2 page Case Study - Posted 9/28/2009
Views: 60
Rate This Evidence:
ISV Reduces Sales and Deployment Cycle from Months to Five Minutes with Web-based Service
Octave wanted to deliver its retail accounting and sales solution as an online service. It partnered with YouSAAS—a Microsoft® Gold Certified Partner specialising in technical and marketing consultancy for independent software vendors (ISVs)—to fully automate provisioning and deployment. Following the transition, the delivery cycle decreased from up to five months to just five minutes, increasing sales and lowering overheads.
Business Needs
Octave is an ISV based in France. Since it was established in 1998, the company has accumulated extensive experience in developing accounting solutions for online retail businesses. Its primary product is a customizable Web-based accounting and sales management tool called Octave VAD, which also provides small and medium-sized enterprises with their own merchant Web sites.
While the ISV’s solution has been successful, Octave felt that business growth was limited by its delivery model. This involved up to 12 weeks of pre-sales customer consultation, and then up to four months customizing the solution to fit customers’ business requirements. In 2007, Octave decided to host the solution in its own data centers to cut the amount of development required on site. But this scenario still involved a long consultation and deployment cycle, reducing the speed at which Octave could acquire new customers.
Michel Perrinet, Chief Executive Officer at Octave, says the company’s lack of hosting experience was becoming a challenge. He explains: “We wanted to focus our attention on expanding the solution’s feature set and improving service delivery. But every new customer represented a new project, which absorbed a lot of time.”
Perrinet was interested in the possibilities of delivering the solution as a service accessed over the Internet. And, although the Octave team had the skills and experience to develop first-class software, Perrinet realized he needed expert advice and support to guide the company through the challenges of deploying a hosted, online service. Given that the software-as-a-service (SaaS) market is highly competitive, the business also needed to develop and execute a sophisticated marketing strategy to attract new customers.
Solution
In 2008, Perrinet was invited to attend a half-day workshop for the Microsoft Software-plus-Services Incubation Center Programme in Paris. Here he met Philippe Limantour, General Manager of strategy consultancy YouSAAS—one of 12 Microsoft Gold Certified Partners that participate in the Microsoft Software-plus-Services Incubation Center Programme. After meeting Limantour and learning about the technical and marketing advisory services offered by YouSAAS, Perrinet realized he’d found precisely the type of support required by Octave. “We needed a true ISV partner that could help us with our business plan and guide us through the technical challenges of delivering our application as a service. YouSAAS was the perfect fit,” he says.
From June to August 2008, Octave worked through an action plan created by Limantour’s team. “The support provided by Octave was pragmatic, taking into account our experience and limitations,” explains Perrinet. “We followed an eight-step success method to define our service offering and developed a fully automated provisioning system for the Back Office solution.”
The three-month plan represented a strategic turning point—the YouSAAS approach helped the company turn its SaaS goals into reality. “In just three months we discovered a way to provision and deploy the solution online within minutes. The entire sales and deployment cycle decreased from up to five months, to five minutes. Commercial efforts focused exclusively on the specials needs after the customer has deployed and tested the solution” says Perrinet.
Customers can now create their own customized sites and e-commerce systems in just a few clicks of a mouse. “Based on our new marketing insight, we designed the service so customers can have a free month’s trial and discover how easy it is to use the solution,” says Perrinet.
Benefits
Increased sales, predictable overheads, and expert support, are just a few of the benefits Octave has enjoyed since transitioning to the SaaS business model. Perrinet says: “Partnering with YouSAAS was an excellent decision. We’ve got the skills and expertise to market and deploy our services successfully in a highly competitive industry.”
- Decreased deployment cycle. All services are provisioned automatically, reducing pre-sales and deployment time from up to seven months to just five minutes.
- Increased sales. The company now finds it easier to sell its product within the hosted environment. “Our customers can trial the service before they buy and discover how simple it is to customize and operate. This approach requires no input from the business, but significantly increases our sales volumes. In the first year sales rose by 112 per cent. In particular, the solution becomes available to smaller customers because the cost of acquiring a new customer is lower,” says Perrinet.
- Competitive pricing. Automated provisioning and billing reduces overall service costs—these savings are passed on to customers.
- Successful campaigns. Octave is applying the techniques taught by YouSAAS to create professional, highly-targeted marketing campaigns that resonate with its target market and are more successful at generating new business.
- Predictable costs. With a fully automated provisioning system, and a managed hosted service, monthly overheads are more transparent and predictable, giving Octave greater financial control.
- Rapid growth. It’s faster to acquire new customers, yet deployment and maintenance costs are lower, which increases revenue and growth.
- Scalable environment. It’s easy to create and deploy new services on the Web without interrupting the application’s performance.
- Ongoing support. YouSAAS now manages hosting services for Octave, so their partnership is continuing to develop and the ISV has constant expert support.
- Valuable partnership. “The partnership is a great opportunity. YouSAAS has improved the hosting infrastructure, while we concentrate on creating new functionality,” says Perrinet.
This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.
