Grow Your ISV Business with Saas
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Grow Your ISV Business with SaaS Microsoft Practice Development Playbook aka.ms/practiceplaybooks aka.ms/practiceplaybooks About this Playbook This playbook is intended for the business and technical leadership of independent software vendors (ISVs) that are considering building new applications, or transitioning existing applications using a traditional licensing and delivery model to using a software-as-a-service (SaaS) delivery mode. Objectives How this Playbook was Made The goal of this playbook is to help organizations that This playbook is part of a series of guidance that was specialize in making and selling software, commonly written by Microsoft Partner Solliance, in conjunction referred to as ISVs, build or optimize an Azure-focused with the Microsoft One Commercial Partner group and SaaS practice. This guide will help you understand how other successful partners that have volunteered their to define your practice strategy, hire and train resources, time to provide input and best practices to share with go to market, and optimize and grow your practice. Our the rest of the partner community. goal is not to re-write the existing body of detailed To validate the guidance provided in this playbook, we guidance on how to perform any given worked with MDC Research to conduct a survey of 463 recommendation; instead, we point you to resources that global partners. In this survey, we gathered insights on a will help you. range of topics, including how partners hire, For the business side, this playbook provides valuable compensate, and train resources; their business model, resources for driving new revenue opportunities, revenue and profitability; what practices and services developing strategies for marketing, selling, and lead they offer; and what skillsets they have in place to capture, as well as building differentiated and longer- support their offers. The results of this survey are term engagements with your customers through new provided in line with the guidance found within this service offerings like advanced data analytics, machine playbook. learning and business intelligence. This playbook also offers technical guidance on several topics that range from key architectures and scenarios for building your SaaS app, to the technical skills your team will need and resources that you can use to accelerate learning as you get started and grow your practice. aka.ms/practiceplaybooks GROW YOUR ISV BUSINESS WITH SAAS PAGE 3 Using the Playbook Effectively Review the playbook to familiarize yourself with the layout and content. Each section includes an executive summary and key actions for that specific topic. Review these summaries first to decide which areas to focus on. Go over content several times, if needed, then share with your team. TO GET THE MOST VALUE OUT OF THIS PLAYBOOK: Get your team together and discuss which pieces of the strategy each person is responsible for. Share the playbook with your sales, marketing, support, technical, and managed services teams. Leverage the resources available from Microsoft to help maximize your profitability. Share feedback on how we can improve this and other playbooks by emailing [email protected]. aka.ms/practiceplaybooks GROW YOUR ISV BUSINESS WITH SAAS PAGE 4 Table of Contents About this Playbook ...................................................... 2 Hire, Build, and Train Your Team ........................................ 69 Partner Practice Development Framework ....................... 5 Job Descriptions for Your Technical Team ..................... 74 The $99.7B SaaS Marketplace Opportunity ...................... 6 Recruiting Resources ............................................................... 90 Define Your Strategy ...................................................12 Training & Readiness .............................................................. 92 Executive Summary .................................................................. 13 Competencies and Certifications ........................................ 95 Define Your Practice Focus.................................................... 14 Operationalize ........................................................... 100 Understand the SaaS Practice .............................................. 15 Executive Summary ............................................................ 101 Case Studies and Vertical Opportunities ......................... 23 Implement a Solution Delivery Process ....................... 102 The Microsoft Approach to SaaS ........................................ 27 Claim Your Internal Use Benefits ..................................... 103 Troubleshooting Resources .................................................. 43 Define Customer Support Program and Process ...... 108 Define and Design the Solution Offer .............................. 45 Manage and Support a SaaS Solution Deployed in Azure ......................................................................................... 113 Assessing for Readiness ......................................................... 46 Support Ticket Setup and Tracking ................................ 115 Implement a Proof of Concept ............................................ 47 Implement Intellectual Property Offerings .................. 116 Understanding Intellectual Property ................................. 49 Setup Social Offerings ......................................................... 117 Define Your SaaS Pricing Strategy ..................................... 51 Go to Market & Close Deals ..................................... 118 Identify Partnership Opportunities .................................... 55 Executive Summary ............................................................... 119 Microsoft FastTrack for Azure .............................................. 58 Marketing Your SaaS Offerings ........................................ 120 Join the Microsoft Partner Network .................................. 59 Guide: Go-to-Market and Close Deals .......................... 122 Define Engagement Process ................................................. 60 Optimize & Grow ...................................................... 123 Calculate Your Azure Practice Costs .................................. 62 Executive Summary ............................................................... 124 Define Potential Customers .................................................. 63 Continuous Delivery ............................................................. 125 Identify Solution Marketplaces ............................................ 64 Guide: Optimize and Grow ................................................ 126 Hire & Train .................................................................66 SaaS ISV Playbook Summary.................................... 127 Executive Summary .................................................................. 67 September 2018 aka.ms/practiceplaybooks GROW YOUR ISV BUSINESS WITH SAAS PAGE 5 Partner Practice Development Framework The partner practice development framework defines how to take a SaaS practice from concept to growth in five stages. It is the foundation of this playbook, and each phase of the framework is covered in a dedicated chapter in this playbook. Define Define your offer, benchmark your practice, and identify Strategy required resources. Hire talent, train resources, Hire & Train and complete certifications. Prepare for launch with Operationalize systems, tools, and process in place. Execute your sales and Go to Market marketing strategy to find your first customers, and close deals & Close Deals with winning proposals. Collect feedback, identify Optimize expansion opportunities, optimize your practice, grow partnerships, & Grow and refine your offer. aka.ms/practiceplaybooks GROW YOUR ISV BUSINESS WITH SAAS PAGE 6 The $99.7B SaaS Marketplace Opportunity SaaS represents an opportunity for independent software vendors (ISVs) to fundamentally transform their business to deliver greater value and sell software to a broader range of customers and streamline internal operations. The evolution of SaaS, driven by advancements in cloud technology, has fundamentally changed the software Forecasted size of SaaS marketplace by $99.7B 1 industry, and how it operates. The promises of SaaS, 2020 lower development and support costs, streamlined sales cycles, unified deployment environments, and new, data- 21% Estimated growth of SaaS marketplace1 driven insights into customer behavior, along with a growing customer demand for cloud-based software solutions are fueling the SaaS opportunity for ISVs. As Average revenue valuation for private 11.2x software buyers give more consideration to total cost of SaaS ISVs2 ownership (TCO), ease of use, and flexibility in their purchasing decisions, the SaaS mode of delivery is Percent of ISVs to update pricing and 70% quickly becoming the preferred alternative to traditional, licensing in next 2 years2 on-premises software deployments across all industries and business process categories, providing an unmistakable opportunity for ISVs. Whether you are a cloud-native start-up or an existing ISV with legacy on-premises software solutions, SaaS represents an opportunity to deliver more value to your customers, while simultaneously increasing profitability and improving internal operations through reduced cost and complexity. This appeals to customers because SaaS solutions are engineered to be more purpose-built and are delivering better business outcomes than