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Companies fret as costs soar for software subscriptions (2019)

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Re: Companies fret as costs soar for software subscriptions (2019)

#191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly this. Unfortunately, way too often I see execs saying "that's too expensive, we just have to do it manually" instead of using good tool. Then what happens is somebody making $100+/hour would spend several hours to do the job that would be covered by a tool that costs under $50/month.

Someone should build a webpage that does this: 1. Enter salary of engineer. 2. Enter cost per engineer of product (subscription, one time, etc.). 3. Enter required minutes to make worth your time (setup per employee can be factored in). This may already exist, but if it doesn't it could be a useful tool for Saas companies. Something you could drop into emails to potential customers ("see how much you would save"). Wo…

Can the tool be used on itself?

Re: Companies fret as costs soar for software subscriptions (2019)

#192
post #27

Translation: Companies are pissed that the free software gravy-train is over and how they actually have to start paying for it. This is the way it should have been for the past decade.

I'm going to use the same argument used about copying/pirating proprietary software: They wouldn't have paid for it in the first place, so you can't count it as lost revenue.

That's not totally true, I used to see my desktop software revenue fall off after a pirated version was published. Not only that but the people using the pirated version would still contact me for support.

Even worse were customers who would buy once license but use the software across their organisation. As soon as I dealt with that those customers started buying more licenses.

Re: Companies fret as costs soar for software subscriptions (2019)

#194
post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Valve is the only one that I've heard of but without manager there need to be a lot of internal politics to get your work done.

Has Valve done anything noteworthy in the last 10 years besides milking the Steam store? Their half-baked console seemed like an attempt to do more of the former.

Is this sarcasm? Steam has been the only consistent video game Cloud SAAS in the past 10 years.Can you name one time that the service was down without warning/proper recourse, had a data breach, exceeded SLAs, etc?

Also, valve's ther ventures are....massively successful. The microtransaction model in gaming originated with Valve, and now the entire mobile and freemium gaming markets use that business model.

So in this case...I would say yes, everything valve has done as a company trying to make money in the last 10 years is par for other successful SAAS platforms.

Re: Companies fret as costs soar for software subscriptions (2019)

#195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then what happens is somebody making $100+/hour would spend several hours to do the job that would be covered by a tool that costs under $50/month. It's never that simple, though, is it? Suppose that tool solves a problem that a $100/hour employee would have solved manually in a day. How long did it take the employee to identify and choose the tool, arrange the purchase, and then learn to solve the problem using it?…

The other gain you get from having the employee build the tool is that now the employee is better at building these tools , so you fundamentally have a better employee than the one that had to spend the time learning the non-transferable one-off tool.

Which is valuable, if your company builds those tools... otherwise you just trained your employee to work at that SaaS vendor.

Re: Companies fret as costs soar for software subscriptions (2019)

#197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly this. Unfortunately, way too often I see execs saying "that's too expensive, we just have to do it manually" instead of using good tool. Then what happens is somebody making $100+/hour would spend several hours to do the job that would be covered by a tool that costs under $50/month.

Someone should build a webpage that does this: 1. Enter salary of engineer. 2. Enter cost per engineer of product (subscription, one time, etc.). 3. Enter required minutes to make worth your time (setup per employee can be factored in). This may already exist, but if it doesn't it could be a useful tool for Saas companies. Something you could drop into emails to potential customers ("see how much you would save"). Wo…

So, a spreadsheet?

Re: Companies fret as costs soar for software subscriptions (2019)

#198
post #8

If you are already spending >$200K per employee, spending another $10K to make them even 10% more productive is a bargain.

If your SaaS services more than 10x their prices (which happened to many SaaS like Segment), suddenly $10K/yr -> $100K/yr and the calculus changes

Re: Companies fret as costs soar for software subscriptions (2019)

#199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly this. Unfortunately, way too often I see execs saying "that's too expensive, we just have to do it manually" instead of using good tool. Then what happens is somebody making $100+/hour would spend several hours to do the job that would be covered by a tool that costs under $50/month.

Someone should build a webpage that does this: 1. Enter salary of engineer. 2. Enter cost per engineer of product (subscription, one time, etc.). 3. Enter required minutes to make worth your time (setup per employee can be factored in). This may already exist, but if it doesn't it could be a useful tool for Saas companies. Something you could drop into emails to potential customers ("see how much you would save"). Wo…

Should just be able to do that in your head.
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