Low price rumor: SaaS software price should be very low.
Some customers' CIOs will solve the same needs by themselves. The five-year lease fee of SaaS model is generally higher than the cost of buyout OP (internal deployment) model. Some SaaS software, the three-year lease fee is greater than the OP model.
It is absolutely a misunderstanding to say that SaaS is cheap. Then how did this beautiful misunderstanding come about? I think it may be the following reasons:
1) Because SaaS enjoys hardware on the cloud, it brings some savings in hardware procurement and maintenance costs, including savings in operation and maintenance costs. However, before SaaS, for small customers, PC was originally installed with software. For large customers, the initial maintenance is an operation and maintenance team and redundant servers. On the whole, there are savings, but they are limited.
2) There is such a big wave of 2)SaaS products, which is very general at first, but how can you tell stories without customers? Adopt low-price strategy to attract; There is still a big wave, simply free. So it gives the public an illusion that SaaS is cheap.
3) The cost of traditional customized development software is extremely high, and SaaS is relatively cheap. In traditional software vendors, a large part of the contract is the development fee, which is generally calculated by person/day. So the more you develop, the higher your income, so you try your best to do various functions for customers. On the surface, it seems that no matter what the customer asks for, you can meet it, but often in fact you find that more than half of the functions can't be used, either you want to use them, or you change them, or you completely abandon them and start over. In the end, there may be problems of getting worse and worse. But whether the software can run in the end, the workload of people has gone up, and the price has naturally gone up.
So what is the real price of SaaS products compared with traditional software?
From the experience point of view, SaaS experience is far better than traditional software, and it is more convenient to use; From the service point of view, SaaS can provide functional iteration and value-added services that traditional software cannot provide; From the perspective of project implementation, the relationship between customers and many traditional software suppliers can be described in one sentence-the customer who didn't pay the money is the grandfather, and the supplier who paid the money is the grandfather. The traditional software implementation cycle is very long and often fails. For customers, it is in the same boat as the down payment, and the products can only be supported if they are not good. On the other hand, SaaS products must pursue customer success, because if customers don't use them well, they can choose not to renew their contracts.
Therefore, to do SaaS software, first, you can't deceive customers by the concept of flickering, and second, you can't trap customers by collecting large deposits. We must make our products and services to the extreme and always serve our customers wholeheartedly. Don't good products and services deserve higher prices? Therefore, the price of SaaS products is not low, but higher. On the road of customer success, the cost performance is very high, so you can buy with confidence.
Trend rumor: Mobility blew the horn of the rise of SaaS.
For 2C Internet, mobility is absolutely subversive, because users' online habits have changed greatly, and the mode of surfing the Internet through PC has been completely broken. Mobile terminals have extended the time and space for people to surf the Internet, the carrier of traffic has changed, and the traffic-based services will definitely change.
Just like SaaS is a technology, mobile Internet is also a technology of 2B enterprise service, because 2B is not a traffic-based business, and the essence of enterprise service is to provide customers with valuable products. Most of them are either efficient tools or matching trading platforms. Mobility has improved these products, but it is not revolutionary. What's more, traditional software doesn't mean that it can't be moved. It's not difficult to develop an APP now.
Therefore, in this era full of changes and the pursuit of efficiency, don't believe that the mobile Internet has brought about the rise of SaaS-the rise of SaaS makes its products and services more in line with the needs of the times, thus bringing opportunities.
Overlay rumors: SaaS software must overlay other services, and software alone is not enough.
This view began with Zenefits, an American SaaS company, which once claimed that HR software was free, but they provided insurance services and made money through insurance service commissions. This business model greatly matches the sexy model of "wool is on dogs". But unfortunately, there are very few enterprise service companies that can really realize this model.
In fact, successful SaaS companies in the United States mainly rely on subscription revenue, that is, the software itself charges customers, rather than relying on the superposition of some services to make profits. Why? Because in theory, other services can exist independently of SaaS services themselves. For example, Zenefits, is there a big difference between the insurance sold by insurance companies and the insurance sold by insurance companies? What's more, more professional services should be provided by more professional companies. SaaS companies are not necessarily professional in doing these non-software services, and their competitiveness will not be very strong.
Zenefits, as the initiator, has gradually fallen into a great crisis in recent years, and the original free products have also begun to charge customers. Some domestic companies also learned this model in the early days. After many years, they found that they couldn't take it anymore, so they could only charge customers honestly.
In addition, the reason for this view also comes from the old idea that "users in China are not used to paying for software". It can only be said that users in China have made rapid progress. For users who rely on SaaS services, it is understandable to add some other services to increase their income, but I am afraid they must carefully bet on these "sideline". There was once a SaaS company that made SaaS for liquor companies, and finally found that it could also sell wine, so it sold wine while selling SaaS. As a result, everyone will definitely guess.