Part 5 - Creating a Checklist - TheCloudGuy Series on Transforming your Company into Cloud and SaaS

In Part 4 I focused on “Born in the Cloud” vs. “Not born in the Cloud” Products from both the Vendor Side and Customer. In this part (and those to follow), I will continue my focus on the organization and cultural elements of Cloud Transformation.

5) Driving the Change internally

Let’s tackle in a more systematic way some of the tracks leadership needs to consider when transforming to cloud. These are also in the image under the episode’s title. This Episode will give an executive summary of those and in the following parts I will be diving deeper into each of them.

Technology Track:

·??????Systems

·??????Moving to a Platform based architecture

·??????Choosing your Cloud Vendor(s)

·??????Security

·??????Customer Billing, ERP

·??????Internal Systems

·??????Network Operations Control Center (NOCC)

·??????Security Operations Control Center (SOCC)

·??????Running the old (legacy), and new (cloud) in parallel for a transitionary period

·??????Hybrid Cloud architectures involving on-prem and cloud services in parallel

Internal Education

·??????This serves the cultural transformation (more on that below) and should be called out as a strategic effort to change the course and direction of some areas in the company

·??????It should not be assumed there is acceptance until that is proven

Revising Financial Tracking/Reporting

·??????For example, tracking Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR)

·??????New acquisition, retention, and churn metrics

·??????Defining different benchmarks for spend in operations, sales, marketing, customer success and more

Investor/Analyst Education

·??????Wallstreet measures cloud companies different than perpetual license ones

·??????Existing analysts will need to be educated on changes, before, during and after the change

·??????New Analysts and investors are an opportunity as the company will now be a SaaS one

·??????The Board may have different levels of familiarity with Cloud. Existing board members will need to be educated, and some added and/or replaced

Customer Education

·??????Cloud acceptance at customers will be heterogenous based on the cloud experience of the buyers, their existing cloud vendor portfolio, and their ability to accept change

·??????As support changes internally, this change must be prepared for on the customer side

·??????In some cases, new buyers within the customer base will be sought or added – for example a CISO may now be involved in buying decisions

Customer Success

·??????A growing area accelerated by cloud vendors is customer success. This team will either need to be created or transformed to cloud operations

·??????This will be a sometimes-new investment that needs to be measured and proven

Cultural Transformation

·??????Some younger staff will have a “born in the cloud” mentality

·??????Some of the older staff may have a challenge transforming to cloud thinking

·??????Organizations that used to dominate, like hardware organizations, may shift to having more of a back seat legacy role creating a need for change management

·??????New DNA will likely need to be brought in at all levels to accelerate the transformation vs. the slower re-education process which needs to happen in parallel

·??????There may be non-believers, at all levels, that need to transform their thinking to survive in the newly focused organization

Support

·??????Customer support may adapt new processes, Service Level Agreements (SLA’s) may change

·??????The customer expectation will also change, and the support organizations will need to address these

Legacy Plan – review and action

·??????Existing products in the field cannot be dropped

·??????Previous customer commitments need to be met

·??????A plan, both external, and internal needs to be drafted, tracked, and met for success

Pricing

·??????Models will change. CAPEX spend will move to OPEX. Customers need to be prepared for the change at least 12-24 months in advance to align their budgets

·??????Product packaging will likely change and therefore forecasts and tracking

Partner Education

·??????Educating and providing resources of partners for future company state (Cloud)

·??????Assessing partner readiness for Cloud services

·??????Augmenting with new partners and sometimes decreasing focus on others

In the next parts I will be diving in more detail into each of these areas and sharing from my experience in each so stay tuned!

*** As usual, feel free to contact me at [email protected]?if you’re looking to engage with me on a consulting/advisory basis as an operating partner, fractional CXO and work on cloudification, transformation, turnaround, growth, product strategy, VC & PE advisory, or start-up mentoring. More here ***