Tasos Christidis

Growth hacking unfolds along two parallel lines. The first one is enabling rapid experimentation across marketing channels using new methods that are easy to implement and fast to pay-off (otherwise, they may be abandoned). The second one is engaging customers in several ways in order to keep them in close distance from the organizations sales “reality” and activity. For example, making sure that new products are instantly known in the customer base, interesting news are immediately propagated in the community etc. In this post I’d like to focus on the latter and discuss how a web-based ERP/CRM integrated solution can decisively assist customer engagement and community building . My intention is to show that SaaS business solutions do not just offer some “technology upgrade” in the organization or solely some cost benefit but can also play a significant role in the growth efforts of the organization . 

In the organization’s journey from an on-premise Business Application setup to a Software as a Service one, one of the key factors of success is data migration . Of course, one starts with basic questions like “do I want or need to move to the cloud?”, “Which is the best SaaS solution for my case?”, “Does it address my special requirements?”, “am I content with the reporting/BI capabilities that it offers?” etc. But having answered all of the above, you should take into consideration the data migration issue. This post will point out some very significant issues around this subject, which you need to address and examine; probably in close co-operation with the SaaS vendor of your choice, before accepting their financial proposal and start the journey.

When customers are looking into a SaaS offering, they usually overlook the infrastructure that the software is running on; and for good reason: They don’t care in which platform the software runs, what kind of servers it runs on etc. as long as it performs as it is expected to. There are some SaaS vendors that run their service from owned infrastructure and some others that also receive IaaS or PaaS services from third party providers. Which leads me to the following thought: Anyone (any I.T dept., that is) with an infrastructure robust enough to offer a good Service Level, can potentially offer and host SaaS services for new customers, outside the strict boundaries of the enterprise. 

In this time and age where Social Media have become an integral part of our lives (private and professional), there is an ongoing discussion about Social ERP (sERP), social CRM (sCRM) and other “s-prefixed” systems. In this post I’d like to contribute my own definition of the “Social” tag and discuss how this could be served by web-based systems and even enhanced by SaaS communities (I use the term “SaaS communities” to show that users working on a cloud Service (public or private) form a new “closed” community which – like any other community – chooses to open up to certain other teams (a.k.a. other users) under certain restrictions and rules (a.k.a. authorizations).

In this post I’d like to approach the issue of whether and how Software as a Service (delivered of course through cloud technology – don’t let them tell you otherwise!) can assist an organization implement an IT chargeback / showback strategy. For those that haven’t heard the terms before, IT chargeback is the methodology or strategy that applies/allocates Information Technology costs on the business unit that is actually using an I.T. resource (be it software, hardware, professional IT services etc.) Chargeback can go as far as internal expense management where the business unit actually experiences cash outflow (or budget consumption) in order to implement an IT function. In other cases, there is no actual cash movement; all calculations are done on reporting level only in order to have a clear image of the costs incurred by each business unit to the organization, for planning and budgeting purposes. This is called “IT showback” where numbers are “shown” but are not actually “c...

Through this channel I have been talking about the advantages of cloud and SaaS products for a long time. In this post I’d like to focus on a more specific area. An area that contains a large pool of potential customers, who at the same time are still facing basic problems in their journey towards a “computerized enterprise”. That of small business ERP and especially the Financial ERP . By the term “Financial ERP” we define the software that performs the basic functions of book-keeping, sales and purchases, stock keeping customer/vendor order management and perhaps some more like basic workflows and some kind of business intelligence. These are requirements that small and medium-sized businesses are seeking to approach first, or they have already done so with not much success. Also, they are the kind of requirement that start-ups are trying to cover, since they touch the back-bone of the business function.

There are many advantages in the adoption of a SaaS application for the enterprise. A lot of people have talked about cost benefits, ease of deployment and maintenance, out-of-the-box remote access, mobility etc. In this post I will focus on a new opportunity that SaaS is presenting to its customers. This is the potential ability to invite their cooperators (customers, vendors, business partners etc.) to join a common workspace and complete business transactions or share information and knowledge.

The relationships between customers and providers in the cloud business are generally governed by the Service Level Agreement or SLA. In a previous post I made the point that a really “tough” SLA is probably not the “holy grail” of the cloud business, which every customer should be looking for. In this post I will continue the same line of thought, focusing this time in the impact that a strict SLA has on the customer organization itself. For this purpose, I will use the term “Reverse SLA”.

The cloud business brings some very interesting and unique characteristics in the way customers and vendors are engaging: For the first time in computer history massive amounts of data are processed and stored outside the physical boundaries of the enterprise (its LAN or WAN). Also, vendor companies can reside thousand miles away from the customer premises and they are run by people that most probably the customer will never meet in person or maybe even talk on the phone. These unique characteristics make the customer/vendor relationship very interesting and also somewhat difficult to describe. Such relations are typically governed by the Service Level Agreement (SLA) which the customer signs or in some cases just “accepts” with the click of a button on the web page of the cloud service they’re subscribing to.

One of the many advantages of web applications (Software as a Service – SaaS applications are the best example here) is their “portability”. Before the rise of business web applications one had to tap in a corporate server using difficult to understand or use technologies like “remote desktop” etc., to gain access to corporate data and functionality. Then the World Wide Web came and new, reliable and safe (although many don’t believe so) applications saw the light of day. Tapping into the corporate environment became so much easier. Also, using a computer other than one’s own became possible (e.g. internet café, a friend’s house, borrowed during vacation etc.)

As anything sold, quality is the first and most important factor for its success on the market (price is the second most important thing, but we will not deal with it, in this post). During my engagement with the Software as a Service business I have found out that Quality is an issue that needs to be redefined in that context. I started thinking about this, driven by the fact that “traditional” software “virtues” are not enough to build a sustainable SaaS income. By the term “traditional” I mean all the usual quality elements or performance indicators that the buyer expects from any kind of software (SaaS or not-SaaS): To be error-free To be fast and reliable To be user-friendly To be adequately supported by its vendor To provide insight to the data that it keeps (and not just to… keep them)

Today I shall scratch the surface of the so-called “Rogue IT”, how it is affected or enabled by the very nature of cloud and Software as a Service and whether organizations should fight against it or just “ride the wave”.

One of the many advantages that web applications (SaaS is my favorite kind!) bring is this of mobility. Before web business applications you had to login to some server using several cumbersome technologies like Remote Desktop etc. to gain access to those apps. Then the web came and new robust (and secure I might add) applications came into light. Tapping in your enterprise network and executing several activities was made much easier. Also, you could now utilize a powerful laptop or even work with a device (PC or laptop) that wasn’t yours. Now, this is the 2010’s, where smart phones (and other devices) gain ground but also users are becoming more and more demanding when it comes to their desk-independence and mobility. They need mobile applications that (like the web before) offer more and more functionality, without serious (or any) compromises in security. Also, a large number of people are becoming more dependent on their favorite devices, so BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) ...

The Software as a Service concept (SaaS) has been around for quite some time now. Therefore, we have gathered enough “historical” data to help us discuss short-term future trends. It is possible that some of them are not finally confirmed, since the business is so rapidly changing, but seeing buyers habits and trends, technology advancement and large players strategy, we can support our views with some degree of certainty. SaaS will gain momentum against Infrastructure as a Service or Platform as a Service: A large percentage of buyers of “aaS” are SMB’s which do not wish, afford or intend to commence internal development cycles. Therefore, they are – by definition – out of the IaaS/PaaS targeting. Of course, there are the big players which understand that buying “just” SaaS is not enough because of their complexity, special requirements, customization needs etc. and they turn to IaaS and PaaS. This market segment is not to be ignored. We just think that even if we see IaaS...

In an older post, I explored the impact of SaaS in the Outsourcing business (see here:   SaaS and the outsourcing function ) and the benefits that any outsourcing company and its customers would   enjoy from the adoption of SaaS. In this post I shall explore the benefits that the Cloud computing/SaaS can have in another area: that of the Franchise business. In a Franchising model there is the part of the Franchisor (the company that offers the franchise product) and the franchisee (the companies that reside “below the umbrella” of the franchisor and reach out to the final customer). In any franchise “package” a number of products and services is offered to the franchisee in order to start and maintain a viable business; typically, this includes stock replenishment for the franchisor’s products, training, sales support etc. In some cases, the franchisor also offers the necessary software to run the franchisee business. And this is the issue that we are interested in, tod...