Assimil8’s experience of developing a dedicated SaaS capability.

1. BUSINESS ANALYTICS AS A
SERVICE
Assimil8 's experience of developing
a dedicated SaaS capability
Presented by Karl Mullins
Assimil8
www.Assimil8.com
K.Mullins@Assimil8.com

2. Briefing
Part 1 – What Do We Do
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A little about Assimil8
What is the Service and offering
Why SaaS Is important to our mid-market clients
How does this help our clients
Part 2 – How Did We Get There
– What did we did internally
– Our journey to get to a point of delivering
solutions
Part 3 – WIIFM?

3. About Us
“Achieve More” with Assimil8
BI, TM1 & EP
Expertise
Value Added
Technologies
Business
Analytics as a
Service
• IBM Premier Business Partner
• IBM Ready for Cloud Services
• IBM Cognos Sales, Consultancy,
Training & Support Provider
• Software Development
IBM Cognos
Recruitment
Specialists

4. What Is Analytics?

5. What Does SaaS look Like?

6. What Does SaaS look Like?

7. Assimil8 Business Analytics as
a Service is...
– Scalable, Modular Analytics service
– BI and Performance Management Solutions
• By Size
• By Industry Sector
• By Service component
– Customised client branded portal technology
– Version Control & Regression Testing
– Automatic documentation capabilities
– Geo spatial capabilities from ESRI
– Self Service Password Module

8. Service On IBM Cloud Hosting
External
Sources
External Services
IBM SoftLayer
Data Warehouse
USER
Organisation
ADMINISTRATOR
USER

9. Underpinned with..
Support and Value Added Services
– Instance provision, Software Images & Virtual Machines
– Dynamic Storage
– Internet Transfer
– Secured LAN
– User/Group security management
– Monitoring Services
– Maintenance Services
– Economies of scale
– Disaster Recovery and Backup Planning
– Notification Services
– Solution integrity and Continuity

10. Why Is SaaS Important to our
Clients
Mid Market Companies would like to perform better but;
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Times of Austerity!
Cash Flow is KING
Increased pressure to cut costs
Increased pressure to cut head count
Increased pressure to reduce infrastructure
Increased demand for pay as you go facility
Increased demand for rapid deployment
Increased demand for outsourced solution management
Aspire to become an Eco-Friendly operation
Targeted to reduce CO2 carbon footprint

11. Typical Non SaaS Engagement
Barriers
• Hardware (Lease or Purchase lead time)
• Software (Perpetual)
– Generally Initial oversizing
• Resource
– Exposure, training, salaries, head count,
attrition
• Long procurement cycle
• Cost NOW, Benefit Later (ROI)

12. How Does Assimil8 SaaS
Offering Help?
• Cost Effective
• Agile
• Focussed

13. SaaS Cost Effective
• Pay as you go/use
• Opex not Capex
• No set up – it’s already there
• Little or no infrastructure layout
• Pay per use = no paying for hardware you don’t use
• All technology needed is already in your office
• Security is included
• Energy costs minimised

14. SaaS Agile
• Always up to date
• Automatically up-to-date version
• No need to schedule implementations
• Upscale package instantly
• Remote working is inherent
• Multi tenant means flexible
• Data accessed centrally so work any time, any place
• Capacity – Possible to Increase and Decrease at short
notice. (Month End)

15. SaaS Focussed
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Quick to put in place. Decide – implement – use
Central server inspires collaboration
Less implementation time = more strategy focus
Virtually nil maintenance – focus on improving
usage
• Environmental impact minimised
• Political benefits - Less conflict between business
and technical managers (focussed on us )

16. Mid Market SaaS Clients
Benefit Summary
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Rapid deployment
Low upfront costs
Monthly rental (SAAS for Cloud & Cognos)
Low administration costs
Lower TCO and fast ROI
Business Continuity built in – no false starts
Lower running costs
Change Solution as their business changes

17. Part 2 – How Did We Get there
…, a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step

18. Actual Experience
…, If we didn’t get there someone else would
• We made the leap !
• Steep Learning Curve
• Pioneering solutions
• Risks & Reward
• Preparation is everything
• 1Direction Autobiography
• 3 years in a lot has
changed
• Long way to go
• Still learning
• Fluidity

19. KISS - Solution
• This is NOT the team (really!)
• We mean.., Keep It Simple Stupid

20. KISS Solution Recipe
• Create ‘off the shelf’ business solutions
(Size,Sector,Analytics Capability)
• Add Managed Service Platform
• Add Value Added components and
Technology
• Add Support functions
• Bring all ingredients together in a simple
straight forward SERVICE to the client
• Leave to rise for 3 years

21. SaaS Ingredients
Paradigm Shift in approach / team
– Crucial to up skill on IBM Cloud Hosting
• SoftLayer, IBM SCE
• Software around the edges
– Crucial to have Integration skills
– Crucial to have dedicated support team
– Crucial to have Go to market license agreement
to support low cost service model IBM ASL.
– Early Adoption clients (prove the SaaS service)
– Identify Value Added Services and Software
which compliment a SaaS route to create a
Market and proposition differentiator.

22. Talking Numbers
• 2011 –Adopted Cloud Internally
• 2011 – £2K & 1 SaaS Client
• 2013 – 30% of our Business Services
Revenue from SaaS Offerings
• Annual associated contracts of £200,000
• Predictable and Secured business
models.

23. Part 3 WIIFM
What’s In It For Me?
– Piggy Back mass marketing drive of Cloud
Computing & SaaS.
– Open new doors to business that would never
have been reached due to cost barriers
– Revisit old clients with new sales approach
– Change plateau at entry level services, untapped
markets (<50m Entry point)
– Reduces Sales Cycle longevity (Your Costs!)
– We can sell to IT Managers ‘Sign-Off’ authority

24. WIIFM – Our Findings
• Less competition in this space! (Not after today)
• Clients have an appetite to expand services
• Up-Sell additional features easily and quickly built
in to the model
• Clients push more software opportunities
– Can you look after our CRM system, HR System,
Legacy Systems and Database.
• Mutual recognition of ROI quickly
• Value of Assimil8 grown as a direct result of
annuity contracts and SaaS Model.
• Compliments our other services and models
– Evolution rather than revolution

25. Parting Thought
• IBM Cloud Host Invaluable to
proposition and success.
• Embrace and Adopt!
• We added £200,00 pa to our business with
these contracts in 3 years, largely with what
we already had!
• No Other option internally could derive such
business growth – not at such a low cost.

26. Thank You
• Thanks you for your Patience and
Attention