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Selling SaaS in Germany

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Re: Selling SaaS in Germany

#11

Post by ahartmetz »

coronapl wrote: post #10

I very much agree with the fact that IT departments have a massive influence during the sale process. Though, based on my experience, things are slightly softening. We entered the DACH market in 2023 with a cloud based CRM for the care sector. Before that, it was pretty much inconceivable in the care sector to use anything that wasn’t installed on-promises and fully isolated from the internet. Nevertheless, companies…

Limitations? Such as suppliers who are pushing for SaaS because it's more profitable?

Re: Selling SaaS in Germany

#12

Post by aniceperson »

the article is on point. I work in germany for an American company, and the /american/_experts_ always contract the most expensive, feature-less alternative because they get baited by SSO, logging and tracking, that then fail to leverage to anything useful. in some instances, we pay per http request.

Re: Selling SaaS in Germany

#13

Post by coronapl »

ahartmetz wrote: post #11
coronapl wrote: post #10

I very much agree with the fact that IT departments have a massive influence during the sale process. Though, based on my experience, things are slightly softening. We entered the DACH market in 2023 with a cloud based CRM for the care sector. Before that, it was pretty much inconceivable in the care sector to use anything that wasn’t installed on-promises and fully isolated from the internet. Nevertheless, companies…

Limitations? Such as suppliers who are pushing for SaaS because it's more profitable?

I refer to the technical constraints of the on-promises model which affects the modernization of the healthcare sector in the DACH regions. There is a need for integrating with SaaS products for several use cases or having AI features. Both things are not easily possible will a fully isolated setup. Therefore, I have experienced that IT departments are becoming more open to adopting Saas solutions compared to a few years ago, where it was not rare for a solution to be immediately rejected because it was using a hyperscaler.

Re: Selling SaaS in Germany

#14

Post by watwut »

> Yet many SaaS companies still struggle to sell effectively there, even after translating their website or pitching German businesses.

I chuckled on this one. I mean arent these the, like, "the bare minimum" rather then "even extra mile" thing. Using local language and pitched to local business you want to sell to kind of sounds like a basic?

Overall article is fine, really. but that sentence was funny.

Re: Selling SaaS in Germany

#15

Post by eigenspace »

For those (like the author) who wonder why such a weird mishmash of different conventions was used to come up with the DACH abbreviation, it's because the word "dach" means "roof" in German, so there's a lot of wordplay that's done to talk about all these different regions which are 'under one roof'.

"Dachsprache" (roof-language) is actually a term used by some linguists (sometimes translated to umbrella-language) to refer to a dialect that becomes the standard language of a large region with a varied dialect continuum. E.g. the dialect of Florence became the "dachsprache" of all of Italy.

Re: Selling SaaS in Germany

#16

Post by niemandhier »

ISO 27001 and 27017 force you to deal with potential exit scenarios early on.

In DACH you often need both to get public contracts.

I also noticed that costumers are weary of American cloud solutions and SaaS solutions.

Most are aware that they already are one White-House-decision away from being non operational and do not want to make things worse.

Re: Selling SaaS in Germany

#17

Post by niemandhier »

eigenspace wrote: post #15

For those (like the author) who wonder why such a weird mishmash of different conventions was used to come up with the DACH abbreviation, it's because the word "dach" means "roof" in German, so there's a lot of wordplay that's done to talk about all these different regions which are 'under one roof'. "Dachsprache" (roof-language) is actually a term used by some linguists (sometimes translated to umbrella-language) to…

I always thought it was because of the stickers we had to put on our cars if we went abroad.

Germany had “D” Austria “A” Switzerland “CH”

Re: Selling SaaS in Germany

#18

Post by eigenspace »

adrianmsmith wrote: post #6

I feel this article is saying people from UK/US/etc. want to maximize upside, and people from DACH (Germany etc.) want to minimize downside. I was a bit shocked when I talked to an Austrian colleague once and they told me they wanted to get into investing, but losing any money at any time was completely unacceptable. They had looked at investing in S&P 500 ETFs etc., but felt they must have misunderstood something, a…

If you invested in the S&P 500 in 1968, you'd be waiting until 1992 before you saw any return on that investment after accounting for inflation, and the inflation adjusted S&P 500 was on a net-losing streak for the whole period from 1968 to 1982 before it started going up again.

People believe the line will always go up, and maybe it will, but it's still at least possible for it to be on a quite painfully downward trend for over 12 years at a time.

I'd argue it's also not at all irrational to worry that we may be on the precipice of a similar situation right now, or perhaps even on the precipice of the situation at the end of the 1920s, where it would have taken more than 35 years for the S&P 500 to recover from its previous highs.

Your colleague is probably more risk-adverse than is rational (and I would say more risk-averse than most Austrians or Germans), but I would also argue that a lot of people blindly throwing all their retirement money at the S&P 500 might not realize just how much risk they are exposing themselves to.

https://www.macrotrends.net/2324/sp-500-historical-chart-dat...

Re: Selling SaaS in Germany

#19

Post by lifestyleguru »

adrianmsmith wrote: post #6

I feel this article is saying people from UK/US/etc. want to maximize upside, and people from DACH (Germany etc.) want to minimize downside. I was a bit shocked when I talked to an Austrian colleague once and they told me they wanted to get into investing, but losing any money at any time was completely unacceptable. They had looked at investing in S&P 500 ETFs etc., but felt they must have misunderstood something, a…

Real estate, gold, crypto, in that order. That's where people from DACH invest, also valid for rest of the Europe. Mediterranean people additionally invest in lottery tickets. I wouldn't exaggerate saying people are keeping their gold bars in their otherwise empty investment apartments.

European banks play very negative role because they aggressively upsell their investment funds and schemes so for many people stock exchange means investment fund with management fee which oftentimes losses yet the growth, if happens, never catches up with the market growth.

Re: Selling SaaS in Germany

#20

Post by eigenspace »

niemandhier wrote: post #17
eigenspace wrote: post #15

For those (like the author) who wonder why such a weird mishmash of different conventions was used to come up with the DACH abbreviation, it's because the word "dach" means "roof" in German, so there's a lot of wordplay that's done to talk about all these different regions which are 'under one roof'. "Dachsprache" (roof-language) is actually a term used by some linguists (sometimes translated to umbrella-language) to…

I always thought it was because of the stickers we had to put on our cars if we went abroad. Germany had “D” Austria “A” Switzerland “CH”

Sure, that might be where that choice of abbreviation started, but I think that one outcompeted the other possible ways to abbreviate it because of the connection to the word for "roof" was evocative, and made for good wordplay.

Sidenote, I always thought Dachli was an especially great extension. 'Li' for Liechtenstein here plays the double-role of also being the diminutive form in Swiss German and some south German dialects that you can stick on the end of a word to make it sound small and cute. Hund -> Hündli, Sack -> Sackli, Nest -> Nestli (yes this is the origin of the Nestlé's name)

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