Our SaaS business focuses on a project management solution we rent to a global user base (servers in the USA, the business is remotely run from NZ). No matter how hard we drive home the ‘Value & ROI’ message, there’s always a large number of ‘Price driven’ customers as we all know. The way to a price driven customers’ heart is education, not price cutting!
Price driven SaaS customers these days need to understand that SaaS software pricing does have real overheads behind it. The Simplicity of a SaaS business to a customer is a facade that actually hides the complexity of systems, material and resources needed to create a simple front end user experience… To explain further…
The shift to SaaS: Interestingly enough, in the old days (5-10yrs+ ago) the customer side (web and application development) of business would be a complex procedure for a one-off project, with sites often built by a business with a simple resource/skill base (designer+developer) and they’d charge heaps.
ie: Customer (Complexity) + Web Business (Simplicity)
= Revenue (High, one-off fees)
= Fast income, non scalable/sustainable model
Nowadays, we offer the clients a simpler tool and user/sales experience. However, as we have to charge less through market pricing shifts, the real money is made on margin and scale. Automation and infrastructure solves these, however comes with a cost of behind the scenes complexity and technology costs.
So the equation now looks like this:
ie: Customer (Simplicity) + Web Business (Complexity behind)
= Revenue (Slow, recurring fees)
= Slow income, scalable/sustainable model
To show this in a real world example, find out below what goes into our SaaS based project management software company’s latest V6 ProWorkflow software release!
Disclaimer: Firstly, I should just point out that I’m the CEO of ProWorkflow.com (ProActive Software ) and do understand that all software companies manage software releases differently. This is simply an example of how ProActive Software handles releases.
We’ve been working away on a new version 6.0 release of our flagship product www.proworkflow.com. This isn’t just a few updates, it’s a fairly solid new release with over 100 updates and pieces of functionality added. The main focus is on improving usability, speed and customer ROI. One of the mistakes we made was telling the user base there was a new release on the way! Now every day we get “When’s it coming? Is it late? Can you include this and that? or another common comment… “Why is it taking so long? It’s only an update?”
It was these type of comments that prompted me to write this post so I could show people the amount of work that goes into a release :-) The following is a glimpse into ’some’ of the thinking and effort needing consideration just to “Roll out V6?.
Customer Feedback
Throughout the year, customer feedback relating to functionality and usability is collected through various means. Emails, forms, calls, testimonials, sales calls etc. We file away the comments of interest in a document, categorized by the sections in the ProWorkflow application. When we do a minor release, we pick a few items of the list.
For a major release we pick the top 50-100 requests that are frequently requested. There are many hundreds of requests that either get dismissed or scheduled to a later release. We make sure no requests are contradictory and that they make sense to add to the core application. We aim to add generic features where possible.
Planning the Functionality
What goes in V6.0, 6.1, 6.1 etc? We always prioritise urgent needs of the masses first, then other needs, throw in a few ‘nice to haves’ and try to hold back on minor functionality for smaller updates later. Major releases (ie: V3, V4, V5 etc) are ‘database releases’ so we add any new tables to the database needed in this release rather than the smaller regular updates.
When we have the desired list, developers give us estimated times per task and these are entered into our personal version of www.proworkflow.com to manage the project. Our core product ProWorkflow is web based project management software, so we may as well use it for ourselves! Also, this way we’re testing the solution at the same time as we’re working in it! Cunning way to test usability too…
Planning Development Time frames
We take a development list, which has been itemised and times assigned. When this has been put into ProWorkflow, the developers start working through it all. The most important aspect of keeping to the development timeframe is keeping tight communication with the developers. Every day or two we talk with the developers, see what’s been completed and look forward to the deadline to make sure there’s enough resource and hours to meet it.
In this industry, it’s always difficult to meet deadlines as unexpected complexities can arise when working on a complex application, however, through tight communication with developers and daily checking of the development plan we’re able to keep on track. The direct and real time visibility of progress through ProWorkflow makes this easy.
Development
When working on the ProWorkflow application, we prefer to use small tight teams. We do not want large teams of developers working over the top of each other causing errors or programming with different methodologies. Our lead developer and CTO Alan Barlow is the guru behind the ProWorkflow code base. Alan determines what he’ll work on personally and what others do (staff or contractors).
Testing
As we use the ProWorkflow solution for our own internal projects, the team are always testing in a live environment. In addition we have a small group of heavy usage customers that enjoy being early adopter test monkeys. Between the select group of 10 customers there are approximately 100+ users. These users create a combined few hundred projects and few thousand tasks and time records a week. So if there are any issues or bugs, we’ll know about them pretty fast. One of the great perks and opportunities with SAAS (Software as a Service) is that issues spotted can be easily and quickly fixed, applied to a live account, and then rolled over other accounts in a maintenance update. No need to notify the user, just apply the patch. Often we apply a patch live that fixes an issue a customer has never seen or improves a feature’s usability. It’s seamless ongoing development!
Pricing
With every major release (typically annually), the solutions’ pricing is reviewed For the past 3 years we’ve kept pricing as is - we’re currently reviewing pricing again pre V6. As much as we want to keep the pricing affordable, we also have to keep in mind that businesses don’t run on good intentions. In addition the tool provides great ROI to the companies using it so should have a relative value. So… the factors we consider when pricing ProWorkflow are:
- Value/ROI to the customer
- Technical Infrastructure (Servers, networks, comms etc)
- Support Infrastructure
- Research, development and ongoing development
- Scalability/Sustainability
- Competitor pricing and feature sets
Support
When the V6 upgrade is released, there will be some new functionality. Even though this will be documented in the Knowledgebase, we’ll still receive calls and emails about the upgrade at a higher rate than normal. This puts extra pressure on support staff so we need to be prepared with quick answers and help docs.
Website Content Changes
The ProWorkflow website has a fair number of pages needing updating when the V6 product is launched. The following will need to be updated: Features, benefits, FAQ’s, packages, overview, all screen shots, version numbers, upgrade pages etc…
Update Knowledgebase (Online help guide)
A huge job, but an important one. There are 100+ tweaks to the ProWorkflow product. When you consider that 1 tweak may be referenced in 5-10 places in the knowledgebase, you start to understand that it’s a sizeable task. The knowledgebase is a strategic asset as the better it’s written, the less email and phone support we’ll receive. Self help means quicker support for the customer and less support infrastructure required at our end.
White papers
We have a couple of white papers that give a brief overview of the solution. These will need to be read through and modified as needed.
Trial Account Master Code
When companies sign up for a Free trial account, the system sets this up from a master code package. This code package needs updating with the latest V6 code. The demo system then needs re-testing.
Subscription Account Master Code
When companies sign up for a Subscription account, the system sets this up from a master code package. This code package needs updating with the latest V6 code also. We have quite a few servers so the master code will need to be updated across all the servers.
Upgrade Packages & Downloads
In addition to Subscription accounts, the ProWorkflow software is also available as a code download to install on a local server. The master packages will need to be updated and the upgrade packages will need to include a new script to add the new V6 tables to the database when installed.
Update All Billing Systems
Depending on pricing or product options, the billing system may need to be tweaked. This would affect the Signup form, payment pages and account and billing pages in the Client Area.
Upgrade Current Subscription Accounts
When a new major upgrade is ready to deploy, we do this in a phased rollout over the customer base. The reason is simple - if there are any bugs we’ve missed, we’ll pick them up early, fix them and roll out further. In addition, we do the phased rollout to stop any new release from having a heavy support load over the initial week. The beauty of a SAAS model is that we can update customer accounts quickly. The downside is that if you rollout an error quickly you can easily affect a large number of customers. So planning a phased upgrade rollout is definitely the safe way to go.
Marketing
- Newsletters
A few newsletters will be emailed out to the mailing list talking about the V6 release and new functionality.
- Press Releases
We’ll write a handful of releases about the new product. These will be sent or syndicated to both local and global news sources.
Project Management
Someone has to manage all this! Easy, We use our own www.proworkflow.com solution for our project management of new releases. See a screen shot (below) showing the huge project task list and timeline. There’s about 100+ tasks on the V6 development alone, and keep in mind this can increase if any of the new update code affects other parts of the application. So effective project management is a key part of getting a release out…
Here’s the ProWorkflow Project screenshot for the V6 release ;-)
Technorati Tags: Project management Software,Software,Rollout,SaaS
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About the editor:
Julian Stone, CEO – Project, Management Software specialist for: ProActiveSoftware.com, ProWorkflow.com & Julian101.com
Our development team have been working on an integration module between our ProWorkflow application (www.proworkflow.com) and XERO (www.xero.com). ProWorkflow is web based project management software and XERO is web based accounting software. Both operate under a SaaS (Software As A Service) model. The aim is to transfer invoices from ProWorkflow to XERO and update the invoice status from XERO back into ProWorkflow.
