Like many business, Enterprise Ireland depends on feedback from client companies to tell it what it is getting right, and what it can do better. Which is why I’m delighted to get the following feedback from Kelly Murphy, CEO of Gridstore, on the EI supported work that Paul Solski carried out with his company.

Gridstore provides next generation storage grid solutions that enable small and medium businesses to meet their ever increasing storage and bandwidth capacity needs seamlessly and less expensively than traditional systems. We see an opportunity to address a gap in the market that exists between enterprise storage and standalone network attached storage (NAS) by building a Managed Services Provider partner channel that can displace traditional storage systems in tens of thousands of small and medium businesses.

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I’d firstly like to thank the Ash Cloud for kindly moving out of the way so Charles Cameron could travel from London and give his presentation yesterday!

I’d also like extend my thanks to our speakers Jennifer, John, Philip, Gerry, and Charles, to my Enterprise Ireland colleagues and their fine organisational skills, and to everyone who took time out of their busy diaries to come along yesterday morning.

Some of the key points that were made include:

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Best Connected Software Event – The Commercial Realities of SaaS

Venue: Enterprise Ireland, The Plaza, East Point Business Park

Time: 8.30 am to 12.00 pm, Wednesday, 19 May 2010

Software as a Service is here to stay. SaaS has continued to gain commercial acceptance by users and buyers across all industry sectors. The Software as a Service market is expected to triple by 2012 when it will be worth $17 billion.

This event complements June’s Managed Services & Solutions Cloud event also hosted by Enterprise Ireland.

Growing a company to scale on a SaaS business model requires a range of skills that extends beyond the purely technical. There are equal, if not greater, challenges in Financial Modelling, Sales & Marketing, and Organisational Development.

Enterprise Ireland invites you to participate in a seminar in Dublin on Wednesday the 19^th May from 8.30 am to 12.00 pm to understand more about the challenges in the SaaS business model.

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If you’re a software company, cracking the US Market is hard. One option is to work with a partner, but finding a partner is the easy part. Understanding the partner, and making it successful for both parties takes a lot of time and effort. Microsoft is the partner of choice for many software companies, which is why Enterprise Ireland has been running joint events with Microsoft to enhance the partnering experience.

The latest, and one of the most important joint Microsoft – EI events, is Paul Solski’s visit to Ireland. It will be useful for existing Microsoft Partners and companies partnering with other vendors both in the US and other key export markets. There will be a public event ‘Succeeding in the US Market – Best Practices for Software Companies’, 23rd March 2010 at Enterprise Ireland, Eastpoint , Dublin.

Paul Solski is the Managing Director of The OpenBorders Group in North America. Together with The OpenBorders Group executive partners in Germany and the UK, he build Microsoft’s Open Borders Program which helps Microsoft ISVs expand internationally, four years ago. Paul worked at Microsoft in the roles of ISV Strategy Director and Dynamics ISV Sales Director from 2004 to 2008. Paul has over 25 year experience in international business development having worked in prior roles at HP, Intel, Compaq, Digital and SCO distribution in Australia, Asia and USA. He holds an Electrical Engineering degree from the University of NSW in Sydney, Australia.

If you are interested in attending this event, please contact Irene[dot]Sadleir[at]Enterprise-Ireland[dot]com .

Full Agenda

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As part of ongoing SAAS (Software as a service) transition programme,  Enterprise Ireland held it’s third workshop on SAAS Business models  in Bewleys hotels Ballsbridge, Dublin on Friday 15th January. This programme is being provided to 10 Enterprise Ireland clients through SaasPoint.

My notes  (part 4 ) from the session are below – Finance and Marketing. This post is one of four from the event covering Finance and Marketing, SaaS challenges and technology, Saas specific sales models and general SAAS Business principals.

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As part of ongoing SAAS (Software as a service) transition programme,  Enterprise Ireland held it’s third workshop on SAAS Business models  in Bewleys hotels Ballsbridge, Dublin on Friday 15th January. This programme is being provided to 10 Enterprise Ireland clients through SaasPoint.

My notes  (part 3 ) from the session are below – Technology and other challenges. This post is one of four from the event covering Finance and Marketing, SaaS challenges and technology, Saas specific sales models and general SAAS Business principals.

(more…)

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As part of ongoing SAAS (Software as a service) transition programme,  Enterprise Ireland held it’s third workshop on SAAS Business models  in Bewleys hotels Ballsbridge, Dublin on Friday 15th January. This programme is being provided to 10 Enterprise Ireland clients through SaasPoint.

My notes  (part 2) from the session are below – business and sales models. This post is one of four from the event covering Finance and Marketing, SaaS challenges and technology, Saas specific sales models and general SAAS Business principals.

Business Models

• Hybrid model of combining one off large sales (traditional, non SaaS) and ongoing service sale will probably not work. Sales people will focus (due to targets and time) on the larger deals (allowing competitors to take your market from the bottom up). Very different to keep focus with the two conflicting mindsets.
• Salesforce.com ‘no software’ logo is not just to customers – it’s a statement of values for the company itself. In early days, Salesforce turned down opportunity to deploy on site due to the risk of confusing the company.
• Other traditional software vendors (named) have tried this mix and match approach and failed; the incentive is for the Sales People to ignore the smaller online sales which are vital to strategic customer success.
• Only way to overcome this ‘incentive effect’ is have common on-site (traditional) and online pricing – but would give a lot of pain with the onsite model.

Sales Mindset (big changes for traditional sales people)

• Sell over internet and phone – only meet customers when really necessary (e.g. travel to close)
• Company selling in person will not be able to support costs (remember Sales are low-ticket, although recurring)
• If not direct, too many people will claim commission on big sales.
• A hub based (direct) sales team (telesales) will allow processes to measure Sales metrics and allow to scale.
• Trial is both a Sales (as well as marketing tool).
• Key sales message is ‘shared risk’ – if you don’t like it then you can stop at end of the contract. Means that sale may be 10 users intially, and take 18 months to build up to 200 users.
• Opex not Capex – no large upfront cost ; very good message in tight cashflow times for customer (but very hard on your own company cashflow).

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As part of ongoing SAAS (Software as a service) transition programme,  Enterprise Ireland held it’s third workshop on SAAS Business models  in Bewleys hotels Ballsbridge, Dublin on Friday 15th January. This programme is being provided to 10 Enterprise Ireland clients through SaasPoint.

Friday’s session focussed on how your business model needs to change when moving to a SAAS business and was presented by Fergus Gloster of Thomond Technology. Fergus (LinkedIn profile) helped  Salesforce.com Europe grow from 3 to 700 people.

Saaspoint logo

My notes  (part 1 of 4) from the session are below. This post is one of four from the event covering Finance and Marketing, SaaS challenges and technology, Saas specific sales models and general SAAS Business principals.

Business principles around SAAS (aka How to sell something at $50 per user per month and make money)

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