The burden of SaaS, in a positive twist

A benefit of delivering a solution as a service includes being able to have an out-of-the-box solution which can fit most use cases and data sources in an easy to implement online UI. Ideally, a customer would go on the internet, visit your website, sign up for the service online, and the service would be intuitive enough to use. If the customer was satisfied, they might even purchase online and manage the account subscription in the UI.

The burden of SaaS is on the sales rep and account managers to retain customers and maximize their lifetime value. Because as easy as it is for a customer to input his or her credit card information, it’s also just as easy to not renew and cancel the subscription.

We need to keep customers happy, by really understanding their businesses, matching your vendor core value adds to their needs, and being flexible enough to grow with the customer.

There was a recent blog article about Anki’s holiday bursts and Sumo Logic: http://www.techrepublic.com/article/robotics-firm-ankis-data-surge-at-christmastime-was-no-sweat-for-sumo-logic/#. Not only is there flexibility with subscription billing, but also in Sumo’s backend, and being able to scale as needed. Sorry if this comes off as a Sumo pitch, but it’s a damn good example of the burden of SaaS and why sales reps really need to be business partners in order to be successful.

“When everyone was back in the office after the New Year,” said Whaley, “I called up Sumo Logic and said, hey, I know we went way over our capacity – let’s figure it out and plan properly for the next holiday season. And they were really flexible about doing that.”

“Obviously we went way over our volume all at once,” explained Whaley. “And so rather than ding us with these overage charges, which can add up pretty quickly, Sumo Logic said they would go back and revise our original contract, pretend as if we had the higher contract, and amortize the costs over the next year. So rather than hit us with really big bills, they basically lowered our cost.”

Happy Monday everyone!