I recently read an interesting blog post by Omer Gotleim discussing how Software as a Service (SaaS) vendors manage to give customers the individual attention they need, and also manage to provide access to best practices. Gotleim quotes Rob Bernshteyn’s Forbes article, stating, “Customer success with Software as a Service is not so much about individual attention as it is about a philosophy of scalable product development and delivery that codifies best practices that all customers can benefit from.”
I’m in agreement, to a point at least. One of the many benefits of Software as a Service is that you have the ability to leverage the vendor’s expertise in a particular vertical so you can start to recognize the ROI as soon as possible. However, I would argue that SaaS customers still need individual attention, because while there can be many similarities across companies within a certain industry, there is always something unique that will require individual attention.
Bernshteyn suggests a number of questions for potential customers to ask SaaS vendors. For example, what kind of customers do you have? What is your philosophy for codifying best practices for all customers and for the kind of customers that I am? What is the long-term roadmap and strategy for your platform? These are the kind of questions that help identify a vendor that has the expertise you can leverage to get the most out of your relationship beyond just the technical ability to provide your application in the cloud.
At Tensoft, not only do we provide Software as a Service, but we consume it as well. We definitely look to provide the knowledge we gain across our customer base to provide the best possible software and services to our customers. We also have a cohort mentality in that we have different, best practices to provide depending on the industry we are serving – a fabless semiconductor company has different needs from a software company, for example. We also look for these qualities in the SaaS vendors that we select for the services that we need ourselves. Recently we have selected SaaS offerings for both help desk support, and time and expense reporting that had experience providing SaaS solutions to businesses in our industry— I can tell you from personal experience, both selections have boosted productivity and have made us a better company.
In the end, isn’t that the end goal for utilizing Software as a Service?
Dan Berube is the
Blog post
The Right Questions to Ask Your SaaS Vendor
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