Company Profiles

In the SaaS Factory program, we have worked with thousands of organizations and one thing we have come to understand is that the journey to SaaS is different for each company. Where you are starting, what domain you are in, what competitive pressures you are facing, the answers to these questions can influence the path you take on your SaaS journey. Therefore, we have identified a few of the common profiles for companies that adopted a SaaS delivery model. As we move through the phases of this document, we will use these SaaS profiles to explore how the journey might vary for each of these company types.

Based on our experience, we found the companies building SaaS solutions on AWS fall naturally into four different types. Not all companies fit perfectly into one category and your company can be a blend of a few profiles. The following is a list of hypothetical profiles that represent the typical starting points for companies moving to SaaS:

Figure 2 - Hypothetical Company Profiles

ToeDipper Software

This profile represents a large and conservative company running a legacy product that is hindered by an aging technology or process, but has a captive, lucrative market. This company represents mature businesses that often have a firm grasp on a market that generates significant revenue for business, but have not demanded SaaS aggressively for industry, regulation, geographic, or cultural reasons. These companies see the potential of SaaS and are looking for ways to adopt SaaS for some or all of their target market. However, they also need to consider how to dedicate focus to SaaS without disrupting their existing business. The tendency with these companies is to search for a path to SaaS that will reduce their risks and allow them to experiment a SaaS offering.

SurvivorTech

This company profile represents the companies that have an existing product but are seeing their market being eroded by competitors that have used price, agility, and/or cost efficiency to capture mindshare. These providers are highly incentivized to adopt a SaaS delivery model. The move to SaaS, for these companies, is seen largely as a survival tactic that will enable them to more effectively compete and retain market share. The urgency and depth of their transformation tends to be much higher and more focused than others that are weighing their SaaS options.

UnicornExpress.com

This company profile represents the greenfield SaaS companies – with a SaaS solution developed from scratch – that are setting out on the path to SaaS without the baggage of an existing legacy environment. These companies are more about maximizing their opportunity and getting to market as quickly as possible. Their journey is often more challenging because the data and outlook tends to be more speculative. At the same time, they are in a good position to plot a path forward and define a business and technology vision that will align with SaaS best practices. The journey can get more clouded as the funding pressures may lead to compromises in operational and business efficiency that can ultimately slow the path to rapid growth.

New Horizons Software

The move to SaaS for this profile is more about identifying and exploring some new market segment that is not addressed by their existing offering. The emphasis here is on using this opportunity to make this move to a new SaaS offering that targets a set of features and experience that is not part of the current offering (or is offered in a model that is substantially different than any existing products). This journey is about carefully defining the path to SaaS without impacting or blurring the lines with their existing customers. The focus for this profile is often more on defining a clear new segment to target and assessing the growth and monetization of the opportunity.

Figure 3 visualizes the SaaS objectives of each company profile upon the following criteria: Time to Market and Business Goal

Figure 3 - Company Profile Objectives