From the article this 👇
“Small pilots and incremental scaling are an obsolete luxury, and the friction between research, development, and large-scale deployment must diminish or disappear.”
Customer Success and Marketing functions are increasingly interrelated and working together. With scale motions and operations it’s driving customer experiences to new heights. I’m not sure its a new trend but I’ve started watching it here: Customer Success Marketing and Scale
A trend watcher is an innovator that spots trends and determines if they are here to stay and whether they should be incorporated into existing strategy. I enjoy it, it keeps me on my innovation toes and I dabble. I’ve captured this view with a few trends I’m tracking and published reports on already: Trend Watching
Tech trends of 2021 number 31
The title of this post is based on an article from Fast Company: Here are the top tech trends of 2021, according to 30 experts. I am adding to the 30. Note I excluded any reference to myself as an expert – I abhor the term. I wouldn’t call myself an expert but I have been known to dabble in trends, past reports here and new one being worked on here. Anyway, it seems a good time of the year to chime in on this topic so read on to see my prediction.
Continue reading “Tech trends of 2021 number 31”Microsoft Teams, with its 115M users, is way more than just chat or meetings. From this Geekwire article:
“Meetings are important, but they are transactional. Work happens before meetings, during meetings, and after meetings. That ability to have the workflow completely stitched together is where Microsoft 365 really stands out. That reinforcing effect of Teams by itself, and then Microsoft 365 in conjunction with Teams, is where you’ll see a significant amount of usage growth, more so than individual tools of the past, even.”
CEO Microsoft, Satya Nadella
Microsoft Teams as a Platform – the next frontier
Another shift the pandemic has accelerated – enterprise sales
B2B selling was already changing before COVID-19. I’ve written before about how I think customer success practices with their emphasis on product usage is changing sales to be more data and impact driven and more receptive to the user, not just the purchasing unit. This change is not unique to enterprise software sales – think about how you purchase cars these days, I did and it involved very few sales people or even physically seeing the car. VC Andreessen Horowitz looks to startups for inspiration and new research from McKinsey provides data points.
Continue reading “Another shift the pandemic has accelerated – enterprise sales”Update on As a Service Trends
Here is list of recent announcements and posts in the As a Service trend which I am curating in a magazine on Flipboard. Here they are (20 of the most recent) after the jump, in a convenient list of RSS fed posts 💥
Continue reading “Update on As a Service Trends”
Six of the things that I think work in terms of content marketing in 2020, captured in a DanelDoodle. This list is not exhaustive and the brief points for each are also not set in stone. Below is a brief additional paragraph on each.
Continue reading “Content Marketing 2020 – six things that work”The supremacy of business outcomes in a low code no code world
You may know of the new low code / no code approach to developing technology solutions (good primer if not). Simply put, it offers a development platform to users that requires little to no coding capabilities to build applications. There are benefits to this but also challenges which is why its important to consider the adage, just because you can, doesn’t mean you should. In this post, I consider the importance of business outcomes, choosing the right platform, governance and pitching your solution.
Continue reading “The supremacy of business outcomes in a low code no code world”As a Service trend research – customer solutions
This is a topic I will be covering as a chapter in my As a Service trend report. It’s not entirely dissimilar to one of the other chapter topics I will be covering and have written about here: As a Service trend research – products to services.
Continue reading “As a Service trend research – customer solutions”As a Service trend research – technology ecosystems
One of the chapters I am covering in a trend report I am working on (As a Service Trend) will focus on technology ecosystems. Technology is fundamental to all of the solutions in the new As a Service sphere because of the connection it provides to data, between customer and provider, to physical things, etc. From an ecosystem point of view, I will also be touching on technology platforms as well as looking at the organisation as a platform – a view being explored by many.
Continue reading “As a Service trend research – technology ecosystems”Update on As a Service Trends
I’ve not had a chance to post for a while and there has been a fair bit of activity in the space so I have quite a bit to share.
I have also run a few numbers through the data visualisation machine and come up with the infographic at left – feel free to use and share.
So herewith some of the best posts from recent weeks.
New SaaS Delivery Models Require New Customer Success Delivery Models. A solid piece on how Customer Success roles need to change in the maturing SaaS space. Sticking with the SaaS space, this article does a really good job of explaining how to manage your vendor if you use a SaaS product: How to manage SaaS Vendors in the Subscription Economy. And for some other really good posts on these themes:
- 5 Blisteringly Successful Customer Success Strategies
- New research report by Gainsight: The State of the Customer Success Profession 2019 (sign up required)
- A practical guide to understanding and reducing SaaS churn – an investors perspective
New entrants to the space
These include:
- Hertz who launches a monthly car rental subscription.
- Then there is Sanofi who turns to subscriptions to offer patients insulin at $99 per month.
- And Volkswagen rolls out subscription model in the UK.
- Last but not least, Urban Outfitters Inc are to start renting out clothing.
This collection of announcements above 👆 shows the sheer breadth of industries effected by the As a Service trend – nothing is off limits.
Industry specific news
There were a batch of articles and new research:
- New research highlights how increasing interest in the subscription economy will revolutionise the automotive dealer service experience.
- From McKinsey: How sharing the road is likely to transform American mobility.
- Great opinion piece by Kara Swisher in the New York Times: Owning a Car Will Soon Be as Quaint as Owning a Horse.
- The Rise Of The Industrial Subscription Economy
- Forget Games as a Service, We’re Headed Towards Consoles as a Service
- Apple is now the privacy-as-a-service company
- Fashion as a Service
Trend indicators
Here is a good summary of the trend which includes commentary on all the different industries being effected by the subscription economy: Subscription Services Draw Companies Closer To Customers. As with so many of the posts that I reference to the subscription economy, this one points to its darling Zuora, as you can see from the source of the chart. But their standing at the top of the subscription economy heap (as a company that powers the economy) may be under threat as new entrants join the fray: Stripe billing launches in Europe to power subscription companies across the continent.
There are other signs of a growing consolidation and integration in the Subscription Economy and Customer Success industries with the announcement by Medallia of their Strikedeck acquisition. Also Customer Success leader Gainsight’s announcement of the broadening of their portfolio into a “Customer Cloud”.
Update on As a Service Trends
Nuggets from the last few weeks. If you have any similar announcements, reports or good articles, please share in a comment as I’m collecting them for a new eBook / trend report 😁
- New EV startup Canoo will only sell cars on a subscription basis. The interesting thing here is not so much about a new entrant in the electronic vehicle space but that it chooses a subscription only model.
- The Subscription Economy: Powering the Next Era of Gaming. The big news a few weeks back that is behind this post was about Google’s new gaming service they announced the launch of (Stadia). A cornerstone of their new service was of course subscriptions and they are not alone in their strategic thinking.
- Apple was another company with big subscription related announcements. This article does a superb job dissecting the announcements and showing how they need to look to services for growth (since their products have hit a wall): Apple’s Services Event. This article title pretty much nails it: Apple’s Two-Word Plan for the Future of the Internet: Subscribe Now
- Industry specific
- Auto: Car Companies Face ‘End of Ownership’ Crisis
- Retail: The Netflix model – How Philips and Husqvarna are embracing the subscription economy. Another one was an announcement from Burker King – Burger King Offers $5-a-Month Coffee to Woo Breakfast Crowd
- Some really good general analysis here on the trend: The subscription economy is changing the mindset of a generation
Update on As a Service Trends
As I think more about this whole space and track the developments in it with posts like this, I’m trying to envisage dynamics of the perfect business in it.
That gave rise to the DanelDoodle at left. Just some fun and very quick so not sure they are absolutely right. I’ll get a better feel for this as I complete my new trend report / eBook on the subject and it may become clearer and a little more scientific.
Anyway onto latest developments which is always the purpose of these posts in the form of announcements, articles, etc.
- Interbrand and Zuora Join Forces to Help Global Brands Succeed in the Subscription Economy. With Zuora a leading proponent and supplier of solutions for the Subscription Economy and Interbrand a global brand consultancy, this is a significant partnership that will help new players in the As a Service world. They’ll get the technical infrastructure needed to change their business models plus the help to shift their strategy, experiences and messages to customers.
- ‘It’s a battleground’: Why retailers are turning to subscription programs to build loyalty. Focus is on Canada but good McKinsey stats from global activity that supports the growing strength of the play for retailers, on the back of Amazon Prime and others’ success.
- How Apple and app developers will try to entice you to subscribe, not just pay once. I’ve captured in other posts in this series how Apple seem to be transitioning to subscriptions. This proves it. I already have one subscription to an App myself and have had for more than a year now. This is different to Spotify for example and here is how you manage your subscriptions from your iPhone.
- Hate Doing Laundry? No Sweat. Tide Just Announced It’ll Do It for You. P&G brand Tide being extended into this new category is a pretty logical and sensible strategy. I’m sure we are going to see more like this where its not just a subscription play for the sake of it.
- Grover launches e-scooter subscription service. Love that this is coming from Europe.
- The auto industry (and manufacturing more broadly) continues to be the subject of suggestions that they shift their strategy to an As a Service model.
- From McKinsey in this article, the observation (mentioned in the video in the article) that: “The biggest change we foresee is moving from a predominantly product-faced automotive industry to a services and solutions based industry.” That from the same McKinsey that suggested Customer Success 2.0 was the new growth engine.
- And its also affiliated services that should be subject to the shift – some excellent research quoted here: Reinventing After-Sales Service In A Subscription Economy World.
- All is not well though in the auto subscription world as I discovered with GM shuttering its ‘Book by Cadillac’ Car-Swap Subscription Plan. Teething problems like this will abound.
If you have any As a Service examples please share in a comment as I’m collecting them :)
