Presentation held at Directions EMEA 2017 in Madrid.
Been on the market for decades? Living from upfront license revenues and services that you sell alongside? Think of developing a SaaS product, but not sure where to start? Think of building a vertical Microsoft Dynamics 365 SaaS app/product? Come and join me, and I will share my experiences with you from building www.just-plan-it.com on Azure and integrate it with Dynamics 365. I will provide real life experiences, share tips and tricks, books to read and tools to use on that journey. My purpose is encouraging you to go the SaaS development route as you as an incumbent have a huge advantage over funding series driven start-ups: you know your market and have you a sustained cash flow to finance growth. In essence, I will cover the following questions:
1) How to identify and validate market demand?
2) What the heck is an MVP (minimum viable product) and how can it help?
3) How can I easily start the inbound lead generation journey?
4) How to organize development to stay at the “pulse of the market”?
5) How to measure and manage initial success?
6) Why is user onboarding so crucial and difficult?
7) How to prepare for scale?
My Slides from the "Implementing Lean Startup" workshop held at the inaugural Ideas to Profit conference at North Central College.
Original sources (Eric Ries & Steve Blank) for the lean startup are in the last slide.
My Slides from the "Implementing Lean Startup" workshop held at the inaugural Ideas to Profit conference at North Central College.
Original sources (Eric Ries & Steve Blank) for the lean startup are in the last slide.
Great Ideas Do Not Succeed On Their Moral Authoritycarlkessler
Technical staff often think that because an idea is a good, it should succeed of its own merit. In reality, one needs a good business case and solid effort in selling the value to the corporation. This presentation covers many of the pitfalls awaiting the person as the beginning selling their idea.
Доклад: “Secrets of Selling Your Global Software Development Services”
Многие из вас наверняка являются экспертами в области программного обеспечения, может быть даже считают себя гениями. Но технические гении не отличаются хорошими навыками в области продаж.
Этот доклад будет посвящен секретам успешных продаж услуг по разработке программного обеспечения, в частности клиентам из Северной Америки. Важно правильно оценить ваши шансы и перспективы и суметь убедить покупателя в том, что именно вы будете для него лучшим разработчиком. Из доклада вы узнаете, как использовать современные маркетинговые технологии для демонстрации ваших возможностей и убеждения клиентов.
Конечно, хорошо быть гением. Но кроме ваших родных и близких кто нибудь об этом знает?
A presentation of the search for Product-Market Fit with the principles, practices and processes that lead to it, from the Lean-Startup and Design Thinking perspective
Introduction to Lean Startup tools - Bank of IrelandRaomal Perera
This is an introductory talk on the value of some of the tools we use in Lean Startup such as Business Model Canvas, Value Proposition Design & Mapping the Environment.
This is a presentation from 2011 I bumped into on customer-centric innovation. While my thinking has somewhat evolved, it's actually still quite relevant :-)
Lean Innovation at UnitedHealth Group, Kunjorn Chambungdabongse, OptumLean Startup Co.
Learn how a group of corporate innovation leaders, change agents, and intrapreneurs implemented a Lean innovation incubator inside a Fortune 14 organization. Hear the story of The Garage, challenges to innovation in the enterprise, and lessons we have learned along the way.
As technologists, we love to build things. And we sometimes forget that our customers (or potential customers) don’t care about what we’re building. They care about what they’re building, doing, or feeling. In this talk, we’ll explore methodologies that help us continually focus on our customers’ needs, building just enough to learn and iterate towards their desired outcomes. Coming away from this, you’ll have a few more tools in the toolbox for your lean startup.
Code4Ukraine (C4U) is a 24h event aiming to solve problems and challenges that humanitarian organizations and volunteers face on the ground while assisting refugees.
We've partnered with humanitarian organizations and volunteers ("partners") and thoroughly mapped a list of challenges to be solved and make someone's life actually easier.
Developers, designers, product people, anyone that can make things a reality. This presentation contains tips for C4U hackathon participants.
Great Ideas Do Not Succeed On Their Moral Authoritycarlkessler
Technical staff often think that because an idea is a good, it should succeed of its own merit. In reality, one needs a good business case and solid effort in selling the value to the corporation. This presentation covers many of the pitfalls awaiting the person as the beginning selling their idea.
Доклад: “Secrets of Selling Your Global Software Development Services”
Многие из вас наверняка являются экспертами в области программного обеспечения, может быть даже считают себя гениями. Но технические гении не отличаются хорошими навыками в области продаж.
Этот доклад будет посвящен секретам успешных продаж услуг по разработке программного обеспечения, в частности клиентам из Северной Америки. Важно правильно оценить ваши шансы и перспективы и суметь убедить покупателя в том, что именно вы будете для него лучшим разработчиком. Из доклада вы узнаете, как использовать современные маркетинговые технологии для демонстрации ваших возможностей и убеждения клиентов.
Конечно, хорошо быть гением. Но кроме ваших родных и близких кто нибудь об этом знает?
A presentation of the search for Product-Market Fit with the principles, practices and processes that lead to it, from the Lean-Startup and Design Thinking perspective
Introduction to Lean Startup tools - Bank of IrelandRaomal Perera
This is an introductory talk on the value of some of the tools we use in Lean Startup such as Business Model Canvas, Value Proposition Design & Mapping the Environment.
This is a presentation from 2011 I bumped into on customer-centric innovation. While my thinking has somewhat evolved, it's actually still quite relevant :-)
Lean Innovation at UnitedHealth Group, Kunjorn Chambungdabongse, OptumLean Startup Co.
Learn how a group of corporate innovation leaders, change agents, and intrapreneurs implemented a Lean innovation incubator inside a Fortune 14 organization. Hear the story of The Garage, challenges to innovation in the enterprise, and lessons we have learned along the way.
As technologists, we love to build things. And we sometimes forget that our customers (or potential customers) don’t care about what we’re building. They care about what they’re building, doing, or feeling. In this talk, we’ll explore methodologies that help us continually focus on our customers’ needs, building just enough to learn and iterate towards their desired outcomes. Coming away from this, you’ll have a few more tools in the toolbox for your lean startup.
Code4Ukraine (C4U) is a 24h event aiming to solve problems and challenges that humanitarian organizations and volunteers face on the ground while assisting refugees.
We've partnered with humanitarian organizations and volunteers ("partners") and thoroughly mapped a list of challenges to be solved and make someone's life actually easier.
Developers, designers, product people, anyone that can make things a reality. This presentation contains tips for C4U hackathon participants.
Without design there is no product. But without product there’s no design. That’s why the user experience must be conceived with business goals in mind. But Designers tend to focus on the users, while the Business on KPIs, creating a gap that’s difficult to bridge. Thus, Designers feel excluded from product decisions, and Business areas feel that Designers don’t consider business needs into their designs. This talk shows the role of Design seen from a Product Manager’s perspective, and provides a few ideas that can help Design and Business understand each other to improve communication, increase collaboration and avoid friction. These tools will help Designers increase their influence in Product decisions.
Highest quality code in your SaaS project. Why should you care about it as a ...The Codest
We are launching a SaaS report dedicated to the whole SaaS market.
It is a useful pill of knowledge for the non-technical founders who are struggling with many challenges, especially the technological ones. In the report, we cover the specific problems/dilemmas such as:
- Is it worth making SaaS start-up if you are a non-technical founder?
- What are the biggest challenges to a non-technical founder?
- MVP as the most popular way to deliver product time to market
- Useful tips on how to build a SaaS product in 6 simple steps
Check out the report and make sure to eliminate common mistakes that can hurt your business. Are you a non-technical founder? Don’t worry!
In the short tutorial, you will learn how to successfully build a SaaS product with no programming skills.
Presented at Ford's 2017 Global IT Learning Summit (GLITS)Ron Lazaro
Presentation Details: The best way to think about product discovery is to think about it in relation to product delivery. It's not possible to build a product without doing both discovery and delivery. Discovery encompasses all the activities that we do to decide what to build. It includes all the decisions we make to decide what to build next, whereas delivery is all the activities we do to write code, package releases, ship products. It's how we deliver value to our customers.
Key takeaway for the participants will be to help them understand the difference between Product Discovery and Product Delivery and how to apply techniques in doing both.
The product is not "the product". Who owns it anyway? donato mangialardo
The business of software is not about the product really Does "P" mean Product or Project? Does it matter? We always talk about Product though... are we talking about the same Product here? Answer: "A product is something you build a sustainable business around."
Driving agility into your customer experiencemarc mcneill
Presentation given at the Customer Experience Management for Banking and Financial Services conference in London.
* Discover how lean and agile thinking delivers customer driven innovation at speed
* Learn how to build the voice of the customer into your delivery process
* Understand how to rapidly respond to changing customer expectations across multiple customer touch-points
Presents eight ideas for agility, moving out of IT and into the realm of experience design.
Driving Business Impact for PMs with Jon HarmerAggregage
https://www.productmanagementtoday.com/frs/26551585/driving-business-impact-for-pms
Move from feature factory to customer outcomes and drive impact in your business!
This session will provide you with a comprehensive set of tools to help you develop impactful products by shifting from output-based thinking to outcome-based thinking. You will deepen your understanding of your customers and their needs as well as identifying and de-risking the different kinds of hypotheses built into your roadmap. Understand how your work contributes to your company's strategy and learn to apply frameworks to ensure your features solve user problems that drive business impact.
Learning objectives:
• Learn how to prioritize the most impactful opportunities: Identify the most impactful opportunities using Impact Mapping and other framing techniques, shift from output orientation to outcome/impact orientation.
• Grow your user empathy skills: Better understand users and the problem space they are working in through Journey Maps that are customized for Product Managers.
• Understand the risks and hypotheses built into your roadmap: By making explicit the different hypotheses in your plan and identifying the riskiest ones, you will be able to quickly validate the riskiest assumptions and improve your outcomes.
• Create actual artifacts for your products: With the practical experience provided in this session, apply these tools to real-world product management scenarios to build journey and impact maps for actual users & products.
Recording available here: https://youtu.be/zZVoo5AbANI
As technologists, we love to build things. And we sometimes forget that our customers (or potential customers) don’t care about what we’re building-- they care about what they’re building, doing, or feeling. In this talk, we’ll explore methodologies that help us continually focus on our customers’ needs, building just enough to learn and iterate towards their desired outcomes.
I've spent the last years modelling complex businesses and Software Architectures with EventStorming. The original recipe evolved a lot from the initial one. This is EventStorming state of the art.
Similar to The incumbent’s playbook for launching a vertical SaaS product (Directions EMEA 2017) (20)
Best Crypto Marketing Ideas to Lead Your Project to SuccessIntelisync
In this comprehensive slideshow presentation, we delve into the intricacies of crypto marketing, offering invaluable insights and strategies to propel your project to success in the dynamic cryptocurrency landscape. From understanding market trends to building a robust brand identity, engaging with influencers, and analyzing performance metrics, we cover all aspects essential for effective marketing in the crypto space.
Also Intelisync, our cutting-edge service designed to streamline and optimize your marketing efforts, leveraging data-driven insights and innovative strategies to drive growth and visibility for your project.
With a data-driven approach, transparent communication, and a commitment to excellence, InteliSync is your trusted partner for driving meaningful impact in the fast-paced world of Web3. Contact us today to learn more and embark on a journey to crypto marketing mastery!
Ready to elevate your Web3 project to new heights? Contact InteliSync now and unleash the full potential of your crypto venture!
Explore Sarasota Collection's exquisite and long-lasting dining table sets and chairs in Sarasota. Elevate your dining experience with our high-quality collection!
What You're Going to Learn
- How These 4 Leaks Force You To Work Longer And Harder in order to grow your income… improve just one of these and the impact could be life changing.
- How to SHUT DOWN the revolving door of Income Stagnation… you know, where new sales come into your magazine while at the same time existing sponsors exit.
- How to transform your magazine business by fixing the 4 “DON’Ts”...
#1 LEADS Don’t Book
#2 PROSPECTS Don’t Show
#3 PROSPECTS Don’t Buy
#4 CLIENTS Don’t Stay
- How to identify which leak to fix first so you get the biggest bang for your income.
- Get actionable strategies you can use right away to improve your bookings, sales and retention.
Web Technology LAB MANUAL for Undergraduate Programs
The incumbent’s playbook for launching a vertical SaaS product (Directions EMEA 2017)
1. Subtitle
The Incumbent’s Playbook for
Launching a Vertical SaaS Product
Lessons learned with and from an ongoing transitioning process
Dr. Martin Karlowitsch
CEO | Co-Owner - NETRONIC Software
2. Subtitle
www.directionsemea.com
DISCLAIMER ;-)
This presentation is not about Dynamics NAV.
It is also not about Dynamics 365.
It is about building a SaaS business, when you already have an (on-prem) business.
For that – of course – both NAV and D365 can be wonderful triggers.
5. www.directionsemea.com
NETRONIC –
Gantt Charts for Visual Scheduling
• 42 years old company
• Independent & privately owned
• We visualize time- and resource-
oriented planning data
• 3 Business lines
• Tools for software developers
(Gantt chart controls)
• Visual scheduling add-ins for
Microsoft Dynamics NAV
• www.just-plan-it.com: SaaS production
scheduling for job shops & small
make-to-order manufacturers
www.directionsemea.com
6. www.directionsemea.com
Where we came from
1. We are a software product company (and always have been one)
2. 80% of our revenue is licenses & maintenance (since more than 40 years!)
3. In 2016: 100% of the business was “on prem”
Setting The Scene
Here is where we came from, what we did and what I will share today
What we did
1. We built a standalone SaaS product
2. We started integrating it with D365 as “connected app”
What I will share
1. Experiences made building & launching a SaaS product (as the kind of company that we were ;-)
7. www.directionsemea.com
The Playbook’s Agenda
1 The Job To Be Done
Your key to identifying a SaaS opportunity
2 The Minimum Viable Product
Your key to validating that there is market demand
3 Commitment to Focus & Long Game
Your key to organizing for execution
4 User Onboarding (The Customer Journey)
Your key to getting an R from the I
Your keys to unlocking some doors that might feel as being closed for you today …
Phantasy, Imagination & Day Dreaming
Your key to preparing for scale5
We are here …
11. www.directionsemea.com
• Reasons for winning custom projects (not very often)
• Client used an ERP, which did not have proper scheduling capabilities
• As ERP customer, client was used to paying money for custom developments
• Client lost customers as improper scheduling led to late deliveries
• Reasons for not winning custom projects (very, very, very often)
• Client had no ERP and looked at software “as commodity, not as luxury”
• What they all had in common
• Make-to-order manufacturing: small batch sizes
• Job shop type of production: each job is unique
• Delivery time & commitments most critical issue
• Were compelled by visual approach to scheduling
First Lessons Learned
13. Subtitle
• “Will not work.”
• “Each manufacturing
site is unique.”
• “You need to
understand the
individual processes
to consult them and
make scheduling
work for them.”
• bla bla bla
14. www.directionsemea.com
What You Should Look Out For
Structural similarities:
micro vertical or
distinct business
process
Obstacles hindering
companies to grow
Things of which
common sense says
“this will not work”
15. Getting there was
a long, long way.
Wish I would
have been aware
of ONE thing
before …
16. www.directionsemea.com
• Purpose
• Provide a theory of why an innovation is successful
• so that you can manage the process of identifying innovations
• rather than depending on good luck.
• Basic idea
• What job did you hire that product for?
• Good news
• Some jobs are timeless, but the solutions may not be
Purpose & Basic Idea & Good News
What job did you hire that product for?
18. www.directionsemea.com
1. In our tech world, we generally think of ourselves as drill makers.
2. We think about features.
3. We think about attributes like bigger, faster, sexier, cheaper.
4. We see what other drill makers are doing and do the same.
Let’s Be Honest
We all are product & technology people … and this is a problem ;-)
20. www.directionsemea.com
As Product People We Tend To Be Blind
Here are some competitors of the drill maker
Faster
Easier
Cheaper
With less damage
For hanging pictures
21. www.directionsemea.com
Defining the Job to Be Done
Make this the cornerstone of your process to find innovation
A „job“ is the progress a person is trying to make in
a particular circumstance.
• Progress
• Represents movement toward a goal or aspiration
• A job is always a process to make process, it‘s rarely a discrete event
• Circumstance
• A job can only be defined (and a successful solution created) relative to the specific context
in which it arises
• Dimensions
• Functional
• Social
• Emotional
22. Subtitle
Finding the Job to
Be Done
“One thought experiment
we’ve found helpful to
really grasp a job is to
imagine you are filming a
mini documentary of a
person struggling to
make progress in a
specific circumstance.”
(we actually interviewed
people)
26. www.directionsemea.com
Purposes
• Test a product hypothesis with minimal resources
• Accelerate learning
• Reduce wasted engineering hours
• Get the product to early customers as soon as possible
The Minimum Viable Product
MVP is a concise summary of the smallest
possible group of features that will work
as a stand-alone product while still
solving at least the “core” problem and
demonstrating the product’s value.
The minimum viable product is that version
of a new product which allows a team to
collect the maximum amount of
validated learning about customers with
the least effort.
Perspective
• Revenue (customer value, not technology)
• Riskiest assumption is not whether something can be
built, but rather would customer X pay price Y
• If you fail, fail fast
Definition, Purpose & Perspective
28. Subtitle
Biggest hurdle: Be 100% convinced (and get your team
behind it) to ship something into a B2B market that
everybody regards as “not ready”.
29. Subtitle
“We only build for early adopters. If people do not like (yet)
what we build, they are not a good fit for us.”
See the difference? We select our (early) customers, not vice versa.
30. www.directionsemea.com
Build & Measure & (Re)Build & …
“If you fail, fail fast” You only can fail fast, if you recognize that you fail
Hypothesis
Build
Measure
31. www.directionsemea.com
Value
Prop
Tagline Name Logo
- Whom to we sell to?
- Which 3 problems do we
solve?
- What is unique value prop?
Done 100% internally
Making a short and clear
statement to nail down the
value prop
Done 100% internally
Cost us <150$.
Gave five 15$ jobs to
different people and then
continued with best
www.fiverr.com
Made two ½ day
workshops with agency.
Their job: not to come up
with a name, but to
challenge us with
(strange) naming ideas
Hired help
Prerequisites for our MVP
Getting our sh#! together
32. www.directionsemea.com
Website
Basic website. We built it on HubSpot
and I highly recommend this software
to achieve proper Inbound Marketing.
Video
150$ on fiverr ;-) – Introducing the
idea in 60 seconds.
Call-to-action
„Request a trial“ people could not
sign up by their own. We wanted
them to engage with us first.
Google AdWords
Best way to do Market research at
controllable cost.
Our Minimum Viable Product
The Ingredients
www.directionsemea.com
38. www.directionsemea.com
Time To Make Decisions
These are just examples. But you need to get this answered. Your (live & paying) customers may be around for a while.
www.directionsemea.com
How will they work? Which established processes need to get kicked aside
for the “new thing”? How do you measure success?
Decide about organization
SaaS is a „long-term revenue game“. Are you prepared of a few years
paying more than you earn? How will you finance this?
Decide about budget & financing
This is the toughest one. Will these guys do is as “side project” or will this
“new thing” become their main and only focus?
Decide about focus
Whom from your people will you assign to the new way of building
technology? Who will do the Marketing? Who will do sales & support?
Decide about the team
39. www.directionsemea.com
Our Decisions
Disclaimer: Did not happen in one meeting; happened over 6-12 months learning & doing
BUDGET
Decided against a „start-up bet“.
Will finance from company‘s cash
flow, and the profit of the existing
business.
THIS IS ONE OF OUR HUGE
ADVANTAGES OVER
START-UPS.
TEAM
Development: built small team
(from internally plus 1 new hire).
Product Mgmt: myself
Sales: myself & my brother
Marketing: initially my spare time
hobby; now scaling up
FOCUS
Development team: almost 100%
focus on just plan it; no distraction;
no other products; no need to
deliver billable man-days
Management: >25% of time spent
on just plan it
ORGANIZATION
KPI: not margin, not revenue – but
website visits, visits-to-trial
conversion and new customer wins
Process: introduced agile
development (2 weeks sprints).
Use Jira.
40. Subtitle
We run this as “start-up within the
company”.
(Almost) no single rule that applies
for the rest of our business
automatically applies for just plan it.
We take the right to unlearn, and to
make completely new experiences.
41. Subtitle
• Proven value
prop P
• Slowly, but
steadily growing
product P
• Marketing
engine running P
• Constantly
signing new
customers P
TIME TO RELAX?
44. www.directionsemea.com
Why User Onboarding Is Crucial
Enthusiasm
(Likelihood of
subscription)
Time
Peak of
inflated
expectations
Trigger
Disillusionment
Slope of
enlightenment
Plateau of
productivity
Comment: curve = “technology hype cycle” used by Gartner; based on ideas/observations from Geoffrey Moore
48. www.directionsemea.com
What We Are Doing At The Moment
Taking a holistic approach
Organic
search
Adwords
Webseite
Landing
Page
Signup page
& process
First-time
usage
Repeated
usage
Subscription
Ongoing
usage
Advanced
usage
Anonymous user Trial user Customer
Basically, we currently try to define for every step the
“minimum path to awesome”
49. Wait a minute …
Time to
recommend
something to
read again
50. www.directionsemea.com
• In-app messaging/chat
• Intercom
• Tested also Drift and SnapEngage
• User analytics
• Mixpanel
• Briefly tested also Hotjar
• In-app user tutorial
• Appcues
• Looked also at WalkMe and UserLane
Building SaaS Drives Using SaaS ;-)
Tools we currently try and/or consider using to help with the onboarding challenge
55. Subtitle
www.directionsemea.com
Let‘s Get in Touch
MARTIN KARLOWITSCH
CEO | Co-Owner
NETRONIC Software
Email: martin.karlowitsch@netronic.com
Twitter: @mkarlo
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/martinkarlowitsch/
Blog: blog.netronic.com/exec-corner (coming soon)
Thank you very much for your attention
(on a Friday morning after a cool party :-)
Editor's Notes
Message = we tried to sell projects and built prototypes; so in the end, we built unicorns
No repeatable, not scalable