Enterprise SaaS: How clients benefit from Professional Consulting Services.
By: Billy D. Aldea-Martinez
Tags: Startup, Strategy, Professional Services, SaaS, Consulting

Enterprise SaaS: How clients benefit from Professional Consulting Services.

An Enterprise SaaS offering has one element that separates the most successful SaaS companies from the rest of the pack.

The not-so-secret sauce of the very best SaaS is leveraging your company’s industry expertise by including high-quality professional services as part of the offering — call it a Product and Services Bundle.

Clients select one vendor over the other to either generate new revenue or reduce cost, yet other factors in support of revenue and costs are speed-to-market and risk reduction.

However, many customers and vendors end up getting caught up in other factors. So your go-to market messaging has to be clear on how you drive ROI with your SaaS platform.

The only way to achieve long term value for your client is to shorten the ROI lifecycle to less than a year, post-implementation. The most effective way you do that is by maximising the complete adoption and usage of your SaaS platform within your client’s business — the more stakeholders using your SaaS offering within the client organization, the stickier they will be.

When your client uses every part of your product throughout their business, they see black-and-white value from your product or platform, increasing the likelihood of them to become long-term clients and increasing your ROI in your venture, with a higher ACV (Annual Contract Value) as well as higher and longer TCV (Total Contract Value).

When your investors see your long-term, established clients continuing to deliver value, they see the value of their investment too. These long-term relationships can even turn out to be the catalyst to raising your next round of funding further down the line.

High value and high returns — for all involved — is the key to the perfect SaaS circle, a business model which works to every stakeholder’s interest. It all starts with delivering clear, high-value services to your paying clients.

Adding your team and expertise to a layer of value of your SaaS presents your product as easily embeddable within the client’s business.

Let the numbers do the talking

Aaron Mittman, a leading SaaS professional with thirty years in the industry, agrees, advising that he has found the most successful of these services always back up their offerings with real, demonstrable value.

“Without an ROI calculation to back it up, unique value selling can often devolve into the sales team echoing what management believes its strongest product features to be,” the industry veteran explained in an interview on the Bowery Capital Startup Sales podcast. He simply adds, “Sometimes, it’s better to let the numbers do the talking.”

Differentiate your value proposition with Professional Services

A strong shift from the past thinking of SaaS should be self-service. More vendors are offering services that are beyond implementation to help their tier-1 clients unlock value, whilst increasing Total Contract Value (TCV).

Your team and messaging is to clearly demonstrate the value of why your clients invest in your SaaS licensing and Professional Services and how that drives success, thereby allowing you to differentiate your value proposition in the SaaS marketplace.

If your clients are willing to invest more for Professional Services as well as your SaaS offering, you will always drive a higher ROI for their business as well as for your SaaS, staff, and investors.

It’s a simpler blueprint for success.

Sources:

https://siliconcanals.com/news/startups/preventing-your-saas-offering-from-becoming-shaas-shelfware-as-a-service/

https://anchor.fm/bowery-capital/episodes/Unique-Value-Selling-Through-ROI-Quantification-with-Aaron-Mittman-Nanigans-e4em63/a-ahnjn0