August 19th, 2010 by Duane Jackson
It amazes me how often I see websites with appallingly bad copy.
If you’re selling to a non-technical audience then pricing your product on gigabytes of data storage is a really bad idea. They don’t know or care how many documents they can store before they hit your 1GB freemium limit and then have to start paying.
The same applies to competitors selling online accounting software like ours. I see so many people saying in big text on their home page that they’re a “SaaS solution” – what does that actually mean to Steve the sparky or Sarah the pie maker?
I spotted a blog post at OpenView recently that linked to this readability calculator.
Essentially you give it a block of text and gives you an indication of the number of years of formal education that a person requires in order to easily understand the text on the first reading.
Useful for sanity checking your gobble-de-gook.
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Tags: Marketing, openview, pricing, SaaS, twaddle
Posted in Marketing, Technology | 3 Comments »
July 13th, 2010 by Duane Jackson
Ben Weeks, a KashFlow customer, made a blog post recently about his move to the cloud for all of his business software needs.
He included this great diagram showing all the different products he uses, with arrows showing the integrations/data flow between the apps.
For the full post from Ben, click here.
Tags: carry the one, cloud, SaaS
Posted in Cloud Computing / SaaS, Small Business, Technology | 3 Comments »
May 11th, 2010 by Duane Jackson
Recently I’ve had a fair number of people get in touch saying they’re starting SaaS businesses and wanting to pick my brains.
It makes me feel like a bit of a fraud if I’m honest.
The modest success of KashFlow, my SaaS accounting software company, has been mainly down to hard work by other people and some very lucky timing as opposed to any great planning, foresight or execution on my part.
However, a recent conversation threw up an interesting question: what are the essential elements of any SaaS application?
Here’s my stab at an answer
In todays world of interconnected applications, an API isn’t optional. It’s right at the top of my list of must-haves for a number of reasons.
Having an API means lots of other applications can integrate with yours (see our Add Ons page) , making your product a more compelling offering as well as potentially giving you access to other companies customer bases.
The more applications in your ecosystem that a customer uses, the less likely they are to jump ship.
And your API has to be free (some silly sausage here tried to charge users £99/year for it and it set us back quite a bit) and fully functional (I know a number of our integrated apps have been approached by a competitor and they’ve not been able to integrate because they have a less than comprehensive API)
You must provide a free, fully functioning trial of your software. And it must be available instantly.
Some sites make you fill in a form and they then get back to you when the trial is ready for you. That’s just plain silly. Either they’re wasting time trying to filter out competitors (if they want to see it, they’ll see it) or they need some manual intervention to get you up and running (not scalable and probably not real SaaS)
This is something we didn’t factor in at the very beginning and had to retrofit (not fun). If you can provide your software on a white label basis (some times called ‘private label’) you’ll find a whole raft of opportunities to sell your product via different channels.
To make your application available on a white label basis you’ll need to be able to totally eliminate your company/product name from the application, including in address bars. Don’t get precious about your brand, get precious about license fees!
This one will raise some eyebrows with anyone familiar with KashFlow. We’re not the best looking application on the web by any means. This is because I’m a techie and designed the initial interface. Techies don’t do beautiful design. At best we do functional design.
It’s an area of our product we’re working on improving. But changing the UI when you have an established customer base of thousands of users is a delicate thing. Get it right at the outset. It really matters
Would you agree those 4 are essentials? Have I missed anything? Feel free to add your thoughts using the comment box below.
Tags: api, design, SaaS
Posted in Cloud Computing / SaaS, Technology | 6 Comments »
April 22nd, 2010 by Duane Jackson
I got lucky at the end of 2008 and got the chance to announce Sages entry to the UK SaaS accounting software market before they did. the luck continued with finding some serious security flaws that forced them to withdraw the product a month after launch.
Their new SaaS product which I’m dubbing “Son of SageLive” is due to be released in a matter of weeks. As I predicted, it’s a “back to the drawing board” jobbie, the problems with SageLive were too fundamental to be fixed.
So with one industry heavy weight about to enter the market, it seems another is close on their heels. Intuit have had an online version of QuickBooks available in the US for sometime, but it looks like they’re now about to launch in the UK.
Witness the following Tweets:
MadelineMcQueen - Found a great business online accounting tool http://www.kashflow.co.uk
(9:13 PM Apr 19th)shaawasmund - @MadelineMcQueen you want to check out Quickbooks – by far the best. We tested everything.
(9:26 AM Apr 20th)MadelineMcQueen - @shaawasmund Quickbooks on-line is not available in the UK, which is what we really need, it is in the US but no plans for release here.
(10:44 AM Apr 20th)shaawasmund – @MadelineMcQueen watch this space … honestly I know far more than what you read!
(11:14 AM Apr 20th)
Shaa Wasmund is a very well respected entrepreneur and founder of Smarta. If she says she knows something, she knows something.
But just to be certain that she is privvy to inside information:
DuaneJackson @shaawasmund KashFlow and Smarta should be working together
(13:00 PM Apr 22nd)shaawasmund @DuaneJackson hear good things about you … However we’re already hooked up with Intuit who are an awesome partner too.
(13:09 PM Apr 22nd)
So there you have it. Not quite as conclusive as seeing the actual product, but I’ll buy a hat and eat it if we don’t see a UK launch of QuickBooks online this year.
Tags: intuit, Quickbooks, SaaS, Sage, SageLive
Posted in Cloud Computing / SaaS, Technology | 6 Comments »
October 14th, 2009 by Duane Jackson
We’re quickly getting lots of new applications integrated with KashFlow. One of the problems we’ve run up against is the sheer number of different e-commerce systems out there.
Those like OpenMindCommerce and and EasyWebstore are easily dealt with – just go to the vendor and work with them to get the integration done. But what about the likes of OSCommerce, ZenCart and Magento where there is no central company to talk to?
Enter CarryTheOne. CTO first started as a simple proxy service between OSCommerce and KashFlow. For a small monthly fee it will take your customer and sales data from OSCommerce and enter it directly into KashFlow for you. I initially thought the “small monthly fee” would be the killer. You’re already paying an ongoing subscription fee to use KashFlow – do you really want to pay another company for the additional services? It would seem I was totally wrong. Businesses are happy to pay the small fee because of the huge amount of time it saves them. CTO have grown and grown and grown and have some very impressive numbers.
As well as OSCommerce they also now support KashFlow integration with CRELoaded, OSCMax, Shopify, ZenCart and Magento. and there are another half dozen in development.
As well as adding more ecommerce applications on the left side of the jigsaw above, they’re now also adding more accounting applications on the right-hand side of it. Each new application they integrate with, on either side of the equation, hugely increases their potential (and actual) customer base.
A very nice business that I’m sure will just grow and grow and grow.
I suspect as SaaS becomes increasingly popular without any agreed API standard, we’ll see more businesses like Carry The One springing up.
Tags: carry the one, CRELoaded, easywebstore, magento, openmindcommerce, OSCMax, oscommerce, SaaS, shopify, zencart
Posted in Accounting, Cloud Computing / SaaS, Technology | 5 Comments »
October 2nd, 2009 by Duane Jackson
A number of KashFlow customers have got in touch recently to tell me about an email they received from Sage.
Earlier this year we offered our online accounting software for free to anyone that could send us a copy of their boxed accounting software. A little video on YouTube demonstrating the future of boxed software got over 27,000 views and really helped fuel our campaign.
Sage then launched a campaign offering small businesses 25% off their software if they trade in a competing product.
The interesting part is that on their site they list “examples of suppliers that we offer our trade in discount against” for Sage 50 Accounts and list a number of products including Quickbooks and MYOB. But the onlyweb-based accounting software they mention is KashFlow.
When we ran our offer we received loads of software, including lots of copies of Sage. The total “value” of the software was over £10,000. I’m willing to bet Sage wont attract a single KashFlow customer with this tactic.
They can’t be getting much interest in the offer or someone would have pointed out to them that their link to the Sage 50 Accounts product actuall goes to a page for Sage 50 Payroll.
Tags: SaaS, Sage
Posted in Cloud Computing / SaaS, Uncategorized | 2 Comments »
September 23rd, 2009 by Duane Jackson
An article posted on the US site SoftwareAdvice caught my eye today. What with world leaders meeting in New York to discuss climate change I thought it might be an opportune moment to look at the green credentials of web-based software and shamelessly re-work some of the numbers the original article highlighted.
Let’s first look at power usage.
A typical multi-user, on-premise solution (ie, the old-fashioned stuff that comes in a CD in a box) would use:
1 x Server(7,000 KW/year) +
4 x High Spec Desktop PCs (400 KW/year each) =
A total of 8,600 KW per year.
A web-based solution like our online accounting software uses multiple servers. A Dell PowerEdge 2950 server, Rackspaces most popular server, uses 6,700 KW per year per server. So 13,400 in total.
As most of the data processing and number crunching takes place on the servers, much lower powered computers can be used by the software user. A Dell notebook perhaps using 120KW/year.
So if one customer replaces their on-premise software with our web based solution then their power consumption would be:
2 x Server (6,700KW/year each) +
4 x Low-power Laptops (120KW/year each x 4) =
A total of 13,880 KW / year
OK, the green argument isn’t looking great for web-based software right now.
But web-based applications, or “SaaS – Software as a Service” solutions, can serve lots and lots of customers without the need for additional servers (unless you follow Sage’s Stupid-as-a-Service strategy).
So let’s scale the numbers up to 10,000 organisations. A tiny number considering there are somewhere between 2m and 4.5m small businesses in the UK.
For on-premise software it’s an easy calculation: 8,600 x 10,000 = 86,000,000 KW / Year
For web-based software you take the 4 laptops (120KW x 4 = 480KW) and multiply that by the 10,000 organisations to get 4,800,000KW / year and then add the servers (6,700KW x 2) to get a grand total of 4,813,400 KW per year
That’s a whopping saving of 81,186,600 KW per year from just 10,000 organisations moving from locally installed software to web-based software. Or around 8,000KW per year per organisation.
1KW hour of electricity produces an average of 0.43kg of CO2 emissions (varying dependent on how the electricity is produced). So 8,000KW saved equals 3,440KG less carbon emissions per year per company that moves to web-based solutions
The National Energy Foundation says that a bus produces 1kg of CO2 per 10 miles that it travels.
So by moving just one organisation to web-based software saves the equivalent of:
- 34,400 miles of bus journey
- or 13,760 miles in an Aston Martin DB9
- or a couple of return flights from London to New York
- or a lot of cow farts
These calculations are very much “back of a fag packet” and only cover power consumption. What they don’t take into account are the many other factors.
No oil-based CDs to produce, no packaging or manuals to produce and ship, less need to replace hardware (a very old computer can comfortably use web-based software), more tele-commuting (so less travelling).
No stamps, envelopes or paper used or miles travelled by postmen to deliver invoices or statements as they’re sent by email. Even when you really *have* to send a hardcopy of an invoice, web-based postal services like ViaPost that integrate with KashFlow can seriously reduce the CO2 footprint.
I’m pretty sure I’ve just saved the world from global warming. But please don’t give me the Nobel Prize, it should go to Tim Berners-Lee (can you beleive he doesn’t have one yet???)
Even though my numbers may not be highly scientific, I still think there’s a very big green argument to be made in favour of moving towards the web-based model of delivering software.
It’d be interesting to hear thoughts from others that might have a better grasp on the numbers
Tags: CO2, DB9, environment, green, SaaS, tim berners lee
Posted in Cloud Computing / SaaS, Ramblings, Technology | 4 Comments »
September 17th, 2009 by Duane Jackson
It’s good to hear Sage haven’t been scared away from SaaS and the cloud after Sage Live, their aborted attempt at a web-based accounting app.
They’ve announced that their SalesLogix CRM system will be available as a web-based offering by early in 2010.
They say it’s a full-featured, ‘single-tenant’ cloud edition of Sage SalesLogix. It’s a positive sign that they’re using “proper” cloud technologies, like Amazon EC2, to deliver the product. Their problems around Sage Live were irresolvable because they’d used an unsuitable middleware product (which they didn’t own) to deliver the application.
One big problem though. Single tenant? One of the biggest benefits of the SaaS model is that the software is multi-tenanted.
A “single tenant” system means there is an installation of the software for each customer. Indeed, Sage say that users can choose when to trigger an upgrade to the vlatest ersion of SalesLogix, rather than have Sage automatically upgrade them (what’s the betting this will be chargeable too?).
As well as not being ideal for the customer, it also creates problems for Sage themselves. This model of delivering software over the internet simply isn’t scalable, nor does it allow them to take advantage of (and reflect in their pricing) the ability to easily support the software knowing that everyone is running the same code.
All in all, it sounds like they’ll make a better go of it than they did with Sage Live. But it’s still a flawed strategy. For proper web-based CRM, see our partners here.
Perhaps by their 3rd attempt at getting into the cloud Sage wll finally grasp the concept in full.
Update: Good to see Philip Carnelley at TechMarketView agrees with me on the multi-ternnancy issue aswell as making some other very valid points. A saner person would argue that it’s me agreeing with him as he published way before me and our post titles are rather similar - but I swear I’ve only just read it!
Tags: Amazon EC3, Cloud Computing, CRM, SaaS, Sage, saleslogix
Posted in Cloud Computing / SaaS, Technology | 6 Comments »
July 8th, 2009 by Duane Jackson
They say a picture is worth a thousand words, so rather than a lengthy blog post I’ve put together a video to illustrate my point.
It’s also perhaps an analogy for the future of traditional software companies that don’t embrace SaaS. Turning to dust and blowing away in the wind.
I find the video strangely therapeutic. Enjoy.
Don’t forget, until the end of this month you can send us your boxed accounting software for our big bonfire and we’ll give you ours free. Details can be found here.
Tags: SaaS, Sage, Software
Posted in Cloud Computing / SaaS, Technology | 17 Comments »
June 8th, 2009 by Duane Jackson
We offer a free trial of our online accounting software and we tend to follow up those who don’t go ahead to become paying subscribers to find out why they chose not to go ahead.
Typically we’re told that they love the software, it’s by far the easiest to use and easiest to understand application they’ve ever tried for managing their accounts for their small company or sole-trader business. But they just don’t like the idea of their data being held on the web.
There’s a perception, especially amongst non-technical users, that data held on their PC or Mac is more secure that it would be on our servers.
So let’s look at this for a moment:
Home/Office PC: Free copy of Zonealarm (software firewall) – probably not updated very often.
SaaS solution: Incredibly expensive hardware firewall with sophisticated intrusion prevention. Most SaaS providers, ourselves included, have to be what is called PCI compliant and are scanned regularly by a third party to check for security weaknesses.
Home/Office PC: No monitoring. Sometimes there might be a software product to alert you to attempted attacks – but this is of no use if you leave the computer on and connected to the internet whilst no one is using it.
SaaS solution: Monitored 24/7 by security specialists at data center
Home/Office PC: High risk. The computer is often in use and is used to visit websites and has other software installed
SaaSsolution: Virtually non-existent. The computer is only used to serve the application
Home/Office PC: Backups may be taken once a month if at all. And that’s only if you remember to do them (honestly, when did you last backup your data?)
SaaS solution: We have real time live synchronisation to a remote location, so if London (where our main data center is) disappeared overnight, we’d be back up and running with zero data loss very quickly. We also take regular “snapshot” backups throughout the day.
Home/Office PC: Your computer is often located under the desk or in the spare-room at home. Physical security is usually limited to a burglar alarm (which keeps going off accidentally so now gets ignored by all)
SaaS solution: SaaS companies use secure data centers. Appointments are needed to visit hardware. Often biometric scans and photo identification are used to gain access
Home/Office PC: Smoke alarm under the stairs (no battery)
SaaS solution: Sophisticated ‘dry’ fire suppression system, ensuring no damage to hardware
So by far a SaaS solution is more secure than your home/office system. Logically it’s very easy to prove this. Often though, when faced with the above arguments people say it “just doesn’t feel right” and talk about “gut feelings”. As a programmer by trade I find it really hard to change someones mind when their opinion is based on emotions. So when someone says they’re just “not comfortable” with their data being online, we don’t try to change their minds (we don’t know how!)
Thankfully though, these objections are becoming less frequent. We hear it significantly less often than we did a couple of years back or even 6 months ago. But I think this is by far the biggest hurdle SaaS companies have to overcome when selling
Tags: SaaS, Security
Posted in Cloud Computing / SaaS, Technology | 7 Comments »
