Social Media, SaaS, and PaaS in a For-Profit World

A Global Software as a Service Platform for Supply Chain Collaboration Social Media, SaaS, and PaaS in a For-Profit World

Talking Points
Who is Asite?
Our Real-World Industry
Think Outside the Firewall
SaaS and PaaS
Accelerate Organic Growth
Asite Engaging – Some Social Media Highlights
Leverage Your Community
What Next?

Who is Asite Asite was founded in 2001 and is based in the City of London. We provide collaborative Software as a Service (cSaaS) for the Architecture, Engineering, Construction and Property sectors. 7 Days up to - 25/09/2009

An industry built on contracts...
Selling Off Risk
Squeezing Supply Chains
Lowest Cost Tendering
Fragmentation
200,000+ companies in UK Construction alone

Data Logistics Challenges
Real-World Global Logistics
Supported (or undermined) by data logistics
The Built Environment is the collision of the virtual and physical worlds

Gen Y? Gen Z? Gen BIM?
Will they change our industry’s culture?
Make partnering the norm?
Finally deliver on Egan and Latham?
If so – how long?
In the meantime – what can we as a SaaS Platform learn from their behaviours?
Impatient with traditional sales and marketing.
Expect Connected-Up Data available all the time
Self-Service Culture

The Long Tail?
There are more than 200,000 companies and 2 Million individuals in UK Construction
This contributes roughly 10% of GDP
Out of this, the “top-tier” companies represent 13% - the rest is the Long Tail
Are SaaS, PaaS, open systems, and social media the tools that will bring construction collaboration to the entire supply chain?

Outside the Firewall
Think outside-the-firewall.
Do you see opportunities to reach out across the Web to your prospects, your customers, your customers’ prospects, your partners and your partners’ customers?
If you can, then you have taken the first step toward breaking out of the mainstream SaaS hard life of low cost-based competition to the Web world of innovation, differentiation and competitive advantage.
-- paraphrasing Joel York, http://chaotic-flow.com , @chaoticflow on Twitter

The Extended Enterprise
Our customers are the whole AEC supply chain
Their job is to deliver to the Asset owners and operators
Our job is to enable them and enable their systems to connect

The Commercial Cloud
Unlimited Storage – Elastic Processing
Government Accreditations – Security, Privacy, Process, Business Continuity (AUDIT AUDIT AUDIT)
Service Level Agreements – Contracted
Global Infrastructure and Regulatory Compliance

SaaS and PaaS
Platform as a service (PaaS) is the delivery of a computing platform and solution stack as a service http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platform_as_a_service

Asite AppBuilder - True PaaS
Build, test, and deploy your own Applications to run on the Asite Platform
Point and Click development
Totally customisable
Connect via Asite API to data and functionality in platform
Connect to external sources

Asite Website Home Page
Free Accounts
Free Trials
Online Purchase
Community Content
Directory Search
Open API

“ My Home” Page
Personalised Pages per user
Add portlets for a variety of functionality
Create Dashboards
Mashups
Partner API to deploy applications

Community Tag Clouds
Workspaces can be tagged by users
This creates a tag cloud for workspaces
The tags are visible to all users with access rights to the workspaces
Filter workspace listings with tags

Dashboards and Portlets
Build Dashboards
Drill-Down through data
Export into other systems
Each user has a full self-service capability to customise the view

Location-Based Mashups
Google Maps Mashup
Virtual Earth Mashup (3D)
Integrate project data into maps views
Visualise project portfolios geographically
Render BIM objects from your projects into Virtual Earth

Google Earth Integration
Render your models from Asite into Google Earth
Carry full object detail, including non-graphical properties
Quickly create visual mash-ups of your schemes

Asite Community Home Page
Free to Participate
Community Forums
Asite Directory
The A-Blog
The Asite Wiki

The A-Blog
The Asite company blog
Multiple bloggers
Early days...

Asite Community Forums
Asite Forums – open to all – free to sign-up
Discussions on Product input, services, hints and tips, and Build London Live (so far!)

Asite Directory
Free to Use
Search all companies on the Asite Plartform
Search by location, trade, capability, etc.

Asite Directory
Self-Service data management by suppliers
Highly detailed information capture
Granular control over what detail you make public or only share with partners

Asite Wiki
Being seeded with a glossary of industry terms
Mostly Asite contributions so far
Link destination from corporate website and platform

Asite on Linkedin
http://www.linkedin.com/companies/asite

Asite on YouTube
http://www.youtube.com/asitesolutions

Asite on Twitter
OOPS!

Asite on Twitter (again)
http://twitter.com/asite

Asite on Facebook
Alumni and Current Employee Networking

Leverage Your Community
What is the true economic value of your community to your business? Free labour. Honest labour. Loyal labour. Viral labour.
By reaching out to your advocates and supporting their goals be they back-office or blogging, you are putting feet on the street.
If you are a start-up with a sales force of two, all of a sudden you find yourself with a sales force of hundreds or thousands or millions!
When you open up your application and encourage your own customers to crowdsource improvements, then you can check items off your roadmap without writing a single line of code.
-- again paraphrasing Joel York, http://chaotic-flow.com , @chaoticflow on Twitter

What does it take?
Work work and more work.
Live the content – the social network does not embrace laziness, disingenuity, or thinly-veiled sales pitches
Turn up. All the time. Your partners, prospects, and customers cannot collaborate with an empty seat.
When you do build technology – make sure it is an enabler for organic growth. – It must help your customers do it themselves – without you.
Open Open Open.

Where Next?
BIM-finity – Collaborative BIM
Real-Time Data Across the Supply Chain
Mobile Revolution?
Into the long, long, tail….
Where the community and the network takes us!

Thank You!
Contact: Nathan Doughty
Asite Website: www.asite.com and www.asite.com/community
Personal Blog: www.freecollaboration.net
Twitter: @asite and @nrdoughty
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/nrdoughty

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Social Media, SaaS, and PaaS in a For-Profit World

by Asite Solutions Ltd.

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