Sorry for my delay in responding. I'm glad you found it of use. To your points, without knowing anything about your software:
> 1. Make it easy to trial, and enable this process with more 'support' than > 'sales' Yes - easy to trial is key. Certainly the typical scenario I see is this: 1. User comes along with new world changing software package that costs X thousands to trial. 2. IT won't pony up the money to trial it for department ABC only, and department ABC can't spend the money on their own. 3. Trial usually fails at this point unless the vendor can be flexible about trialling the software. Making it easy for the department to be able to trial and prove out the software and build word of mouth is ideal. Other challenges in any Enterprise IT department, particularly at the moment: * No resource -- even if I want to help Department ABC, I'm struggling to find resources. Even though I might not have cut staff yet, I'll probably have a recruitment freeze at the very least. Finding people with time to do something new is hard. Your support model idea really helps here -- I love Vendors that believe in their product enough to invest some time in parallel with me to help set it up and get me going. > 2. Make it cost effective to make an implementation that gets in under the > capex limits for a team. This one is more interesting... when we come to implementation or pilot (as opposed to trial) we actually don't have much "team" software so it's hard to comment. Certainly from an Enterprise Architecture perspective we wouldn't encourage this; typically software falls into either of two camps: 1. Software is so business critical and a part of the teams process that the team capex limit is irrelevant, it will get approved up the line anyway. 2. Software is really appropriate across the whole business in the first place -- we would always try and license it for the entire business in that case. Again this is Enterprise centric. >From an Enterprise Architects view point if I came across a department trying to do this (and they'd be found out around here anyway) I'd immediately put the following challenges or questions: 1. No business case should be made on Capex limits. 2. What is the functionality of the software and where does it fit in our strategic landscape. Sometimes the more expensive option might be the better fit strategically. 3. What are our existing vendors doing in this space. One of the challenges of Enterprise Licensing and why you need Enterprise Architecture is that you often get the same functionality bundled into licenses from multiple vendors -- my issue is often not the price of the tool, it's that we've got licenses from 4 different vendors effectively for "free" (bundled with other licenses) and we want to only run one class of a tool. > 3. Build success and leverage word of mouth (either by encouraging it, or > asking "who runs department X? Do you reckon they'd get value from this") Yes, yes and yes. I rarely speak with vendors who approach me directly. I will always speak to a vendor who approaches me through my client (the Departments), especially where my client says "X from blah said I have to come and speak to you, we are really excited about product x but he says we need IT on board early". > 4. Expand out into other parts of the enterprise... I think the challenge (assuming word of mouth internally etc. is working for you) is going to be reducing your ongoing support. You've invested to help me get a server up and running at some cost to yourself as a trial, you don't want to be redoing this for every department that comes along -- personally I wouldn't want it anyway, if you won't scale I'd of ruled you out by now. Depending on a range of factors like how big your target client is, your ultimate number of installed seats etc. what I'd look at here is one of two models that will help you expand quickly and effectively: 1. Flat model -- Some kind of attractive first year pricing that leaves plenty of room for growth and lets you negotiate 6 - 12 months down the track. This way other departments just roll on in and once you've got some numbers you've fixed a point at which you review usage and renegotiate (or even have that price set up front). 2. Per Head -- We see this a fair bit and it's what we like to negotiate in this kind of scenario; a fixed per head cost at the anticipated "total" usage break point. This pricing could have some kind of review point and expected commitments beyond that; for example, we expect 1000 users (which you'll do at $10 per head), I sign up my 100 at $10 per head, word of mouth grows it, we review in 6 months and there are now 500 users, so I pay up the next 400 (for the next 6 months of the agreement), at the end of 12 months, we have 1000 users and an enterprise licence at this point or similar. Alternatively we get to 6 months and there are still only the 100 users, well it wasn't as useful as we thought -- at that point you up the price per the contract to the more expensive break-point and we either terminate (trial failed to attract the business usage) or the Department now has it so entrenched they can now fully justify the increased cost. To some degree this is related to an extended trial, but I think in the terms of your questions I see it as part of implementation; really it's a third licensing bracket -- a pilot licence. This leaves you with three things to consider for the Enterprise: 1. How to get in the door (keep it simple) 2. How to help open the door (pilot licence) 3. How to make your money (full implementation). Hope this is of use, Cheers, Tim On Dec 24 2008, 10:48 am, Geoff McQueen <[email protected]> wrote: > Tim, awesome advice and insight; thanks for that. > > One question is your experience and opinion on the "land and expand" model. > > Our apps have been seeing some good success with this in larger > companies/government, where they go into one team or division (often > accounting for 100 or so seats, so not a single person tinkering), and then > users talk about the benefits they're getting, and then more people get > bought into the application (which is good on something that earns licence > revenue on a user-connected way), or another vertical of the application is > implemented for the additional teams with the problem. > > So, could it be a legitimate approach in your mind to: > 1. Make it easy to trial, and enable this process with more 'support' than > 'sales' > 2. Make it cost effective to make an implementation that gets in under the > capex limits for a team. > 3. Build success and leverage word of mouth (either by encouraging it, or > asking "who runs department X? Do you reckon they'd get value from this") > 4. Expand out into other parts of the enterprise... > > Thanks again for your detailed thoughts... > > Geoff > --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Silicon Beach Australia" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/silicon-beach-australia?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
