Cloud | Ceo2Ceos.com

Situation: A company offers a product combined with a service. Small companies can’t afford the combined price, but don’t need the full functionality of the combined product plus service. An option is to create an offering on a per-seat basis. In this option, how do you price seat utilization? How do you price a product and service?

Advice from the CEOs:

Pricing needs to follow value. For large companies, functionality and seamless operation are key. Small companies have different challenges – they have less money and don’t need all the features required by large companies. Configure a limited product for this market.
Don’t de-feature the product – create a different use / pricing model. Consider a model that prices based on the user company’s revenue, with periodic review of their revenue and fees paid. As they grow and increase utilization, they increase their ability to pay for, and their need for full utilization.
Use a cloud model and create a “pay per amount of use” option. Limit this offering to X number of users or X number of projects to create a different product from the full license option. While this will require monitoring, it will differentiate the partial license option from the full license option.
Develop an alternative to what is offered by the chief competitor and create an offering that this competitor can’t compete with.
Before making a final decision, institute a formal process for collecting ongoing feedback from customers. This will help to clarify alternatives going forward.

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Situation: Start-ups and early-stage enterprises are typically both resource and talent constrained. The CEO of a start-up asks how others successfully outsourced infrastructure cost effectively and when they were early-stage so that they could focus on critical success factors and improve their opportunity to succeed. How do small companies outsource infrastructure?

Advice from the CEOs:

In the early stages of company development, outsource everything possible and focus our efforts only on the key functions.
In order to focus on the most important things first, decide what must be accomplished and when. Set priorities, establish key milestones and create a timeline to measure achievement. Celebrate your successes!
Identify the most important strategic foci within your business model and outsource everything else.
- For example, use outside data centers instead of developing these yourself.
- With the increase in Cloud-based options, early stage companies can do without the IT infrastructure that they used to need. Just be careful to safeguard your intellectual property!
Attend relevant meetings and functions to learn about existing and available capabilities. Look for local networking opportunities relevant to your market.
Incubator sites have developed in a number of high tech centers. These are designed to cover infrastructure needs at a reasonable cost so that founders can focus on product and service development.
Hire a virtual assistant – you can find these locally using a Google search.
Take advantage of lower cost labor and enlist younger, less experienced labor to manage databases and clean records.
Set up a wiki for information. This exchange is free and you can tailor it to your needs. It is permission-based; you can find it at pbwiki.com.

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