Webinar Replay Now Available: SaaS + Sales Performance Management = Recession Resilience

We've just made the recording our recent webinar with Forrester available:
View: SaaS + Sales Performance Management = Recession Resilience

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Overview:

With recession alarm bells going off all over the world, smart managers are looking for ways to make their businesses more recession resilient. Reducing your cost base, making sure you have operational flexibility, and boosting employee productivity are three well-proven tactics. In a recession, businesses need to invest in getting the most profit as possible out of their front-line employees.

In this educational Webinar, Xactly founder and CEO Christopher Cabrera will discuss how Sales Performance Management (SPM) solutions can boost performance and results and why companies should care in the best of times and during an economic slowdown.

ForresterLiz Herbert, Senior Analyst at Forrester will discuss how Software as a Service (SaaS), while not an option during the last recession, has established a track record over the past several years.

Key questions will be addressed:

• What are the key economic value drivers of the SaaS delivery model?
• How does Sales Performance Management impact employee and business productivity in a down economy?
• SaaS delivers lower costs and enhanced flexibility, but where does that leave employee and business productivity?
• How do SPM solutions provide value by helping to align sales behaviors to corporate objectives?
• Why is subscriber retention one of the key success metrics to determining success?

View: SaaS + Sales Performance Management = Recession Resilience

Upcoming Webinar: SaaS + Sales Performance Management = Recession Resilience

This webinar provides deeper dive into a previous blog entry: SaaS + Sales Performance Management = Recession Resilience

With recession alarm bells going off all over the world, smart managers are looking for ways to make their businesses more recession resilient. Reducing your cost base, making sure you have operational flexibility, and boosting employee productivity are three well-proven tactics. In a recession, businesses need to invest in getting the most profit as possible out of their front-line employees.

In this educational Webinar, Xactly founder and CEO Christopher Cabrera will discuss how Sales Performance Management (SPM) solutions can boost performance and results and why companies should care in the best of times and during an economic slowdown.

Liz Herbert, Senior Analyst at Forrester will discuss how Software as a Service (SaaS), while not an option during the last recession, has established a track record over the past several years.

Key questions will be addressed:
- What are the key economic value drivers of the SaaS delivery model?
- How does Sales Performance Management impact employee and business productivity in a down economy?
- SaaS delivers lower costs and enhanced flexibility, but where does that leave employee and business productivity?
- How do SPM solutions provide value by helping to align sales behaviors to corporate objectives?
- Why is subscriber retention one of the key success metrics to determining success?

Registration Required: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/451142996

Podcast - Common SaaS Misconceptions

Everyone says different things about SaaS, with disagreements going down to the basic definition of what qualifies software as a service. Christopher Cabrera recently spoke with Krissi Danielsson at ebizQ about common SaaS misconceptions. Listen to the podcast below, or read the transcript.

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SaaS + Sales Performance Management = Recession Resilience

With recession alarm bells going off all over the world, smart managers are looking for ways to make their businesses more recession resilient. Reducing your cost base, making sure you have operational flexibility, and boosting employee productivity are three well-proven tactics. Software as a Service (SaaS) wasn’t an option during the last recession. But SaaS has established a track record over the past several years, decisively proving its value in supporting the first two tactics: cutting costs and increasingly flexibility. And what’s valuable in the best of times can prove priceless in the worst of times.

You know the litany. In contrast to on-premise enterprise software, SaaS means no upfront hardware and software costs, no worrying about costly ongoing software maintenance, and no vendor lock in. Instead of being tied to an expensive software infrastructure, you’re free to quickly implement changes. And if a SaaS vendor doesn’t perform, you’re free to immediately choose one that will and be up and running in a matter of weeks. Believe me, savvy SaaS vendors know this. Subscriber retention is one of our key success metrics, along with speedy initial implementation and the ability to quickly deliver innovative new functionality.

So, while SaaS delivers lower costs and enhanced flexibility, where does that leave employee and business productivity? Obviously, not all software applications—SaaS or on-premise—deliver equal productivity boosts, at least not of the kind that directly impact the bottom line. Yet some categories excel in their ability to do so, including Sales Performance Management (SPM) applications. In a recession, businesses need to invest in getting the most profit possible out of their front-line employees. SPM applications provide this value by helping align sales behaviors to corporate objectives, focusing reps on the most strategic sales, maximizing agility in the face of market change, and providing visibility into sales success drivers through comprehensive analytics. And along the way, they help greatly reduce administrative time and costs, and support compliance efforts.

The last recession was a boom time for early-generation SPM applications—and that was even before the advent of SaaS. Today, thanks to the SaaS model, the SPM arena is expanding in scope like never before, and SPM functionality such as on-demand sales compensation management is finally affordable to companies of any size.

SaaS plus SPM delivers a genuine double whammy in the face of recession: SaaS economic value combined with SPM strategic business value. It just makes good business sense, whether you are managing in a recession or in a vibrant high-growth economy.

On-Demand in Demand as SAP Goes SaaS

If ever there needed to be a “big bang” validation of the software-as-a-service (SaaS) concept, then SAP’s September 19 unveiling of its Business ByDesign on-demand software for midsize companies surely suffices. Not only is SAP the first major enterprise software player to get serious about SaaS, it is the absolute largest enterprise software player and its move is thus freighted with significance.

But there really doesn’t have to be a big-bang validation of SaaS. Many thousands of customers are endorsing the concept every day as they leverage SaaS offerings, and will continue to do so in increasing numbers, with or without the help of traditional enterprise software companies. It is not SAP nor any other huge software company that will drive SaaS. It is the customers who are in the driver’s seat, and SAP is wisely reacting to this fact. And now SAP will have to meet these customers’ expectations—expectations built up by trail-blazing, 100 percent SaaS companies like salesforce.com, NetSuite and Xactly.

There’s no doubt that SAP’s on-demand offerings have the potential to provide immense value to the targeted customers—SaaS delivery coupled with SAP functionality packs a powerful punch. But SAP is not about to abandon its on-premise model anytime soon, and its management will be wrestling for some time with such issues as how to keep from cannibalizing its bread-and-butter software licensing revenues and how to successfully support two entirely different delivery models. And along the way, they will learn what 100 percent SaaS companies have known from the start: If you don’t meet the expectations of SaaS customers, they can cut you off in an instant, no questions asked. That’s not something that enterprise software vendors, with their long-term licenses and claws sunk deeply into their customers’ costly IT infrastructures, have traditionally needed to deal with.

Still, SAP is doing the smart thing by getting started in SaaS now, when it can be lifted by the rising SaaS tide. In doing so, SAP will add to the tide by increasing the portfolio of software functionality available to customers on demand. SAP’s move doesn’t prove that SaaS is viable. That’s already established. What it really demonstrates is that the traditional enterprise software model is not all that viable for most companies. And for that we welcome SAP to the SaaS world.

Buyer Beware: “Hosted On-Demand” Is No More Than a Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing

Reeling from tight IT budgets and the consequent popularity of new software-as-a-service (SaaS) offerings, many enterprise software vendors are casting around for ways to dress up their own offerings and perhaps cash in on the cachet of SaaS and on-demand delivery. What several have come up with is the “hosted on-demand” label, which in reality is nothing more than draping the tired old enterprise software wolf in ill-fitting sheep’s clothing. As I’ve said before, enterprise software by any name, hosted or otherwise, is not a substitute for true on-demand. Software vendors taking this re-labeling route are doing a colossal disservice to customers, whether those customers buy into the name game or not.

So, what does “hosted on-demand” have to offer? Disappointments, mostly. What these vendors are doing is simply providing the same old premise-based software in a hosted environment, coupled with a seemingly substantial—but not nearly substantial enough—price break. And under the fleece is the same old ravening wolf. Hosted or not, these are still expensive solutions to implement, and shaving 30 percent or even 40 percent off the typically enormous up-front implementation cost doesn’t change that fact—and there’s still the monthly fees for accessing the hosted software to contend with. These are also typically complicated and inflexible solutions and just because they are now off-premise doesn’t necessarily change that fact.

What may well change, however, is a customer’s support priority. With two models to support—on-premise and hosted—there’s an almost invariable dilution of resources. Which customers do you think a traditional enterprise software company is most likely to make its top priority? And for that matter, what about new functionality, version control, reliability and scalability? On-premise and “hosted on-demand” implementations are identical in that each customer is a discrete box, or technology platform—it’s just that in a hosted implementation, that box has been moved off-site. But with a true on-demand solution, all customers share the exact-same platform. Just as they all share the same low cost-base, they all benefit equally from more rapid introduction of new functionality as well as from identically robust version control, data security, disaster recovery and scalability. In numbers, there is strength.

So buyer beware. Don’t be misled by labels. If you want on-demand, go with pure on-demand solutions, 100 percent purpose built to deliver the full benefits of SaaS. Avoid the nasty shock of being fleeced, and let the wolves go howl.