Comments for Laurie McCabe's Blog http://lauriemccabe.wordpress.com Perspectives on the SMB Technology Market Mon, 30 Nov 2009 21:18:13 +0000 http://wordpress.com/ hourly 1 Comment on FinancialForce: A New Force in Cloud-based Accounting by Flying Through the Cloud: Dreamforce Takeaways at 50,000 Feet « Laurie McCabe's Blog http://lauriemccabe.wordpress.com/2009/10/06/financialforce-a-new-force-in-cloud-based-accounting/#comment-246 Flying Through the Cloud: Dreamforce Takeaways at 50,000 Feet « Laurie McCabe's Blog Mon, 30 Nov 2009 21:18:13 +0000 http://lauriemccabe.wordpress.com/?p=297#comment-246 [...] a sampler: Xactly launched a new sales performance solution for small and medium businesses (SMBs); FinancialForce, which Salesforce invested in with Coda to to deliver business critical financials solutions on the [...] [...] a sampler: Xactly launched a new sales performance solution for small and medium businesses (SMBs); FinancialForce, which Salesforce invested in with Coda to to deliver business critical financials solutions on the [...]

]]> Comment on Small Business Has a Big Appetite for Digital and Social Media Marketing by Alex Hawkinson http://lauriemccabe.wordpress.com/2009/11/05/small-business-has-a-big-appetite-for-digital-and-social-media-marketing/#comment-238 Alex Hawkinson Mon, 09 Nov 2009 06:34:12 +0000 http://lauriemccabe.wordpress.com/?p=359#comment-238 Hi Laurie - great post and would love to connect with you again. It seems our views are aligned today just as they were 5+ years ago. We've worked with about 400 thousand small businesses with our platform, and those experiences have led us to see the same trends that you outline above. Fundamentally, social media growth is exploding amongst consumers. Facebook is now 1 in 4 U.S. pageviews (http://bit.ly/28iVda). Consumers talk about companies as they use social media (http://bit.ly/4zJ0Xe) and those conversations influence buying behaviors (http://bit.ly/MM6ZT). Consumers expect businesses to be present and interactive with them in those environments and the businesses that embrace it as an opportunity to deliver great customer engagement and service will benefit (http://bit.ly/nf0or). Ultimately, small businesses need a strategy that gets them discovered via BOTH search and social discovery (http://bit.ly/1LLhUo) and which helps them to go beyond discovery to listening and serving their customers (http://bit.ly/44evxJ). Hi Laurie – great post and would love to connect with you again. It seems our views are aligned today just as they were 5+ years ago.

We’ve worked with about 400 thousand small businesses with our platform, and those experiences have led us to see the same trends that you outline above.

Fundamentally, social media growth is exploding amongst consumers. Facebook is now 1 in 4 U.S. pageviews (http://bit.ly/28iVda). Consumers talk about companies as they use social media (http://bit.ly/4zJ0Xe) and those conversations influence buying behaviors (http://bit.ly/MM6ZT).

Consumers expect businesses to be present and interactive with them in those environments and the businesses that embrace it as an opportunity to deliver great customer engagement and service will benefit (http://bit.ly/nf0or).

Ultimately, small businesses need a strategy that gets them discovered via BOTH search and social discovery (http://bit.ly/1LLhUo) and which helps them to go beyond discovery to listening and serving their customers (http://bit.ly/44evxJ).

]]> Comment on Small Business Has a Big Appetite for Digital and Social Media Marketing by Tweets that mention Small Business Has a Big Appetite for Digital and Social Media Marketing « Laurie McCabe's Blog -- Topsy.com http://lauriemccabe.wordpress.com/2009/11/05/small-business-has-a-big-appetite-for-digital-and-social-media-marketing/#comment-228 Tweets that mention Small Business Has a Big Appetite for Digital and Social Media Marketing « Laurie McCabe's Blog -- Topsy.com Thu, 05 Nov 2009 15:32:42 +0000 http://lauriemccabe.wordpress.com/?p=359#comment-228 [...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Serj Joseph and simongeorge, bridget busutil. bridget busutil said: Small Business Has a Big Appetite for Digital and Social Media ...: So, with their appetite whetted, what will .. http://bit.ly/1TYe5F [...] [...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Serj Joseph and simongeorge, bridget busutil. bridget busutil said: Small Business Has a Big Appetite for Digital and Social Media …: So, with their appetite whetted, what will .. http://bit.ly/1TYe5F [...]

]]> Comment on Another Plea for Plain English! by lauriemccabe http://lauriemccabe.wordpress.com/2009/10/27/another-plea-for-plain-english/#comment-225 lauriemccabe Mon, 02 Nov 2009 14:55:17 +0000 http://lauriemccabe.wordpress.com/?p=346#comment-225 That is really an interesting idea. If that's the plan, we can only expect more and more garbled gibberish. Yikes! That is really an interesting idea. If that’s the plan, we can only expect more and more garbled gibberish. Yikes!

]]> Comment on Another Plea for Plain English! by stevenjusher http://lauriemccabe.wordpress.com/2009/10/27/another-plea-for-plain-english/#comment-221 stevenjusher Sun, 01 Nov 2009 02:14:33 +0000 http://lauriemccabe.wordpress.com/?p=346#comment-221 I totally agree. I think the 1,990-page Healthcare Act could be another example. I wonder if, at times we don't have a sort of reverse paparazzi situation. Given the competition for position in search engine results, and for the fame it brings, is this not an example of these companies chasing the paparazzi? Thereby, using every word in every manner they can think of(and poorly at that) to get search engine hits? I totally agree. I think the 1,990-page Healthcare Act could be another example. I wonder if, at times we don’t have a sort of reverse paparazzi situation. Given the competition for position in search engine results, and for the fame it brings, is this not an example of these companies chasing the paparazzi? Thereby, using every word in every manner they can think of(and poorly at that) to get search engine hits?

]]> Comment on Workingpoint’s New Twist on SaaS Pricing for Small Businesses by uberVU - social comments http://lauriemccabe.wordpress.com/2009/10/22/workingpoints-new-twist-on-saas-pricing-for-small-businesses/#comment-219 uberVU - social comments Thu, 22 Oct 2009 21:18:10 +0000 http://lauriemccabe.wordpress.com/?p=317#comment-219 <strong>Social comments and analytics for this post...</strong> This post was mentioned on Twitter by tweetcloud: Workingpoint's New Twist on SaaS Pricing for Small Businesses: In a post earlier this month, I raised the issue.. http://bit.ly/2HtGOO... Social comments and analytics for this post…

This post was mentioned on Twitter by tweetcloud: Workingpoint’s New Twist on SaaS Pricing for Small Businesses: In a post earlier this month, I raised the issue.. http://bit.ly/2HtGOO...

]]> Comment on Prescription for Subscription Fatigue? Time for New SaaS Pricing Models by Joel Passen http://lauriemccabe.wordpress.com/2009/09/20/prescription-for-subscription-fatigue-time-for-new-saas-pricing-models/#comment-204 Joel Passen Thu, 15 Oct 2009 17:51:46 +0000 http://lauriemccabe.wordpress.com/?p=279#comment-204 Laurie, Great blog post! We couldn't agree with you more. Experimenting with SaaS pricing models is long overdue. As a company that caters to SMB's, we realized that our customers were tired of complicated contracts and especially tired with per-seat charges. The issue of “dead users”, particularly these days, is huge. Companies buy into inflexible contracts and get charged for service that they don’t use causing among other things animosity towards the vendor. Also, another thing that we realized is that most SaaS companies need to make their software more complicated to support their inane user rights and complicated pricing schemes. That’s another can of worms worth exploring in a blog post some time. We went with tiered pricing, month-to-month contracts, and we only charge for administrative users – our clients can add their general users for free- as many as they want – any time! And, we decided to take this a step further by putting pricing right on our site – no hassles! Total transparency! http://www.newtonsoftware.com/pricing.html Joel Laurie,
Great blog post! We couldn’t agree with you more. Experimenting with SaaS pricing models is long overdue. As a company that caters to SMB’s, we realized that our customers were tired of complicated contracts and especially tired with per-seat charges. The issue of “dead users”, particularly these days, is huge. Companies buy into inflexible contracts and get charged for service that they don’t use causing among other things animosity towards the vendor.

Also, another thing that we realized is that most SaaS companies need to make their software more complicated to support their inane user rights and complicated pricing schemes. That’s another can of worms worth exploring in a blog post some time.

We went with tiered pricing, month-to-month contracts, and we only charge for administrative users – our clients can add their general users for free- as many as they want – any time! And, we decided to take this a step further by putting pricing right on our site – no hassles! Total transparency!
http://www.newtonsoftware.com/pricing.html

Joel

]]> Comment on Prescription for Subscription Fatigue? Time for New SaaS Pricing Models by Chitra Dunn http://lauriemccabe.wordpress.com/2009/09/20/prescription-for-subscription-fatigue-time-for-new-saas-pricing-models/#comment-169 Chitra Dunn Tue, 22 Sep 2009 07:03:57 +0000 http://lauriemccabe.wordpress.com/?p=279#comment-169 I agree whole heartedly, a new value based model is required. Watch our website for a new SaaS offer which will be based on a value model, not per seat/user. I agree whole heartedly, a new value based model is required. Watch our website for a new SaaS offer which will be based on a value model, not per seat/user.

]]> Comment on Prescription for Subscription Fatigue? Time for New SaaS Pricing Models by Michael Wolff http://lauriemccabe.wordpress.com/2009/09/20/prescription-for-subscription-fatigue-time-for-new-saas-pricing-models/#comment-168 Michael Wolff Tue, 22 Sep 2009 06:50:39 +0000 http://lauriemccabe.wordpress.com/?p=279#comment-168 Very thought provoking blog. Clearly as small businesses sign up for more and more SaaS applications, there will be a point where the burden of the accumulated subscriptions becomes too high. This provides an opportunity for aggregators like ourselves to discount subscriptions based on integrated packages. With the emergence of "enterprise 3.0" and virtual organizations, a business will require a full suite of SaaS applications to operate end-to-end. This is effectively what we are doing at Ki Work, using the virtual team function as the basis for integrating multiple apps. A single discounted subscription for a package of apps is clearly the way forward. See http://ki-work.com Very thought provoking blog. Clearly as small businesses sign up for more and more SaaS applications, there will be a point where the burden of the accumulated subscriptions becomes too high. This provides an opportunity for aggregators like ourselves to discount subscriptions based on integrated packages.

With the emergence of “enterprise 3.0″ and virtual organizations, a business will require a full suite of SaaS applications to operate end-to-end. This is effectively what we are doing at Ki Work, using the virtual team function as the basis for integrating multiple apps. A single discounted subscription for a package of apps is clearly the way forward.

See http://ki-work.com

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