1. Scaling your Software Business with SaaS
Agoria 02 -10 - 2012
nick.boucart@sirris.be
the collective centre of the Belgian technological industry

2. Sirris in a Nutshell
Mission statement
Making the right technological choices
for sustainable economical growth value innovation
Translating new technologies in through
concrete products for a company technology
Taking into account the business
& technology strategy of the company
© sirris | www.sirris.be | info@sirris.be | 8/10/2012 2

3. Software Landscape in Belgium
Typical software
SME’s
Mostly
B2B
Mix of product and service
• Product
• Configuration/customization
© Sirris | www.sirris.be | info@sirris.be | 08/10/2012 3

4. Meet Bart! Business Applications
CRM
A typical Belgian
B2B software company

5. Bart’s Current business
A limited number of
customers
Every customer is
different
Long
sales
cycles
Custom
work

6. Bart’s dream: Silicon Valley
hockey stick growth through
SaaS
cbsnews.com forbes.com

7. Bart’s main concerns
Bart’s initial questions
• Will my database scale?
• Which servers to use?
• Will my current technology be up for 100K Scaling
users? Technologies
But, we know that…
Scaling technology will not be Bart’s first
scalability problem
© Sirris | www.sirris.be | info@sirris.be | 08/10/2012 7

8. Digging deeper
Technical
scaling issues
Business
scaling issues
08/10/2012 8

9. Scaling customers and offering
Can you scale with your current target audience?
 Do your current target represent a homogeneous niche?
 Is that niche big enough?
 Can you reach your target niche?
Do you have a compelling offer?
 Can you turn your offering into a well-defined point solution
for their problem?
 Do you need 5 meetings to explain your offering?
© Sirris | www.sirris.be | info@sirris.be | 08/10/2012 9

10. Consider using
Entrepreneurship
as a science Emerging
Methods
Frameworks
Application
More info?
In Belgium http://www.slideshare.net/NickBoucart/lean-startupsminixpdays
© Sirris | www.sirris.be | info@sirris.be | 08/10/2012 10

11. Scaling customer relationships
Are you ready for self-service?
 Can potential customers signup themselves?
 Can your product be automatically configured?
 Do you invoice automatically?
 How will you support your customers?
 Have you heard about community driven help
desk, online FAQ’s, training video’s?
© Sirris | www.sirris.be | info@sirris.be | 08/10/2012 11

12. Consider using
Analytics to
steer product management
Customer
support and feedback
Subscription and billing
automation
© Sirris | www.sirris.be | info@sirris.be | 08/10/2012 12

13. Scaling partners
You won’t be doing everything yourself, will you?
 Which Cloud/SaaS based solutions will you use to
automate parts of your business?
 What about a presence in existing market places?
 How will you integrate your point solution into a larger
value chain?
© Sirris | www.sirris.be | info@sirris.be | 08/10/2012 13

14. Consider using
Point solution Existing SaaS
integration Market places
Cloud/SaaS
based solutions
© Sirris | www.sirris.be | info@sirris.be | 08/10/2012 14

15. OpenSaaS: a Collaborative Transition Project to SaaS
• Research on ICT technologies to scale up business models
(OpenSaaS Belgian project)
• The SaaS bottleneck assessment service
• Identification of the bottlenecks that withhold you from scaling
• Considers all elements of the business
(product, technology, market, sales, etc …)
• Based on: Osterwalder’s business model
© Sirris | www.sirris.be | info@sirris.be | 08/10/2012 15

16. Concluding remarks
Transitioning to SaaS is not only a technical challenge
It is also a business transition
leading to a complete redesign of business model
© Sirris | www.sirris.be | info@sirris.be | 08/10/2012 16

17. Contact
nick.boucart@sirris.be
@nickboucart
http://blog.sirris.be/software-ict/
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