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Guiding Questions - SaaS Journey Framework: Building a New SaaS Solution on AWS
Assess the SaaS OpportunityDefine Target SegmentsEvaluate the Market and Customer Strategy Model Market / Segment Growth

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Guiding Questions

How you approach each of these key activities of the business planning exercise will be different for each company. As a starting point, we have assembled a series of guiding questions that may help you fill in important dimensions of your business case and can provide a better insight into the fundamentals of your model. Below is the list of guiding questions:

Assess the SaaS Opportunity

  • What are your compelling factors for adopting SaaS?

  • What is your projected customer acquisition two-year growth rate?

  • How soon can you be profitable?

  • How many of your existing customers are expected to adopt your SaaS offering?

  • Are SaaS competitors encroaching on your market?

  • Are there new segments of the market that are best targeted by a SaaS offering?

  • Does the company see SaaS as an essential component of its future success?

  • How long will it take your company to complete the transition to a SaaS model?

  • What is the risk of not pursuing the SaaS initiative?

Define Target Segments

  • What are the customer segments that you are targeting?

  • What are the unique requirements of these segments?

  • Are there any specific operational, performance, or compliance profiles of the different customers in this market?

  • Which customers would you not target with this new offering?

  • Will this offering be available to all customers or limited to new customers?

Evaluate the Market and Customer Strategy

  • What channels will be used to access new customers?

  • How will you differentiate your offering from competitors?

  • What data do you have to validate market acceptance and readiness for this offering?

Model Market / Segment Growth

  • How many customers do you expect to add in the first year?

  • What is the profile of customers spanning the different segments?

  • What level of churn do you expect from your customers?

  • How many existing customers do you expect to move into the new model?

Finance

  • What is the monetization model for the new offering?

  • What is the target MRR for this offering (across segments)?

  • What would the price need to be (for each segment) to be competitive?

  • Will the company profit and loss structure change?

Sales Transformation

  • What is different about selling SaaS?

  • How will your sales organization need to transform to support a SaaS model?

  • Will your sales compensation model change with SaaS?

  • What incremental resources will be needed to support selling the SaaS offering?

  • What costs will be associated with sales activities to these customers?

  • Do sales teams have the skills that align with a SaaS delivery model?

  • What incremental tooling and automation will be needed to support your sales strategy?

Marketing Transformation

  • How will you reach new segments/markets that represent all new targets for the company?

  • How will you build a brand for your SaaS offering?

  • Will your marketing profile change to reach these SaaS buyer personas?

  • What costs will be associated with marketing activities to these customers?

  • What incremental marketing resources do you need?

Define Operational Model / Resources

  • What incremental expenses would be required to support this model?

  • What is the AWS cost model for operating the system (cost per tenant)?

    (A tenant is a group of users who share a common access with specific privileges to the software instance.)

  • Will new resources be required to build/manage your DevOps pipeline?

  • How will agility and automation change the long-term operational expense footprint of your company?

Develop a Staffing Profile

  • Does your team have the resources to take on this move to SaaS?

  • What incremental staff would you need to hire?

  • Do you have a customer success team that will be responsible for customer retention and loyalty?

  • What costs are associated with staffing and hosting this solution?

  • Do you have enough AWS expertise to build the SaaS solution?

  • Do you have the right development and operational tools to develop, test, and deploy SaaS?

  • Will you need new development resources for this effort? Will these be net new resources?