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SaaS Needs a Single Point of Purchase

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Re: SaaS Needs a Single Point of Purchase

#71

Post by Fission »

alangibson wrote: post #56
chrismeller wrote: post #4

He complains about the reseller and their incompetence, but (incompetence aside) this is basically what he's looking for? I know it's one of those things that tends to change over time, particularly if your account rep changes, but wouldn't simply finding a reseller that doesn't suck be the answer here? Perhaps one that lets you automate quotes and purchases...

Nope. Resellers are very hands on and high touch. I'm talking about something more like a pass-through payment processor than a reseller. Quotes in this case are as trivial as a PDF generator that just inserts the fixed price into a commercial offer template. As it stands, you wouldn't believe how hard it is to pry something like that out of a typical SaaS vendor.

I'm a maker of satchel.com. This is one of the core problems we aimed to tackle. In doing so, we've actually build out _exactly_ this.

There are still some crucial obstacles to ensure robustness, but I'd love to get your feedback nonetheless. Could I ask some questions over email? I can't find yours, but I'm at andrew@satchel.com

Re: SaaS Needs a Single Point of Purchase

#72

Post by alangibson »

andrenotgiant wrote: post #63
alangibson wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think maybe I wasnt clear. No one tried to keep us from licensing anything. Pretty much any solution was fine with then assuming it wasn't a security nightmare. > Just get it done Getting it done is a process heavy, minimum 4 month process because of purchasing rules. That's the problem I'm calling out.

Whether it's IT or Finance (purchasing rules), CEO/VP have the power to force them to make an exception or change their process if there's a clear business benefit.

I'm talking about 10K+ global employee companies. No VP wants to listen to my problem licensing Jira. And prices changes like that happen on the scale of years.

Re: SaaS Needs a Single Point of Purchase

#73

Post by jariel »

dagw wrote: post #64
jariel wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would employees be buying services individually? With 10K employees there would be a site licence.

Just because your company has 10k employees doesn't mean they need 10k licenses for everything they buy. Often only 10 people in one department in one country need that one specific thing.

A 10K employee company will use a finite number SaaS services, they should absolutely be well equipped for their financial staff to 'pay' for stuff, including software, using a variety of means, including credit cards, it's what they do all day, this is not a new concept and neither is the scale of it.

They buy toilet paper, cleaning fluids, pens, envelopes that way.

A team of '10' needs 10 licences, they have their rep. from the finance do that, if it's over $X amount it needs approvals etc. etc. it's not rocket science, just like the special chairs, the screen for the window, the special hard drive.

Re: SaaS Needs a Single Point of Purchase

#74

Post by [deleted] »

bauerd wrote: post #11
Jugurtha wrote: post #3

This is a pretty established distribution model often called "bottom up" approach, and it's particularly relevant to enterprise sales where you allow the users to start using the software without friction [something that was proper to "consumer" applications] and then allow management to pay for that software, or users to pull their corporate credit card and buy what their budget allows. One turn-off for us for machi…

>One turn-off for us for machine learning products was going to the website, wanting to try the software, and then finding a button that says "Schedule a demo" or "Schedule a sales call". Share the sentiment but both of us are likely not the target audience for these kinds of funnels then. Decision-makers who go down the "talk to our sales team" route are more likely to sign big enterprise-y contracts in the end I gu…

[deleted]

Re: SaaS Needs a Single Point of Purchase

#75

Post by encoderer »

There’s merit here but one challenge is that such a service is just another revolving line of credit for the company. Another credit card. Finance would likely want it locked down as well.

Ive had a lot of success shaving hundreds of thousands off aws budgets and my first tactic is always to create mental awareness that every terraform apply is a virtual swipe of the company credit card.

In big companies, making it hard for non-executives to spend money is a feature not a bug.

Re: SaaS Needs a Single Point of Purchase

#76

Post by [deleted] »

bauerd wrote: post #11
Jugurtha wrote: post #3

This is a pretty established distribution model often called "bottom up" approach, and it's particularly relevant to enterprise sales where you allow the users to start using the software without friction [something that was proper to "consumer" applications] and then allow management to pay for that software, or users to pull their corporate credit card and buy what their budget allows. One turn-off for us for machi…

>One turn-off for us for machine learning products was going to the website, wanting to try the software, and then finding a button that says "Schedule a demo" or "Schedule a sales call". Share the sentiment but both of us are likely not the target audience for these kinds of funnels then. Decision-makers who go down the "talk to our sales team" route are more likely to sign big enterprise-y contracts in the end I gu…

[deleted]

Re: SaaS Needs a Single Point of Purchase

#77

Post by dagw »

jariel wrote: post #73
dagw wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just because your company has 10k employees doesn't mean they need 10k licenses for everything they buy. Often only 10 people in one department in one country need that one specific thing.

A 10K employee company will use a finite number SaaS services, they should absolutely be well equipped for their financial staff to 'pay' for stuff, including software, using a variety of means, including credit cards, it's what they do all day, this is not a new concept and neither is the scale of it. They buy toilet paper, cleaning fluids, pens, envelopes that way. A team of '10' needs 10 licences, they have their…

They buy toilet paper, cleaning fluids, pens, envelopes that way.

I can assure you they do not (at least not in any company I have worked). They have pre-approved suppliers for all those things that are well integrated into our invoicing system. Adding a new supplier to that list is a major process.

If I need a new one off hard drive I can either either ask IT to order it from the one approved computer component company or I buy it out of pocket and go through the reimbursement process.

Re: SaaS Needs a Single Point of Purchase

#78

Post by solidasparagus »

alangibson wrote: post #30
Jugurtha wrote: post #3

This is a pretty established distribution model often called "bottom up" approach, and it's particularly relevant to enterprise sales where you allow the users to start using the software without friction [something that was proper to "consumer" applications] and then allow management to pay for that software, or users to pull their corporate credit card and buy what their budget allows. One turn-off for us for machi…

My main point is that this bottom up approach doesn't work as well as it could simply because of the difficulty of navigating purchasing processes. I know my team would have bought easily 5x what we did if we didn't have to invest 4 to 6 months in getting a vendor set up for each SaaS we wanted. It just wasn't worth the hassle.

I don't really agree. I've sold software both independently and by hooking into the AWS marketplace to reuse existing billing channels. It really didn't make anything better even though using AWS as a single point of purchase sounds like a good idea. The enterprise software purchasing process is just a slow one and the actual billing mechanics aren't really the issue in my experience.

Plus delegating control of your payment relationship with your customers to a third party is more of a pain than a boon.

Re: SaaS Needs a Single Point of Purchase

#79

Post by alangibson »

encoderer wrote: post #75

There’s merit here but one challenge is that such a service is just another revolving line of credit for the company. Another credit card. Finance would likely want it locked down as well. Ive had a lot of success shaving hundreds of thousands off aws budgets and my first tactic is always to create mental awareness that every terraform apply is a virtual swipe of the company credit card. In big companies, making it h…

That's not a tough but to crack. It's pretty straightforward to build a feature that sets limits by team, business unit, etc.
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