Viewing Category: Software as a Service
[
clear category selection]
(displaying entries
21 - 23)
A prospect outside of the US recently asked me to compare the pricing of the ESM to another application (let's call it Application B). My first response was to tell him that the two applications were completely different--the ESM focused on Strategy Management, while Application B focused on data analytics. My contact was undeterred. He said that he knew the difference, but he needed to do a price comparison for the purchasing agent at his company who didn't care about features.
The main challenge in our two prices was that the ESM is priced on a per scorecard basis, and the Application B is priced on a per seat basis. The contact struggled because Application B offered him an unlimited number of scorecards for 5 licensed seats. The contact was thinking that the pricing of Application B protected against increased pricing should they add scorecards throughout the year.
At the conceptual level, the per seat licensing with unlimited scorecards looks appealing. But then you have to look at best practices in strategy reporting.
Our license model allows organizations to delegate out the updating process to the right people, without thinking about costs. You can choose the people in your organization that should have access to the tool, rather than the top XX number of people that can have access to the application.
When we look at organizations using the ESM from the macro level, we notice that they are all giving their leadership team access to the tool for updating objective and theme information (5-7 users), and then they are giving objective, measure, and initiative owners access (4-15 users), and of course they have the scorecard owners and administrators in their Office of Strategy Management (2-3 owners). The average is close to 10 users per scorecard.
The users may not be in the tool every day, but with the email reminder system, the scorecard owners can reach out to them and get information updated in a quick and timely manner without having to go through a bottleneck or being limited by the number of licenses they have. I guess what I am trying to say is that having unlimited scorecards is not much of a help when you can't manage them because you have a limited number of users who can access the system.
I think managing strategy is hard enough without having to limit the number of people that can update information.
[hide extended entry]
As Keith noted in a recent posting, the Executive Strategy Manager has over 3,500 users from around the world. In fact, almost 50% of our hits are from non-US locations. What does this mean? This means we need to take global monitoring of our SaaS application very seriously.
Content Advisory: Contains Technical Content
We recently upgraded our server monitoring software to use AlertSite. AlertSite allows us to monitor the performance of the ESM from 30 locations around the world. The automated monitoring system logs in from each of these locations every 30 minutes, and pings the site every five minutes.
What have we learned from these early tests? Well, some parts of the world are "closer" to us than we expected (like Korea), and some parts are further away than we expected (like Sydney [ok, we should have know that already, but we were surprised by the performance we're seeing there]).
So how to we make this better? Some things are in our control, and some things are out of our control. For example, in some regions, DNS resolution (the time it takes your computer to translate executivestrategymanager.com to our numeric computer address) is slow. And in other regions, just getting the content there is slow.
But since we're a global business, we need to manage and account for (or work around) even the things that are out of our direct control. So, we're going to be looking into the DNS resolution issue, and we're considering deploying servers in locations where we have a significant customer base and potential performance issues.
We sincerely appreciate and value each and every of our users, and understand how critical this application is for managing your strategy. If you ever run into a performance issue, let us know at esm@palladiumes.com. We will make it right.
[hide extended entry]
Software as a Service (or SaaS) is all the rage nowadays, with the success of SalesForce.com and other highly configurable applications making serious inroads into corporate offices.
Here at Palladium, the Executive Strategy Manager (ESM) application has been offered in the SaaS model since 1999, when we first launched the Design Center and First Report applications. How things have changed over the past 7+ years!
First of all, the concept of SaaS is now accepted in organizations worldwide. The security, access, and user interface problems which all early adopters of SaaS (including us!) faced have been addressed -- even to the point where almost all applications are now delivered as web applications, regardless of their licensing model!
There was a great post on Trumba earlier this year about the advantages of Software as a Service. I encourage you to check it out. I think you'll find the five benefits very encouraging:
Save money. Save time. Focus your technology budgets on competitive advantage rather than infrastructure. Gain immediate access to the latest innovations. Join a community of interest.
http://www.trumba.com/connect/knowledgecenter/software_as_a_service.aspx
I also encourage anyone who's not yet had a chance to take advantage of the world's leading strategy management SaaS application, the ESM, to request a free trial today.
[hide extended entry]
