saas, b2b and product management: unique challenges and experiences - goran begic (productcamp...
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SaaS, B2B and Product Management: Unique
Challenges and Experiences
ProductCamp Boston, May 2015 1
Goran Begic, @gbegicw
About the Presenter / Audience
• How many are in SaaS business today, including hybrid?
• How many involved in on-premise?
• How many C-level execs?
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About the Audience
• 15 years Product Marketing and Product Management in Software• Veracode• SmartBear• MathWorks• IBM Rational
• Twitter: @gbegicw
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• PM in SaaS is different from On-Prem
• At a very high level the objective is the same - stay engaged and strategic
• Forces dragging one into tactical are very strong, often unique and certainly persistent• Pricing Model
• Deployment Model
• Release Cadence
• Operations
• Managed Services
• Feedback Volume
Overview
In Scope and Out of Scope
• One challenge, opposite views
• Disclaimer...
• In Scope• Practical product management; real life examples and stories
• Out of Scope• Product owner vs. product manager topics
• Importance of business intelligence and metrics
• Cost of service and cost of customer acquisition
• Glossary• Product Managers and Product Management
• SaaS
• B2B
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PM in SaaS - Is It Really Different
• Point of view
• Struggle between strategic and tactical
http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/ 5
http://pragmaticmarketing.com/ 6
At a Very High Level…
• Same problem• Getting stuck in tactical
Let’s Play
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Anas-Edible-Creations
7
Hypothetical Situation 1
• Expansion opportunity in year 2
• Enterprise sales lead is all in
• No legal obstacles, budget is there
• Proved value in 1 BU, 15 more to go
• If there would only be this one new special feature…
• ROI not there, not aligned with roadmap
• Issue is escalated to the executive team
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Each quarter you may be going
through this with a significant portion of your customer base
Pricing Model
• Annual subscriptions and renewal frequency
• Pace of adoption and growth of your product
• Feature creep and over-commitment traps
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• Review the planning process with your team
• The product team must be on the same page
• Review the escalation process
• Develop rules of engagement
Recommendation: Challenges and Opportunities:
Hypothetical Situation 2
• Success in the marketplace.
• Landed 15 new accounts with high potential.
• Each account has a slightly different process and wants your product to fit.
• Buyer used to working with professional services who made customized on-premisesolutions.
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Your customers likely do not (want)
understand the implications of
having one product deployed in your
data center
Deployment Model
• One deployment for all
• Shiny object syndrome: “Why don’t you just add another field here?”
• Standardization is a powerful source of business intelligence
• Concentration of specific domain knowledge
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• Develop API strategy
• Services
• Create plugins, examples of integration
• Enable partners
• Protect product design…
Recommendation: Challenges and Opportunities:
Release Cadence
• Feature scope and relevance
• Each improvement is also a change… Are your enterprise end-users ready?
• Feature communication – who needs to know what
• Training…
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• Feature planning process
• Review release communication, what to communicate, to whom and how?
• Training process - internal and external
Recommendation: Challenges and Opportunities:
Hypothetical Situation 3
• You committed to delivering new functionality by the end of May
• April 27: PM we need to make a decision…
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Tactical agility – get ready, you’ll need it
You Now Have OPS
• You host the product on customer's behalf
• What do you do when something goes wrong?
• Tactical awareness -what are we doing, who is doing it, when...
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• Reserve time (drop other projects)
• Emergency response team. Get to know this team.
• Document and practice what if scenarios
• Communication templates -ensure that all customer facing teams know what to do and what to say
Recommendation: Challenges and Opportunities:
Managed Services
• Staying up to speed with product
• Management of expectations
• Training, training, training...
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• Review feedback process (Enhancement requests)
• Self-help
• Technical Account Managers
Recommendation: Challenges and Opportunities:
Volume of Feedback
• "Important customers"
• Subject matter experts
• All of the above
• Approach• Community
• CAB - Customer Advisory Board
• Idea board
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Conclusion
• Not all SaaS products are $10 a month, low touch sales, no managed service
• Time Investments• Process definition and alignment• Communication management - frequency,
volume, target• Planning
• Working with a business process around a conveyor belt
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Q/A
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