In short, as per Part 1, you

1. keep admitting to every mistake you are making and do something about it, then
2. continue by looking for cost-effective opportunities for improvement and pursue them and finally
3. never, ever, ever forget the timeless basics.

Today, we’ll continue by describing what you do when you identify, and admit to, one of the next two mistakes (mistakes 5 & 6) we chronicled in our two part introduction to our “dead company walking” (Part 1 and Part 2) series (where we helped your potential customers identify problems that signify you are a SaaS supplier they should be walking away from). (You can find part 2 and part 3 here.)

5) An innovation burst is enough, especially if it is disruptive

A successful innovation burst is great as it can get you noticed, and as it’s very hard to get noticed in an overcrowded space (again, see the Mega Map), that’s a great start. But someone noticing you does not mean they’ll engage with you, and engagement does not mean they will buy from you.

Moreover, it’s never long before a one-trick pony loses the limelight as fast as he enters it. If you want to stay in the limelight, which wants to move on to the next story as soon as you’ve had your 15 seconds of fame, you need to keep innovating, or at least developing the core functionality necessary to flesh out the value message to the point the overall message is so compelling people want to hear it and repeat it.

The reality is that it is continued development, especially around core processes your technology is being designed to support, that will at least keep you on the periphery of the limelight, and that is where you need to be to not only attract enough potential customers, but convert them into customers who want, as we’ve been stating repeatedly, solid solutions to their problem and not shiny tech that looks cool but doesn’t do what they need it to do.

6) Too much investment, too soon, against an overly ambitious plan

This is one of the biggest threats to your success, especially since you will be pushed to scale up fast to support the rapid growth, that won’t come, or at least not early in your corporate development. Falling for this will burn the cash well before you are even close to break-even, and if you can’t raise additional funds fast when you run out, you’re dead.

The first thing to do when you raise too much money is to stop dead in your tracks, stop all external hiring and engagement, and step back and do the detailed market research described in our first mistake and figure out the MVP you’ll actually need to build a significant market share, and focus first on hiring the talent / or acquiring the third party tech, to get there as soon as possible.

Then you need to figure out what not only makes a good customer, but one that is easy to sell. It’s likely that the majority of these customers will need education to get them there. The next thing to do is hire the product people who can build these educational assets for marketing, sales, partners, and customers.

When you get close on the product and the marketing, then you start to ramp up marketing and high-performing sales (who can work without a lot of support and incomplete, but progressing monthly, assets) to start building the initial funnel when you are ready to go hard.

Then start building up your services teams with senior resources who can do multiple roles and initial implementations with little support.

And only once all the pieces start falling into place do you start scaling up.

And in the process, be sure to:

• review the marketing plan: cut the funding to anything not focussed on education and thought leadership in the early days
• review sales: cut the “leads” to those truly qualified with problems that match your solution; and definitely cut the spray and forget power washer lead blasting from 3^rd parties, you want well qualified leads only
• review the development plan: make sure it’s 90% steak and only 10% sizzle; sizzle doesn’t solve problems, or fill bellies, and that’s why customers want steak
• review the budget: anything not going to educational/thought leadership marketing, qualified solution-based lead generation, or solid development is extraneous and needs to be cut ASAP to ensure the money lasts until the solution is broad and deep enough to serve the intended market, command the expected price tag, and get the interest you need for steady, continued, growth

Stay tuned for Part 5!

In short, as per Part 1, you

1. keep admitting to every mistake you are making and do something about it, then
2. continue by looking for cost-effective opportunities for improvement and pursue them and finally
3. never, ever, ever forget the timeless basics.

Today, we’ll continue by describing what you do when you identify, and admit to, one of the next two mistakes (mistakes 3 & 4) we chronicled in our two part introduction to our “dead company walking” (Part 1 and Part 2) series (where we helped your potential customers identify problems that signify you are a SaaS supplier they should be walking away from). (You can find Part 2 here.)

3) Shiny New Tech is More Important than Tried and True Methodology

Tried and true ALWAYS trumps shiny new tech in enterprise software. Especially when the total cost of ownership after factoring in license fees, maintenance, hardware & software updates, services, data feeds, integration fees, etc. usually push a solution into the realm of seven figures (and eight figures for large enterprises). Companies want a return, and shiny doesn’t generate a return. So focus on algorithms, processes, and approaches that are guaranteed to yield solutions. Do this by:

i) As THE REVELATOR would say, take an agent-based approach and focus in on what the solution should do

It’s supposed to be people-process-technology (or, in the doctor‘s words, talent-transformation-technology since you should first look for opportunities to improve your processes before investing in technology), not technology-forced workflow-prisoner! When you focus on the tech first and forget the process it is supposed to support and the people who have to use it, you’re never, ever, ever going to get it right. And believing that an over-hyped unproven technology will eventually show emergent behaviour (that it has zero chance of doing because of the underlying technology) and “evolve” to solve the problem is just stupid.

Real tech encodes real solutions identified by real human intelligence that have been implemented, repeatedly verified, tested in real world operating conditions, and understood to the point that the success can be repeated predictably. Sometimes it’s traditional AI, sometimes it’s RPA, sometimes it’s workflow, and sometimes it’s a simple calculation. It all depends on the problem and the people-process combo that can be applied to solve that problem. Tech is only transformative when it supports the business. You don’t lead with tech, you follow.

ii) Then identify the best tech options for each step

Once you have fully documented the problem(s) the people need to solve, the processes they can support, and the solutions that will work acceptably (maybe not perfectly, but it’s rare that a solution is perfect — plus, as we’ve repeatedly indicated, most enterprise users would cry tears of joys if they found something that just worked), identify all the potential tech options at your disposal, from open source to out-of-the-box from third parties to custom development.

Then, for each option, evaluate:

• it’s cost
• the relative return (for the customer and how that will translate into sales)

And identify the options with the best balance. You’ll be surprised at how often it’s not the new shiny. The best hotness is the old busted hotness.

iii) Select tried-and-true when all things are equal (and save)

Finally, when all things are equal, go for the most stable, tried-and-true, methodology — don’t do experimental new “AI” development if a sold optimization or analytics-based solution already exists.

4) Over Reliance on Third Party Tech is a Sustainable Business, Especially if its Gen-AI!

Reliance on third party tech, especially that which has not been proven to be on stable ground in the market, is not a good business plan. What do you do if the provider goes bankrupt, or, realizes they are on the path to bankruptcy and turns the tech off? If you have nothing else to pivot to, you go bankrupt too. Not a good scenario!

Even if you are building on tried-and-true stable tech (with a large install base), unless your business plan is to be acquired by the tech you’re building on and you actually have a chance of making that happen (you came from the provider, have good connections, etc.), your options are very, very limited if you don’t succeed.

You need to focus on a solution to a real problem that companies will pay to address first. And while it can be based 100% on third party tech to start, that shouldn’t be the game plan. The plan should be to acquire it, build something better in house, or at least find three or four options that will serve the same function until you can acquire or build appropriate tech. (The exception being a product maintained for you by a third party that is based on open source that will always be there for you to take ownership of and then assign to a new team.)

Once you have a solution, and know what tech you need, do the cost benefit analysis of:

• licensing someone else’s tech
• acquiring the third party tech
• building on, and contributing to, open source
• building your own

for each aspect of the solution, as well as the points at which one option becomes better.

In addition, even when you select a solution, always keep your eyes out for an alternative that has been demonstrated to be more reliable, efficient, or cost effective. When a problem has been newly identified, some companies will just throw anything at it to see what appears to work, without doing a proper analysis and designing a proper solution from the ground up. Eventually, some smart minds powered by Human Intelligence (HI!) will come up with a better solution. Once that becomes economical, you’ll want to switch to that if you don’t have an equivalent solution in house, while keeping back-up options open.

And definitely don’t (over) rely on third party Gen-AI — even the biggest companies can only afford to bleed for so long. There’s nothing Gen-AI can do that traditional tech can’t. It’s best uses are as an interface layer for (very) low TQ (Technology Quotient) folk who are being forced to use tech but just don’t get it (as a more natural language chatbot interface) or as a massive document store search and summarization solution (when traditional semantic / neural networks would just be overloaded). That’s it. And in all of these cases, it needs an underlying application that actually does the work and manages the data.

Stay tuned for Part 4!

In short, as per Part 1, you

1. keep admitting to every mistake you are making and do something about it, then
2. continue by looking for cost-effective opportunities for improvement and pursue them and finally
3. never, ever, ever forget the timeless basics.

Today, we’ll continue by describing what you do when you identify, and admit to, the second mistake we chronicled in our two part introduction to our “dead company walking” (Part 1 and Part 2) series (where we helped your potential customers identify problems that signify you are a SaaS supplier they should be walking away from).

2) A Shiny Exterior is More Important Than a Modern Engine

i ) Flip Your Focus from UX first to Solution First

Too many companies right now think the “lack of adoption” problem is a lack of usability problem because all their founders knew was SAP Ariba or monolithic Jaggaer or decade old GEP smart, which aren’t the most usable of applications for certain tasks, and definitely not usable by anyone but core buyers.

Many successful companies have been started, grown, and acquired or merged into bigger companies for the past two decades to be better, easier, and/or more affordable than SAP Ariba, Emptoris (acquired by IBM, sunset in 2017, one of the first big players), Jaggaer (which was SciQuest until the 2017 rebranding), Coupa, etc (including Procuri, acquired by Ariba; Iasta, acquired by Selectica, merged with b-Pack, rebranded Determine, acquired by Corcentric; EC Sourcing, acquired BidMode then was acquired by Simfoni, etc.). And ten times as many have started for the same reasons and no longer exist (without [nearly as] successful exits). Usability is only part of the problem.

For an application to be adopted it has to

• be easy to use to the point where it
• is easier and faster to use it than to circumvent it
  (or to keep doing what the user is doing now) and, most importantly,
• solve the user’s core problem.

This last reason is why a lot of fake-take, sorry, intake, solutions are going to be ultimately abandoned. Simply making it easy for a user to request something and then showing an animated graphic of the request being forwarded to Bob and then, the next day, showing an animated Bob opening the request once he’s read it DOES NOT solve a user’s problem where they need a product or service to do their job. Unless the platform allows Bob to process and fulfill that request more efficiently and effectively than the current methodology, and, most importantly, gives full visibility into what actions Bob has and is currently undertaking, along with an ETD of when the user will have the request fulfilled, the intake application is worse than not having anything at all. This is because the user still has to message or call Bob to find out what’s going on until Bob manually indicates that he has accepted the request, fulfilled the request, and when (and where) the product or service will arrive.

ii) Design Open API first with full data and process control

Everyone focuses on the UX and UI first because that’s what the users (and executives) see, believing that a great demo will get them the sale. And while, sadly, it will get them some sales from executives with no Tech IQ whatsoever, it doesn’t mean it will get them the renewal, especially after the product fails to be adopted because it doesn’t actually let the users work the way they need to work.

It’s not the UI, it’s the ability to capture the data and run the processes in an acceptable manner, and this is not possible if the UI or workflow is wrong. And you’ll never get it (completely) right the first time. But if you build a solid backend that is fully (Open) API driven for data and process control, it will be easy to programmatically alter the workflow, and modify or rebuild the UI (with external help who won’t even have to know more than the API calls) later to be more appropriate.

Too many companies sacrifice a proper software foundation in their rush to MVP and a sale, and this is what cripples them (sometimes to the point of failure). Think of building software like building a real building. If you only build the foundation for a 2 story house, you’ll never be able to build a 20 story apartment building. But if you build the foundation for a 20 story apartment building, you can build out 2 stories of units to start, sell those, and then build out the rest (when you can show off the demo units and drum up a lot of interest).

iii) Then Design a UX on top that customers use – with their help

Work with beta customers, plural, on enhancements and new modules and get their input on what their core processes are and what would make a UI more usable. While you should never design for any specific customer, you should design to meet the 80% common needs, and, where possible, include as many configuration / customization options in the product (workflow and data collection) as possible (but not the codebase, it has to be software switches, you don’t want multiple code branches in production, ever).

Your chances of success improve greatly if multiple customers will say it solves their problems and they use it daily. It’s not about them loving it, it’s about them using it. That’s the key.

iv) If extra $$$ remain, farm out the eye candy development

It doesn’t hurt to have the application look new and shiny, but that’s secondary to having it work in a modern fashion that will leave your new users with tears of joy the first time they use it (because they thought that no solution could tackle their complex procurement, sourcing, logistics, new product design, supplier management, etc. challenges). So if you have a few extra dollars, once you’ve figured everything out about usability and configurability, then you can hire a UX guru to make it sparkle. (But always remember that a solution that actually works shines on its own.)

Stay tuned for Part 3!