Creating and Sustaining Profitable SaaS Customer Relationships

The essential key to long-term success for a SaaS company is simply stated: No Churn.  Get the right customers and keep them.  But all too often, Software-as-a-Service companies fall into the bad habits of their traditional-model predecessors by focusing only on acquiring new licensee customers.  The resulting unconscious assumption that all customer relationships will automatically persist and/or be profitable is a huge and largely invisible risk for a SaaS company.   It’s time to ask some poss

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The SaaS & Support Project in 2010

Almost five years ago, Bill Gates warned Microsoft about the significant challenge to the company and industry posed by the advent of SaaS.  While the new business model has yet to fully reach the gains predicted for it back then, the momentum is building.  An ever-accelerating number of traditional perpetual-license software companies are readying SaaS products or have already quietly released them.  In the process, a lot has been learned about the magnitude of the change that is SaaS.  As comp

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The SaaS & Support Project Research

As the Software As A Service business model continues its rapid advance, the inherent changes for both vendor and customer are both substantial and significant.  But once again, Customer Support is in danger of getting shoved to a back burner.  I’m sure you’ve heard the usual statements of “strategies:”  “SaaS doesn’t need Support, it’s included in the subscription.” “We’re going to do it all via web self-service.”  “The social networking community will take care of it for us.”  And, of course,

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Recorded Webinar: From Income Streams to SaaS River of Profitability

Which way to turn?  In the current economic climate, the pressure is on.  SaaS CEOs are told on one hand that there are but three paths to growing revenue:  Raise prices, acquire more customers and keep them longer.  Another voice advises that the secret to success in SaaS is to minimize contact with the customer, to make the application itself take over services that would otherwise be done by marketing, sales and support staff members.  There is an inherent conflict; customers that have but li

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SaaS & Professional Change

Awareness of the fundamental changes driven by the shift to SaaS to the profession and practice of Customer Support, both to external Support and internal IT Help Desks, is growing.  The Help Desk Institute has asked me to write a two-part series on the subject for their SupportWorld magazine, drawing on the continuing research of The SaaS & Support Project (tm).  The first article, on “SaaS, Cloud Computing and The Redefinition of Customer Support,” explores the changes to Support when a co

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