Saas Professional Services
Three core needs for Professional Services for SaaS companies; onboarding, migration and user training.
Onboarding
Unless you are a pure Product-Led Growth company with full 100% service-service attach, you will need some level of professional services to assist new customers with onboarding. This type includes configuration and any integration work. Onboarding needs typically increase for customers as you move upmarket into the scaleup or enterprise market segments. For solutions requiring integration with CRMs, ERPs, Billing or other financial systems, seamless quick integration is key to professional service needs and customer success.
Don't assume customer want their setup and integrations done one way. Some will want the tools and documentation to do it themselves. Other will the vendor to do it. Other customers will want a choice of SI (system integration) vendors experienced in deploying your solution.
If your solution allows customers to do it themselves, this gives you the option of offering to do it for them as a revenue stream. Don't hesitate to charge for setup and integration. Customers understand it takes work, and charging for it highlights its value and gives customers some leverage to hold the vendor accountable.
Create a network or at least short list of SIs that can set up your software for customers. This is important to give customers options as well as help you scale your business. Some SaaS companies think they don't have enough "work to do" in their setup to support SIs, but this becomes less true when you consider data migration and as you move up to more complex enterprise set ups.
Think Connector Re-Use
One of the best things any professional organization can do is think of re-use. When you do your first integration with another solution, create it as a reusable connector you can use for the next customer needing that same integration.
As an example, Avalara has over 1,800 connectors. Some are built by partners or customers, but many they built and maintained themselves and maintain. This allows them to easily re-use these connectors for future customers.
Migration
Migration is often overlooked as a core competency that professional services needs to provide. If a customer has an existing customer base, relevant data for those customers will need to be migrated over into your solution. Two examples would be a customer selecting a new payment processor needing to move customer payment wallets onto a new processor, or a customer selecting a new a subscription management or billing vendor needing to move existing accounts onto their new billing platform.
Customers need migration completed before they can start fully utilizing your platform. Typically customers will want as few changes to existing accounts as possible to avoid migration churn. While some changes to existing customer processes will be acceptable for an improved process, if extensive unnecessary changes are needed, this may prevent a customer from selecting your solution.
Need for Ramp Pricing
Most customers will be very annoyed to be paying full-boat for their licenses before existing customer accounts are set up to use your solution. If you are providing migration for your customers (versus themselves or an SI), you will want to provide some form of Ramp pricing. Why would a customer want to pay for a software solution they cannot have their existing business use yet? This is totally reasonable. Why should a customer pay for software licenses if they are waiting for their vendor to complete their migration?
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Ramp pricing can scale license costs over time as setup and migration gets completed, or simply replace software costs with professional services revenue during the migration process. You don't need to worry about it as the customer is assuming the time frame gap to complete migration.
Sell Your Migration Capability - Don't Give it Away for Free
Understand Migration is a core competency and differentiator. We have observed many potential customers like a SaaS solution's features, but then choose another vendor that is better positioned to perform a successful migration.
Customers evaluating your solution may see it as a great solution, but next, need to be convinced you can successfully migration their existing customer base quickly, accurately and with minimal impact on their existing business. It is a capability your sales team needs to sell - not just something brought up during deployment.
There is huge value here for customers. The alternative is for customers to do their own DIY migration and testing. It requires resources and time. While you may think every customers would prefer to get it for "free" if they could, I would always prefer to be paying for the value for what I am receiving, and be able to hold the vendor accountable for delivery. You would be surprised to know that many customers would prefer to have the solution provider do migration for them to be able to hold them accountable for delivery and know it's going to be done well.
Sales associates need to be able to talk about your onboarding, setup and migration processes. They need to provide confidence in the approach being used and time frame for completion, and be able to share similar use cases and customer references.
Training
Two types of training are Setup/Installation and User Training.
Setup/Installation training helps support customers or partners performing aspects of setup, onboarding or migration themselves. It can be self-help training and documentation.
User Training is needed to help customers learn initially and over time how to use different features of your solution. As with most SaaS solutions, there is a learning curve, so think of basic functionality and then more advanced functionality; possibility not needed on Day 1 but can be learned progressively over time. It doesn't matter the modality or modalities you provide (self-service, video, instructor-led, documentation, etc.), but don't make the mistake that because you are "SaaS" you don't need to provide user training. Too often SaaS vendors fall in love with their software, and think it is perfectly easy to use and intuitive. Rarely is that the case. Training and good documentation can go along way to help customers find what they need, learn the system, and most importantly optimize the value they are getting out of your solution.
A great goal for any SaaS vendor is to find ways to continually improve customer value over time. Ongoing training and being directly engaged in improving customer utilization helps you do that.
Solution Consulting
A fourth Professional Services area for another article is Solution Consulting. I cannot tell you how many Salesforce implementations I have seen that are truly miserable with usability; forms with way too many fields, overly complex workflow, and certain data unable to be reported on. I recall at ADP they let each market segment business define their own sales lead form. Omg - what a mess!
Client Retention will be based long-term on perceived value. Perceived value will be driven by how well the customer optimizes their solution. As a SaaS provider, your goal should not just be selling, but ensuring the customer optimizes the value of their solution and continues to improve that over time. Solution Consulting to view system configuration and usage relative to the customers needs is a much needed, rarely provided service that Professional Services organizations can also provide.
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