fabiochiu/medium-articles huggingface dataset:
UX QA: Why it Matters & Where to Start
By: Kayla Fathi
Tags: UX Research, UX, Ux Strategy, Sap, Quality Assurance

Quality Assurance is the foundation for user confidence and customer satisfaction.

Motivation

By definition, user experience involves measurable quality attributes such as ease of learning, efficiency of use, and user satisfaction.

There are two main drivers in maintaining a focus on UX Quality:

User Adoption: users seeing value in features and wanting to leverage them Reduced UX Debt: redesigns and rework are prevented by considering quality in each step of the design process

Implementation

Our team implements standards to ensure high quality UX outputs by:

Maintaining UX consistency throughout each product

Designing with accessibility in mind

Testing extensively before features are shipped to end users

As we build primarily net-new products, Minimum Marketable Products, this can best be understood by taking a look at this visual:

Pre-development

UX Design Standard Checklist

Prior to designs going into refinement with developers, they should pass a UX Design Standard Checklist. In our team’s case, this internal checklist covers both SAP Fiori standards in addition to general best practices. It covers the topics of Interaction Design, Common Functions, Visual Design, Typography, and Accessibility.

UX Research

As a user-need, outcome-driven, and data-informed unit, our team places utmost importance on user feedback. We perform usability testing in order to collect data needed to identify usability issues and to optimize designs in response. User stories and their respective designs should be validated through usability testing with end users before going into refinement with developers. You can read more about our UX Research process here.

Post-development

Reporting Bugs

The designer’s role does not end once there’s been a hand-off to developers — it’s vital that the same attention to detail a designer places in wireframes and prototypes is applied when observing the outcome in a dev environment. After a design has been developed, it should be tested by one or more designers to ensure it performs as expected. If errors are observed, bugs should be reported and handled accordingly.

Applying these simple steps of checking designs internally and with end users before development, as well as testing the product before shipment to end users after development not only prevents UX debt, but produces higher quality outputs which leads to a greater chance of users adopting the features that have been built.

References

QA & UX

Ergonomics of human-system interaction — Part 210: Human-centered design for interactive systems

Make design QA official
Como escalamos processos de pesquisa para dezenas de pesquisadores no PicPay
By: Sheylla Lima
Tags: UX Research, UX Design, Pesquisa, Google Sites, Picpay

Learn more. Medium is an open platform where 170 million readers come to find insightful and dynamic thinking. Here, expert and undiscovered voices alike dive into the heart of any topic and bring new ideas to the surface. Learn more

Make Medium yours. Follow the writers, publications, and topics that matter to you, and you’ll see them on your homepage and in your inbox. Explore
Decision Paths
By: Jasmine Kaur
Tags: UX Design, UX Research, Progressive Disclosure, Decision Paths, Amazon

Photo from Unsplash

It is an exercise that helps a UX Designer thinks through what information needs to surface to the user and when. Once a UX Designer gets all the needs of the users and stakeholders for a particular project, it is recommended to create Decision Paths. It is because Decision Path tells us:

How much information a user needs at any given point in time How to organize and prioritize the information

There is one more important terminology in UX called Progressive Disclosure, which means everything on the screen should progress naturally, from simpler to complex things. Only the necessary and requested information should be displayed at any time. Progressive Disclosure helps people manage complexity. Decision Path is a model of Progressive Disclosure Strategy.

Here is the Decision Path for Amazon. From left to right, I’m moving to the phase where the user is deciding, to a point where they have trust, and now they are ready to act.
Notes on UX Research Methods & Usability Testing (Nielson Norman Group)
By: Jacob John
Tags: Business And Technology, UX Research, UX, Ux Research Method

Photo by UX Indonesia on Unsplash

User experience or UX plays a crucial role in ensuring your customers have a meaningful and relevant experience with your product. Although UX’s designing phase has received traction, there seems to be less attention to its research.

Several universities integrate usability testing and research into their curriculum. However, novices may not have access or have limited knowledge about the same. Furthermore, a common misconception about UX is that it refers to the design of the interface alone. UX design refers to the end-to-end process that researches, sketches, and tests various patterns and how they appeal to specific user groups.

“UX involves the design of the entire process of acquiring and integrating the product, including aspects of branding, design, usability, and function.” — Interaction Design Foundation [1]

Trying to understand how users respond to your product prior to rolling it out is paramount to its success. User-centric research also helps drive your business in the right direction. Several companies such as IBM, Apple, Microsoft & Grofers have begun adopting an agile mindset [2], which compliments usability testing [3].
Como criar bons questionários de pesquisa
By: Sheylla Lima
Tags: UX Research, Questionário, Pesquisa Quantitativa, UX, Formulários

By signing up, you will create a Medium account if you don’t already have one. Review our Privacy Policy for more information about our privacy practices.
BikeSafety
By: Vivek Raj Bhatnagar
Tags: UX Research, Apps, Theory, Interfaces, Ux Writing

Secure your bike when you’re away

Situation

Generally when people are on holiday they used to park their bike in some parking area but that is still not safe and chances are bike might be get stolen. And sometimes users forget the exact location of their parked bike.

So, Goal is to design an experience to help the user locate their locked bike and be informed if it moves. The experience should also help in preventing their parked bike and other vehicles they own from being stolen while they go on a holiday.

Research

There are exclusive expert teams all over the world which specialises the act of stealing motorcycles.

There are many reasons for bikes to be stolen. “Any stolen vehicle is abandoned, sold or used for crimes later. In seventy five per cent of crimes, bikes are used as getaways by criminals. For example, recently in all the chain snatching incidents and loots, thieves used bikes for the purpose,” said a senior city police official.

This data clearly shows thefts of bicycles are way more than compared to other vehicles. Bicycles are easy to unlock or even thief can carry it on their shoulders. However the data is old but this is enough to tell you the gist of the story.

On the other hand another image shows how bike theft is increasing, the data is from 2011–2014, Poland.
Case study: Advancing UX Research at Elli
By: Myroslava Domanitska
Tags: UX Research, Startup, UX Design, Product Design, Strategy

What we introduced

1. User research as a shared team activity

We work closer with product managers and product owners at the early stages of product design to integrate user requirements early in the development process and to motivate product teams to perform user research more often and iteratively. Everyone at Elli, regardless of role and responsibilities, is encouraged to plan and conduct user research.

Now we always set assumptions before planning research and get back to them after analyzing the findings to learn. For example, we found how important it is to write down what we think users are going to tell us before we start interviews: what could be their goals? pain points? needs? This also helps involve the entire team in research planning early on.

2. Defined which methods we want to use for which purposes

We realized the three key goals which Elli seeks to fulfil with user research:

to understand who early adopters of our solutions are, to learn about their motivations and needs (e.g. early discovery research for new products). Methods: interviews, observation, contextual enquiry

to test new flows or design explorations (e.g. at the early stage of digital product design or when developing new features). Methods: moderated testing

to quickly test updated designs before handing them over to development (e.g. when re-designing existing flows). Methods: unmoderated testing, A/B testing

Later I found out that Nielsen Norman Group classifies research methods in the same way — so we went on to see which methods are missing in Elli UX research. The first two goals we generally covered with the methods we used. We introduced A/B testing to quickly test designs and inform our design decisions with quantitative data — here you can read a case study about how it worked.

3. Visualizing user research findings

We turned Elli’s internal Design Wiki page into a discoverable user research repository to make sure employees always have a chance to read through some exciting insights presented in a playful form. We present text- and quote-based reports visually, e.g. as affinity maps or exciting user stories.

As user research advanced at Elli and became a more natural ongoing activity, we felt like there was a need to link all the findings. We wanted to make it easier for teams to incorporate those findings in their design process as well as build upon existing research — that is how we identified the need of a full-scale user research repository, which Elli plans to set up soon.

Advanced research process

Methods used: a combination of qualitative (e.g. interviews, usability tests) and quantitative methods (e.g. A/B testing)
Private backers invest in Moozicore company!
Tags: Music Business, B2B, SaaS, Investors, Moozicore

Greetings investors!

First of all, we would like to thank all investors for their patience and relentless support of the Moozicore project. The last months haven’t been easy for Moozicore Team. During these challenging times, we have been facing the dramatic impact of COVID-19 that has caused project delays and big disruptions in our roadmap however, we can ensure you that we are still putting in a lot of hard work to move our project forward and launch our business on the U.S. market as the most coveted and awaited event by Moozicore community.

This announcement is the first of the scheduled updates we gonna release on a regular monthly basis by keeping our Moozicore community posted about the progress in works & what our next steps are in preparing for the official product launch event in the U.S. to be kicked off in Spring/Summer 2021.

As a first BIG NEWS, we are extremely happy to announce our successful partnerships with Private Investors who have decided to back our project by the acquisition of shares in Moozicore company.

We do believe that having them on board as a source of financial and know-how support will give a huge boost and wings to our company to let us become the fast-growing business on the U.S. market.

Within the upcoming releases we will bring you more details focusing on the below points:

- Strategic long-term business partnerships as a part of master plan for — expansion of Moozicore

- The key features & functionalities of our Mobile App after its upgrading to final version

- First adoptions of the U.S. Public Locations & Partnerships

- Pre-Launch Moozicore Landing Page redesign

Once again, thank you all for your ongoing support and patience as we continue to grow our business.

Please follow our social media feeds and stay tuned for the next updates.

Moozicore Team
Cloud Security
By: Yashwardhan Bhangdia
Tags: Iaas, Paas, SaaS, Cloud Computing, Cloud Security

With a tremendous amount of data being generated on a daily basis, the need for servers, storage and analytics has led to the paradigm shift of exponentially exploiting cloud services not only by top-notch companies like Facebook, Google, and Amazon, but also by the common public. There was a time when shifting to cloud seemed like a mammoth task but with the advent of the COVID-19 global pandemic, changing the conventional technologies and upgrading to cloud services was paramount. However, imagine getting your Instagram account hacked, with all your personal chats and photos being leaked on the internet! Well, cut to reality, near about 50 million records on Instagram were compromised in 2019 merely due to lack of compliance with cloud security practices.

“Security should be factored in at inception, not as an afterthought.”

With the hackers becoming more sophisticated in their approaches of attacking major cloud lacunae, having a robust cloud security environment is absolutely imperative.

So how to make our sensitive data secure on the internet? Let’s find out.
How are we going to sell to all these customers?
By: Scott Sambucci
Tags: Startup, Scaleup, Ramp Up, B2B, SaaS

Many companies in various industries probably suffer from the problem you solve, and the more you search for the problem, the more you realize that it’s everywhere. That leaves you wondering, “How are we going to sell to all these customers?” The more you look at the total addressable market for your product, the more overwhelmed you become, wondering where you’re supposed to start.

What you really want is to be able to focus your efforts, quickly add new customers, and generate momentum in your sales work.

Most importantly, you want to be the industry leader whom you know you can be, so prospects are asking you, “Can you please help us?”

[Excerpt from my book — “Stop Hustling, Start Scaling.”]

Did you know you can download a free & complete PDF version of the book? Link in the comments below. 👇👇
Bringing SaaS to Korea
By: Jonathan Moore
Tags: Software As Service, Virtual Tour, Ecosystem Building, Ecosystem, SaaS

We all love traveling. In fact, one of my favorite things to do is visit startup ecosystems around the world. There’s just so much to learn and absorb. But as we all know, traveling became impossible this year due to the COVID-19 pandemic. First, MWC was canceled. Then so did Web Summit, SXSW, Slush, and every other major tech or startup event around the world.

So, we came up with an idea. Instead of traveling, let’s bring startup ecosystems directly to us with a virtual tour. And to keep things relevant to 2020, we decided to choose SaaS as an overall theme.

Why SaaS?

Korea is a country more traditionally known for hardware than software. But in a post-COVID world, businesses are realizing the importance of pivoting to online business models. In fact, the global SaaS (Software as a Service) market, valued at $158 billion in 2020, is projected to double by 2026.

SaaS could be the next boom for Korea’s startup ecosystem, but first, we need to raise more awareness. So, at PowerPT, we ran a SaaS-themed virtual pitch competition (see more here). Once we saw how successful it was, we decided it was time for our global SaaS tour.

Finding a global SaaS partner

In order to introduce SaaS from cities around the world, we needed a partner who already had connections. That’s when we found SaaStock, a global community of SaaS founders, executives, and investors. So, we partnered with SaaStock and created a series of Global Startup Tours.

Touring the world

Our first event was a virtual trip to Europe where we learned about the SaaS scenes in London, Munich, Krakow, and Ljubljana. Even SaaStock’s CEO, Alex Theuma, joined and spoke about London’s SaaS scene.
The Internal Side of the Sales Funnel: Sales Operations
By: Mollie Smith
Tags: Sales Operations, Revenue, B2B, Sales, SaaS

As someone who works primarily with SDR teams, something I’ve struggled with is explaining the relationship between Sales Operations and our stakeholders.

After debriefing our last onboarding session with a new class of SDRs, my team realized that we could do better when setting expectations for how their teams can parter with Sales Ops, how we can support them, and what exactly we do. How do we create an excellent foundation for working together in which both parties understand and benefit from the relationship?

My manager, Phu, expressed a great idea: During their onboarding, SDRs learn about the sales funnel. Specifically, they learn about the sales funnel as it applies to how they engage with external prospects. Here’s what that looks like:

This is one side of the funnel, and a very important one. But we realized that a great way to explain the relationship between sales teams and Sales Operations is to emphasize how Sales Operations supports them internally throughout the funnel. Here’s what we came up with:

In Sales Operations, we wear a lot of hats. We think strategically and tactically, needing to understand both the big picture and the day-to-day, often at the same time. But this description doesn’t always connect with reps in a meaningful way. They leave that conversation thinking the purpose of Sales Ops is solely either grand, high level strategic planning or to reactively churn out on-demand Salesforce reports. While planning and reporting are essential functions of Sales Ops, it still doesn’t answer the sales rep question of “right, but how do we work together?”

While planning and reporting are essential functions of Sales Ops, it still doesn’t answer the sales rep question of “right, but how do we work together?”

Translating the relationship between reps and Operations folks based on how that relationship looks through the lens of the sales funnel helps a lot here. Sales Ops primarily focuses on creating and iterating on sales processes, tracking performance and monitoring KPIs, and smoothing out any issues in the deal process. Communicating how we support our stakeholders at each stage in the funnel — using their language — breaks down communication barriers between teams.

I am excited to use this framework not only in training for new reps, but also in my day-to-day supporting the sales team at each stage of the funnel. I’m looking forward to sharing the journey!
My two cents: “5 things LinkedIn won’t tell you”
By: Scott Sambucci
Tags: Startup, Scaleup, B2B, Sales, SaaS

1. LinkedIn is a “jobs site” — Disagree. While it is a jobs site for many people, it isn’t for all of us.

2. People don’t hang out on LinkedIn: Well, sort of… I’m on LinkedIn all the time every day, but I’m not “hanging out” because I’m working.

3. Thanks for the free content — Disagree. When I publish, it’s to show some expertise or share my observations to my immediate network.

4. Endorsements are only for ego — Agree. I wish LinkedIn would improve this. My guess (and it’s only a guess) is that that the tags help your profile search results.

5. Needy members will creep you out — Disagree. If someone is contacting me from my network because they need something, um, yeah… that’s the whole point… That’s why I connected with them in the first place.
dinCloud Hosted Workspaces — Highly Viable for Remote Work
By: Din Cloud
Tags: Work From Home, Dincloud, Virtual Desktop, SaaS, Cloud Computing

Over the past few months, all of us would agree that remote work has now become a long term need for organizations. So, enterprises now require a platform for their remote employees that’s versatile and secure.

dinCloud Hosted Workspaces are one of our flagship cloud offerings. This is a remote work platform that ticks all the right boxes and is not only ideal for your immediate needs, rather its capabilities are equally good for the long haul, here’s why.

· dinCloud Hosted Workspaces are mounted with a fully virtualized Windows 10 desktop experience. This gives you access to the latest OS and productivity solutions.

· Whether your remote employees access them via a smartphone, tablet, laptop, or desktop, the user will be treated to a seamless end-user experience.

· Our Hosted Workspaces are fortified against cyber threats through a multi-layered approach to security.

· Before your remote employees access dinCloud Hosted Workspaces, they will have to undergo a Two Factor Authentication (2FA) protocol for enhanced security.

· Via dinManage, which is our web-based cloud management portal, you can manage your entire Hosted Workspace environment from a single interface.

· Our Hosted Workspaces are offered at a flat-rate monthly subscription model, that’s both predictable and very cost-effective with no hidden costs.

To sum it all up, dinCloud Hosted Workspaces are a very strong and reliable platform for all your remote work needs. If you’re still not sure, then don’t worry, we are offering a 14 Day Free Trial as well.
Why Young Products Should Avoid Feature Packaging
By: Garrett Schemmel
Tags: Saas Marketing, SaaS

Hi there. At this time, we’re about 6 months into the full-time operation of Baromitr and Classr. Along the way, we’ve been rapidly deploying new features.

For anyone that’s in early stages of a product or business, you’re likely thinking about those personas and how your features fit into their needs. We thought this way from day 1. But almost immediately, we found ourselves spending unplanned engineering time to unwind features baked into certain personas and use cases because we had not anticipated needs or connections.

As a result, we now explicitly launch features and controls a-la-carte. To use them, we will need to make supporting documents that show which features/controls to use for which persona. But that’s a much cheaper solution than spending development time to take code apart.

So early businesses — save yourself the heartache. Don’t build features around personas and use cases in the early days.
11 Best Websites to Announce Software Products
By: Yuliet García Puente
Tags: Software Product, Marketing, Promote, Software, SaaS

2020 is coming to an end (Finally!), and I know you are waiting for the right moment to announce that idea you’ve been working on these last months. The start of a new year fits you like a glove. But where?

Internet could be overwhelming sometimes. There are many places to keep up to date and learn from people who are in the same field: LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, TikTok (why not?), YouTube, etc. For example, if you’re immersed in the tech environment, working in a SaaS (Software as a Service) company, or even learning a framework like React, YouTube is a good ally. But back to business, what you need is a list of the best websites to announce your software product for the first time. So here you have these 11 websites we’ve compiled for you, hoping these will help you put your ideas into the market and beyond:

Reddit- Entrepreneur: https://www.reddit.com/r/Entrepreneur/ Reddit-SideProject: https://www.reddit.com/r/SideProject/ Hacker News: https://news.ycombinator.com/ Product Hunt: https://www.producthunt.com/ Betalist: https://betalist.com/ AngelList: https://angel.co/ Beta Bound: https://www.betabound.com/ BetaTesting: https://betatesting.com/ Feed My App: http://uk.feedmyapp.com/ Index.co: https://index.co/ Launching Next: https://www.launchingnext.com/

If you don’t have a new software development project yet or are starting a new one right now, check out the benefits of doing it with a React component library.

Let me know your thoughts and which ones fit you. Good luck launching!
Meet Henry Mason, Principal at Dawn
By: Josh Bell
Tags: Startup, Investing, Venture Capital, SaaS, Software Development

Henry is a Principal at Dawn and covers data and security. Let’s meet him!

Why B2B software VC?

Software underpins every aspect of our lives today. My job is figuring out what’s coming next, and supporting the driven visionaries who are building it. Why wouldn’t someone want to do this?

Most exciting moment at Dawn?

The day we finally upgraded to a custom Zoom URL for the firm.

What do you think is the most interesting trend in the industry, and why?

Playbooks on how to scale startups are now essentially open source. The challenge for VCs is no longer to simply impart that knowledge, but rather to help founders put it into practice.

And the quick-fire round!

Netflix series you most recently binged on and would recommend

The Queen’s Gambit — a very satisfying series because (unusually) the chess board is correctly oriented in every scene (white square in the bottom right corner).

Favourite SaaS metric and why

In early-stage companies, growth forgives any and all wobbly SaaS metrics — if the company is growing then it will be able to build market share and attract more funding.

Best book for a much-needed holiday

I’m slowly working my way through Somerset Maugham’s vast oeuvre and finding it good going!

Best and worst thing to see in a deck

Best thing is a coherent and compelling narrative — investors need a good story as well as good numbers to get behind.

Worst thing is graphs with no scale (or even axis labels).

Recipe for the perfect evening/weekend?

Cycle round some country lanes, visit a National Trust, maybe even take in a cracking owl sanctuary.

If you could build one company right now, what would it be?

I don’t think that calendars and scheduling have really been nailed yet — there’s so much more we could still automate and improve here.

Best piece of advice you have given or received?

Don’t put on your tie until you’ve brushed your teeth.

Follow Henry on LinkedIn and Twitter
What is churn in SaaS
By: Scott Paulin
Tags: SaaS

Every month some of your customers will leave you. It’s nothing personal and they are not taking half of your stuff.

Sometimes your customers will choose to leave you. Maybe they are going to a competitor, or had a bad experience and don’t want to use your product any more. When customers choose to leave this is called voluntary churn.

Sometimes your customers leave without deciding to. Maybe their credit card expired and they forgot to update it, or your server threw an error when charging them so the payment failed. When customers leave without deciding to this is called involuntary churn.

We need to talk

If you want to make more money then you should find out why your customers are leaving. You don’t need to call them and have a deep and meaningful, just ask them in a web form when they cancel their subscription.

Once you find some common reasons you can fix things that will stop future customers leaving. You might need to fix bugs, improve customer onboarding, or provide better support.

If your team is involved in this process make sure you follow a blameless process. No individual or team should be blamed for lost revenue, the issue is probably due to a system or process within your business.

If you can reduce your customer churn rate by 1% then your business will grow by an extra 1% every month — it’s like giving yourself a 1% pay raise every month for the rest of your life.

Here’s my number, so call me maybe

There are a few popular ways to measure churn, and they tell you different things about your business.

Customer churn just measures how many customers are leaving you each month. To improve this just make sure that fewer customers leave every month.

But what’s my pay-raise? I need money to make youtube video memes. Before you order your books, you need to calculate your revenue churn:

Revenue churn just measures “if I don’t get any new customers, how much less money will I make next month”. Revenue churn includes revenue lost from customers leaving or downgrading but includes revenue gained from existing customers upgrading.

If you earn more money from customers upgrading than you lose from them leaving/downgrading then your revenue churn will be negative. This is called negative churn.
Podium Star: Virtual Edition
By: Jonathan Moore
Tags: Startup, Korea, Pitching, Virtual, SaaS

If you’ve been following Podium Star for the past year, you know that it’s been one of the most popular startup events in Korea. In 2019, we hosted 11 events and attracted large crowds to venues in Gangnam, Yeouido, Mapo, and COEX.

Podium Star at Google Campus in March 2019

But with this year’s COVID-19 pandemic, Podium Star was delayed, and then moved online. So on October 29, we used a hybrid format for our first Podium Star of 2020. Our startups gathered offline to pitch at our studio, while our judges and audience joined online. By hosting online, we’re not only helping to provide a safe environment for the startups, but we’re also able to bring new eyes from around the world to some of Korea’s hottest startups.

The global SaaS (software as a service) market, originally estimated at $68 billion, is projected to reach a revised size of $219.5 billion in just a few years. But Korea’s SaaS scene is well, underwhelming. So if more future entrepreneurs knew and invested more into SaaS solutions, it could be another boom to Korea’s startup ecosystem. So, we scouted some of the top up-and-coming startups who are creating amazing SaaS solutions for both consumers and businesses. Then we invited VCs and accelerators to take a look, including current and former executives from the World Innovations Forum in Switzerland and Walmart VC/ACs to act as judges. And we hosted it on a new and engaging platform called Airmeet. See more about the Podium Star: SaaS event here.

Here are the SaaS teams that pitched

Mobidoo: Live commerce platform that connects brands with customers Roborus: Identification platform that helps brands improve customer experience ImagoWorks: 3D dental modeling software for faster and easier visits to the dentist PayWork: Task and payment management for digital contracts Business Canvas: All-in-one tool for business documentation creation I-ON Communications: Document management for digitizing and signing contracts

David Lee wins Podium Star: SaaS Edition on October 29, 2020

In the end, our 1st place winner was Mobidoo, a live commerce platform that connects brands with customers. By winning, Mobidoo receives membership into the World Innovations Forum. This includes mentoring from the chairman as well as access to their 1,000 investors. This works out great, as CEO David Lee said they are currently raising their Series B round.

Next Podium Star

Don’t forget to follow us on LinkedIn to learn about our events, including 2020’s final Podium Star on December 10, where we’ll hear from six innovative startups in the mobility space.
How DaaS Mitigates WFH Related Challenges
By: Din Cloud
Tags: Work From Home, Virtualization, Virtual Desktop, It Infrastructure, SaaS

Over the coming few months, we are expecting remote work as the mainstay for productivity across the globe. In these circumstances, Desktop as a Service or DaaS appears to be the perfect fit for your remote work challenges, here’s how.

Authenticate Remote Users

A DaaS solution such as dinHVD allows you to authenticate each end user before access is granted to data and productivity tools. This is a great security check for remote employees.

Mount Productivity Tools over dinHVDs

The DaaS solution offered by dinCloud in the form of dinHVD is not just a Cloud Hosted Virtual Desktop. You can augment our DaaS solution with a wide range of productivity apps.

dinManage Gives You Full Visibility

In full-on remote work scenarios, you desire visibility into your cloud resources. dinManage is our intuitive web-based cloud management portal that gives you full visibility and control.

Data is Centralized and Secure

In the case of dinHVDs, all your enterprise data is securely housed within dinCloud’s infrastructure. It is not only accessible to each remote employee but also highly secure.

On the Go Productivity

With a DaaS solution such as dinHVDs, your remote employees can be fully productive from the safety of their homes, or any other location outside of the workplace.

These were just some of the compelling benefits of a quality DaaS solution like dinHVDs. They are indeed a great fit for all your remote work challenges. Try Out Now, as we are offering a 14 Day Free Trial!
6 Things SaaS Founders Need To Know About Accounting
By: Dan Martell
Tags: Startup, Accounting, Growth Hacking, Revenue, SaaS

I didn’t want to shoot this video.

Honestly, I didn’t even think it was necessary.

I assumed that all scaling SaaS founders must be doing accrual accounting, right?

But I soon discovered about 15% of those that I coach were using cash accounting, and they weren’t clear on the difference between deferred revenue vs accrued revenue.

…or why it matters.

Don’t worry, I’m not pointing fingers.

Over the years, I made almost every business mistake there is, so there’s no shame or judgement here.

But today I want to sell you on what accrual accounting is, WHY your accountant should be doing it…

And how it will set up your SaaS company for success.

Exclusive Download: Precision Scorecard™ — Keep Your Leadership Team Focused & Accountable To Growth

In this video, I’m going to give you the perspective of an entrepreneur, a CEO, or a founder… NOT an accountant. You’ll learn:

Why lots of SaaS founders start with cash accounting

Deferred revenue vs. accrued revenue

How to move to accrual accounting

Why it will make you financially rock-solid

How it can save you from overpaying taxes

What bookkeeping software will do it for you

“But Dan, I pay an accountant so I don’t have to think about this stuff.”

So do I.

For every company I’ve ever started, I had accountants… and I’ve learned more about accounting than I ever wanted or planned to.

But you need to know that your business isn’t a leaky bucket of profits and that you’re optimized for scalable growth. That means knowing some high-level accounting principles.

It’s like eating vegetables. They might not be as tasty as chocolate, but trust me — it’s good for you.

P.S. Prefer audio? Subscribe to the Growth Stacking Show directly on Apple Podcasts or Spotify and make sure to leave a rating and review if you find the show helpful.

—

Dan Martell has advised more startups than his hometown has people and teaches startup founders like you how to scale. (Get access to all my latest business hacks.) He previously created, raised venture funding for and successfully exited three tech companies: Spheric, Flowtown and Clarity.fm. You should follow him on Twitter @danmartell for tweets that are actually awesome.
Have you ever had a conversation with new prospects and feel like you’re talking past your customers, not talking with them?
By: Scott Sambucci
Tags: Startup, Scaleup, B2B, Sales, SaaS

“They’re trying to tell you about their business and their problems, and you’re focusing on your product and how it works. When you’re focusing on your product, you’re a hammer looking for a nail.

If you find yourself in a situation where you feel like you have this cool technology, and you’re looking for a market for it, then you’re just the hammer looking for a nail. This is the moment to take a step back and say, “What problem does this technology solve?” Just because you can (or did!) build a product, it doesn’t mean the market wants to buy it.”

[Excerpt from my book — “Stop Hustling, Start Scaling.”]

Did you know you can download a free & complete PDF version of the book? Link in the comments below. 👇👇
SaaS, Paas, Iaas Analogy
By: John Reynolds
Tags: Cloud Services, Iaas, Paas, SaaS, Cloud Computing

I came across a great analogy that conceptually synthesized the differences between SaaS, PaaS, and IaaS. The analogy compared cloud services to transportation, an on premise solution was compared to owning a car, IaaS to leasing a car, PaaS to using a taxi, and SaaS to riding the bus. Similar to owning a car, companies that own local on premise solutions rather than cloud services are responsible for the maintenance, security, and upkeep. IaaS on the other hand relates to leasing a car, companies can choose and use the infrastructure as they want but they do not own it. PaaS relates to using a taxi because you are not the one driving the taxi but rather you tell the driver where you want to go and relax in the back seat. Finally, SaaS was compared to riding the bus, the bus already has predefined routes and the ride is shared with other passengers. I thought the analogy between cloud services and transportation effectively conceptualizes the differences between cloud services.

Reference:

https://rubygarage.org/blog/iaas-vs-paas-vs-saas
The Most important Metrics for tracking SaaS — (Metrics for SaaS — Part 2)
By: Digital Transformation Blog
Tags: Saas Marketing, Saas Metrics, Product Management, SaaS, Saas Pricing

Industry leaders and investors have always been looking for vehicles for perpetual value generation, and SaaS products are a way to achieve this objective. However, to be successful, as discussed in the previous article, there is a number of metrics that need to be tracked. One of the most important metric for SaaS is:

A SaaS product manager has to be utmostly focused on improving this ratio, and to do so he needs to understand what it means in terms of customers and revenue.

What is LTV

LTV is the ‘Life Time Value’ of customers. It is the money that a customer would potentially pay for product usage over its lifetime (usage period). It is calculated by dividing the average revenue that SaaS product generates per user (ARPU) by the churn ratio. That is:

ARPU (Average Revenue Per User) is an industry-standard term that has been a key performance metric in the telecom industry for decades, and thus essentially SaaS companies are looking to replicate this model of perpetual cash generation through subscription economy. This model of revenue generation of telcos has been a source of great envy with which other industries have looked at the telecom industry, however, SaaS business makes it possible for other industry players to be part of similar cash-generating juggernauts. That’s the reason the SaaS model is getting more and more investment visibility nowadays.

Coming back to the main topic, let’s see what ARPU is in the mathematical sense. ARPU is calculated by dividing the revenue over a period by the number of customers during that period. So simply put:

Another important number on which LTV depends upon is ‘Churn Ratio’. It’s foolish to expect that once a customer has registered to be a paying customer he will never think of leaving the service if he doesn’t get the value he expects. Thus the customers who are not satisfied they will eventually leave the subscription, and these leaving customer constitute to what is called ‘Churn’ and ‘Churn Ratio’ is the ratio of customers left during a period to an initial number of customers. So if C0 is the number of customers at beginning of a month and C1 is the number of customers at end of the month, then the churn ratio at end of the month is:

So, what if C1 is more than C0, i.e. customers at the end of the month are more than customers at the beginning of the month. Will the churn ratio be negative? What are the implications of the churn ratio? We will discuss the impact of churn on the overall SaaS pricing strategy in future articles.

Going back to our equation on LTV, as SaaS product generate more and more revenue and as the churn becomes extremely small the Lifetime value of a customer increases significantly and hence we get closer to our target of improving the LTV/CAC ratio (>=3.0)

But what does it take to reduce churn, and what does it take to increase revenue. These are interesting questions, and the value metric helps us in addressing that. We will take up this topic in the next article.
How to (mis)use Pipedrive from sales to delivery at our startup company Adusso and beyond?
By: Janne Pitkänen
Tags: Startup, Project Management, Sales, SaaS, Pipedrive

How to (mis)use Pipedrive from sales to delivery at our startup company Adusso and beyond?

I wanted to figure out if I could set up another pipeline on Pipedrive for following up the stages after Sales Pipeline when a deal is won and begins to be delivered as a project, for example. This I named as Project Pipeline with stages Preparation, In progress, Delivered and Closed.

The problem is that just duplicating a deal and moving it to Project Pipeline won’t work, as either the sales statistics is lost, or the deal activities are not following into the delivery funnel (duplicating a deal will copy neither the days spent in different stages nor the activities and their content).

My requirements for handling these two pipelines and associated deals were:

Original deal to be marked as won must retain all its content, most importantly the deal value and time spent at different stages to keep up Sales Pipeline statistics about deal flow.

The new deal in Project Pipeline must get all the activities and notes from the original deal to maintain the communication history with the customer for seamless continuity from sales to delivery.

This is how I managed to do it:

Duplicate a deal in Sales Pipeline Delete the original deal Go to the deleted original deal Merge the deleted original deal with the copied deal by retaining the values of the copied deal in case of conflict Reopen the original deal Mark the original deal as won Move the copied deal to Project Pipeline

Now we are able to “misuse” Pipedrive for maintaining a funnel about our customer projects and ongoing service delivery. The only tricky part is this seven-phase mouse-click procedure upon winning a deal, but it’s worth it as our deals are sizeable, typically with large healthcare providers or big Electronic Health Record system vendors. Hope this helps anybody who has already been considering the same or is looking for a simple view on all ongoing projects and deliveries on a dashboard-like view which Pipedrive has to offer.

P.S. Pipedrive provides an API that would make it possible to automate the transition of a deal from Sales Pipeline to Project Pipeline. I would be very happy to hear your thoughts if this could be implemented with the existing API commands. Please share!
Modern Zen Story
By: Sateesh Hegde
Tags: Marketing, Growth, Sales, SaaS, Business

Modern Zen story.

Story-1

A worried sales head went to meet the Monk on the top hills. The monk was considered to be a wise man of the corporate world. He was not an ordinary monk.

Monk not only sold his Ferrari but his billion-dollar AI startup which he built in silicon valley.

Our sales head explained in detail about his company products and sales performance. The monk listened to the details and thought a while. Instead of answering he started a story.

“My dear sales head, let me tell you the story of ‘Settlers and Swagman of Australia. In the 1800s, the settlers went to Australia and claimed the pieces of land, and started agriculture. The ownership of land was power and fortune.

The people who could not claim the land wandered aimlessly. They carry their swag ( bed) and navigate from farm to farm. They had no place to call their home and wandered around the place to place searching for work.

They stuck feeling resentful for not claiming the land when they had a chance. They always blamed the landowners that they worked hard but not paid well.

“Find out your niche and micro-niche and focus on that son”. Said the monk.

Story-2

One day, an old monk died and went to god’s place.

He saw two big gates and one was hell and another was heaven.

The well-dressed young manager at the gate of heaven was energetic and happy.

Whereas the old looking manager at the fate of the hell was pale and tired.

Both had an equal target of bringing souls from earth to God’s place.

The monk astonished and asked the manager of heaven, “ Young man, why you seem to be happy and energetic, and why your counterpart is dull? I hope you both have an equal target”.

The manager at the gate of heaven said,

“ Well, I get inbound calls since we are investing in Google SEO. People do call us and explore in detail. We have a freemium model, hence our conversion ratio is higher”.
Modern Zen Story
By: Sateesh Hegde
Tags: Marketing, Growth Hacking, Sales, SaaS, Business

Modern Zen story -1 ( Take it on a lighter note)

There lived a wise tailor named Tsu in a Chinese town named Hang in Hangdu province. He had a tailoring shop on Mao Tsung street of Hang there was a tough competition by other tailors there. Despite the tough competition, Tsu had a flourishing business.

There there were many tailoring shops on that road. The display boards of the shops were as follows.

“The best tailor in the world”

“The best tailor in China”

“The best tailor in Hangdu province”

“The best tailor in Hang town”

The display board on Tsu’s shop followed.

“The best tailor on Mao Tsung Road of Hang town, Hangdu”.

One day, his son asked Tsu. “Father, what is the secret of your flourishing business?”

Tsu answered “ SEO on Longtail specific keywords”

Modern Zen story-2

A worried sales head went to meet the Monk on the top hills. The monk was considered to be a wise man of the corporate world. He was not an ordinary monk.

Monk not only sold his Ferrari but his billion-dollar AI startup which he built in silicon valley.

Our sales head explained in detail about his company products and sales performance. The monk listened to the details and thought a while. Instead of answering he started a story.

“My dear sales head, let me tell you the story of ‘Settlers and Swagman of Australia. In the 1800s, the settlers went to Australia and claimed the pieces of land, and started agriculture. The ownership of land was power and fortune.

The people who could not claim the land wandered aimlessly. They carry their swag ( bed) and navigate from farm to farm. They had no place to call their home and wandered around the place to place searching for work.

They stuck feeling resentful for not claiming the land when they had a chance. They always blamed the landowners that they worked hard but not paid well.

“Find out your niche and micro-niche and focus on that son”. Said the monk.
Identifying The First Customers
By: Scott Sambucci
Tags: Startup, Scaleup, B2B, Sales, SaaS

“The next challenge in the start-up stage is identifying the first customers — which companies are actively seeking to solve the problem at hand, and who the key people are who will be the first buyers of the startup’s product.

Another challenge in the start-up stage is generating revenue — collecting in the first dollars in exchange for the purchase and use of the product. While most early-stage entrepreneurs fret about their pricing strategy, in the start-up stage, there won’t be much strategy or structure to how the product is priced.

That’s not important at this stage — what matters is that a startup finds its first customers to pay for their product because when a customer purchases a product, they are indicating that they see value in its implementation and use.

Establishing problem-product fit, identifying your first customers, and generating revenue establish your company’s viability. It shows that a startup is past the “I’ve got an idea” phase and is now a real company solving real problems for real customers paying with real money.”

[Excerpt from my book — “Stop Hustling, Start Scaling.”]

Did you know you can download a free & complete PDF version of the book? Link in the comments below.