hook at SAP by announcing a in-memory offering just when SAP was hoping to bask in the glory of their results and highlighting how, with HANA, they would unseat Oracle in their customer base. If that was not enough now to negate SAP’s acquisition [...] Continue Reading
Product Management
How complete is your product? 50%? 60%?
I was having this interesting chat with a salesperson today as I was trying to help get him hired to a software company. As we went through all the details of the product he posed this interesting question to me. How complete do you think is the product? 50%? 60%? I had heard this question before [...] Continue Reading
Sales
Sales Demo techniques for a unique product
Sales demos are tricky no matter what. Unless your product is a well-known brand like Band-Aid solving, a clear and distinct problem. Sales demos need a whole lot of strategy to go into it. If yours is a software product, a early version of your product and a unique product that falls in between the [...] Continue Reading
Risk Management
Offshoring is an art
By now you would think offshoring has acquired enough notoriety. Lots of water has flown under the offshoring bridge. Best practices have been written, re-visited and rewritten. So it was kind of a surprise when I got this call from a friend of mine who was trying to get this “offshoring” thing started in his new [...] Continue Reading
Marketing
Go-To Market strategy for geeks
An excellent video by Chris Yeh(@ChrisYeh), an angel investor and one of the better speakers in the valley talks about Go-To Market strategy and many other critical things in a startup. Although the goal of the video was around readying the company for raising money, the points made are applicable to all companies. Specifically around [...] Continue Reading
Marketing
Company Website – your best brand ambassador
With marketing moving increasingly online, a company’s website has become, above all, the quintessential brand ambassador for the company. The way the company website speaks to the visitor (a prospect) goes a long way in convincing them in becoming your customer. For a startup in its early stage when it does not have credible references, lot of [...] Continue Reading
Technology
The Impending Yahoo Swayamvar
Swayamvar, for those not familiar with Indian history, was a practice in old days, where the father of the bride invited all the possible suitable grooms to come and demonstrate why they were the most suited for marrying his daughter. Most often it included some kind of contest like lifting a humongous bow or moving some large [...] Continue Reading
Technology
Watching mid-life crisis play out at HP
Check how the HP stock has done versus IBM in the last two years, starting at almost similar position it has gone in symmetrically opposite direction and consequently the enterprise value. All through this journey HP has manfully stuck to its core strategy of ”Observe IBM and adopt their strategy 10 years later”. Case in [...] Continue Reading
Marketing
Letting loose monkeys on bloggers is not PR
I have been meaning to write this post for a while but was holding back so as to not upset anyone in the marketing/PR space. But the the last straw finally broke and I had to publish this post. PR as you guys might well know is an essential part of marketing notwithstanding all the [...] Continue Reading
Marketing
Stories Stick, Stats Suck
Technology Marketing has historically been a chest thumping contest between vendors claiming one-upmanship on the back of a variety of statistics. If it is not the TPC benchmarks demonstrating the might of a database performance under stress, it has been volume of orders processed, that has been centerpiece of marketing campaigns. You cannot escape walking [...] Continue Reading
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