BPaaS Widgets and the future of ISV Partnerships

Adding Composition, PLG, Customer Success, and Ambassador Networks to SaaS GTM Partnerships

Over the past few years industry thought leaders Jay McBain and Scott Brinker have meticulously reasoned and espoused a future of open tech stacks, breezy product composition, and a new commerce ecosystem paradigm that removes value-added obfuscation, compensates participants for outcomes, and tracks transactional and non-transactional activities. Slices of their vision have been referred to as 2nd Martech, SaaS 2.0, allbound, nearbound, and Exper-Chamber Ecosystems.?

I factored their ideas into a product category - BPaaS Widgets. A Business process as a service (BPaaS) Widget is an ecosystem-in-a-container that tightens SaaS ISVs partner PLG frameworks, targets Zero-CAC outcomes, and increases ISVs’ leverage in capturing audience attention.

BPaaS Widgets have the horsepower to be a transformational new platform that blends joint product development, multi-channel promotion, customer acquisition, and product delivery and under a powerful, single experience for the entire ecosystem. Its a fresh game. No doubt. This is a blue ocean platform for ISVs and go-to-market experts to master and control their destinies. USPs are created and customer acquisition will be won at the point where teams collaborate to create optimized stacks and processes wrapped in their collective wisdom. Points are scored and market share is gained as their collaborative BPaaS Widget reaches buyers daily in 12 of Jay McBain's 24 buying moments, replace time-consuming stack research, deliver single-session onboarding, and a 360°customer success experience across all ISVs partners in the BPaaS Widget Stack.

BPaaS Widget Composer

Hosts spontaneous real-time collaboration across SMEs and ISVs. They manifest right-fit, app agility, and process. BPaaS Widgets have a bi-directional relationship with platforms like HubSpot. Pulling and Posting based on rules to ensure exchanges are seamless and compliant.

BPaaS Widgets - A Cohort’s Product

Widgets are an easy, breezy assortment of apps with a USP for four core user segments. A signal widget can add value to four buyer personas:

Platform Gaps: Fill gaps when native deployments aren't practical based on case, cost, time, confidence, agility, experiments.??

No-Frills Automation Extensions: ?Bolt unlimited automation processes run on best-of-breed apps into basic CRMs or online database.

Process Apprentices: Each widget holds the collective wisdom of its’ creators. It’s an immediately accessible version of their tried-and-true processes and apps with proven outcomes. Their knowledge grounds businesses as they avoid inaccurate scopes and keep project costs in check.

Opportunity Costs: Related to Platform Gaps, Widgets bridge common execution roadblocks in heavy platforms that prevent Users from executing best practices. There’s a market for businesses that can’t afford to pay $75,000 and wait six months to deploy a simple marketing automation flow and execute bi-directional syncs.??

Sharing Widget Previews for $0.00 CAC

In traditional GTM ISVs are beholden to marketplace promotion, brand development cycles, assembling partnerships, co-promotion, webinars, etc..? Widgets give cohorts control over their go to market outcomes by covering more ground with less effort and far less risk.?

BPaaS Widget Previews are pro tips, YouTubes, and blogs on steroids. They’re interactive brows-able versions of automation sequences that allow audiences to explore specific rules, copy, apps, app landing pages, ISV Zaps setup links and setup videos. Widget Previews have embedded YouTubes that used to encourage sharing for referrals income and win favor with YouTube algorithms and create a viewership flywheel. And giving YouTube viewers an opportunity to play with what’s being taught seems like a very natural extension to the viewer’s experience.

The significant growth of video advertising, as evidenced by the IAB/PwC Internet Ad Revenue Report, which projects an increase to $66.1 billion by 2023, is a testament to the power of video in capturing and engaging an audience. Integrating this with the concept of BPaaS Widget Previews, which include embedded YouTube content, presents a compelling strategy for businesses, especially in the B2B domain.

View BPaaS Widget Preview

BPaaS Previews and Viral Incentives

Built-in BPaaS payments to Ambassadors and Influencers and app commissions give solopreneurs, users, and ISVs’ current affiliate base incentives to spread the word. For example, in just a few hours a YouTube Influencer can walk through a BPaaS Widget’s features and post a link to the widget’s Preview and in return they receive years of BPaaS income and a stack of ISV app commissions.

BPaaS OS Adapters - Biz Ops and Architecture as a Service

A BPaaS OS Adapter providers the interface, hosted architecture, and business services to bring the vision together. From a PaaS point of view, Adapters directly sync with large platforms like HubSpot and Salesforce and have data pipe capacity to take over where tools like Zapier reach their limits. Bulk data imports for millions of records, data field normalization to patch and smooth automation and data transfers across app stacks, solid-state automation at scale, and economy. The commerce side of the Adapter is BPaaS Usage Metering, handles user payments, and remittance throughout the ecosystem. And finally, the Adapter handles business process automation to bring cohort customer success teams into newly created PLG account opportunities, and free client onboarding.

Validation and Alignment with What’s Next

Scott Brinker’s recent post on 2nd Age of Martech and the evolution of Commercial Software, Professional Services, and Custom Software. Scott calls for Platform Ecosystems, Blended Models of Software and Services, and Custom Apps on Commercial Platforms. BPaaS aligns perfectly with Scott’s vision. My response to his post garnered a “Very Cool Vision” reply.?

Democratized Access and Gaining an Edge

From the ISVs perspective and speaking from my experience as a SaaS founder, getting mindshare of dominant distribution marketplaces is difficult and doesn’t remove the risk of digital advertising or reduce the amount of work to reach profitability.? Despite behind a top ranked app on Salesforce Appexchange, we had the same costs to bear for awareness than if we weren’t a certified partner.?

From the User’s perspective, as I suggested in the platform gap and opportunities above, merged integration alliances and acquisitions between major platforms - like HubSpot and LinkedIn, or Salesforce and Pardot, have an isolation and disadvantageous effects for businesses that use solutions outside the merged solution set.

Conclusion

By adopting BPaaS, ISVs position themselves at the forefront of the SaaS sectors’ movement towards more integrated, efficient, and user-centric ecosystems. BPaaS doesn't just reshape how partners interact but fundamentally shifts the paradigm of customer engagement and market penetration, offering a blueprint for the next generation of SaaS growth and collaboration.

Citations

McBain, J. (2022) How to successfully build channel ecosystems to drive subscription and consumption models. Canalys Blog

Brinker, S. (2023) Composability is Everywhere Today. Chief Martech Blog

Brinker, S. (2024) Martech Day Model, LinkedIn Post