This week has been busy as I had to review a number of cloud based solutions SAAS and cloud hosted for a contest among Indian Software companies. Some of the solutions were outstanding in compliance, workflow,agriculture, abstract word search engines, patient management, rewritten ERP solutions, content management, specific business vertical solutions optimization solutions all were world class solutions and can be used anywhere in the world.
BUT here is what these companies need to do to compete in the world market place
1. Declare the name of cloud vendor they are using, it is difficult to ascertain whether they are in the cloud or a traditional hosting environment.
2. Provide a free trial of your solution, with ability to regularize it after the trial period. Most companies wanted a big form to be filled before the trial, you have a few seconds before the mouse clicks away from your site. Grab the customer with a simple email id and a password like Google does.
3. Provide a payment gateway to sign up to your solution immediately anywhere from the world, customers that need a cloud solution want to start using it from the word GO.
4.The designs are good, but give some features to customize it for the customer without your help, ability to add the customers company logo and template could be a beginning.
5. English is not the only language in the cloud, you could also provide your solutions in Spanish, German, French, Russian and Mandarin and Swahili and more languages to capture the world.
6. Your solutions must be for the world and not for India and India's problems, many countries who have no software solutions will be the fastest adopters of cloud computing solutions, target these countries.
7. You do not have an online chat to answer queries, customers need solutions NOW in the cloud and support has to be proactive through chat and voice.
8. Some of the sites were simple and effective, many still lean on Indian verbose, the English have long left this country, stick to the point so that the eyeballs of your customers freeze at your site and they empty their wallets.
9. Lastly keep up the good work, go social, you need a social media presence to be discovered in the crowded digital marketplace. Get your blog, twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and more into place so the world knows you exist and make sure you use SEO tools.
All the best to you brave entrepreneurs in making the difference to customers who believe in the cloud by providing them the best SAAS solutions in the world.
It is a wide open marketplace, can Indian Companies tap the opportunity ?
Photo Credit : Amitav Thamba
Photo Credit : Amitav Thamba
BUT here is what these companies need to do to compete in the world market place
1. Declare the name of cloud vendor they are using, it is difficult to ascertain whether they are in the cloud or a traditional hosting environment.
2. Provide a free trial of your solution, with ability to regularize it after the trial period. Most companies wanted a big form to be filled before the trial, you have a few seconds before the mouse clicks away from your site. Grab the customer with a simple email id and a password like Google does.
3. Provide a payment gateway to sign up to your solution immediately anywhere from the world, customers that need a cloud solution want to start using it from the word GO.
4.The designs are good, but give some features to customize it for the customer without your help, ability to add the customers company logo and template could be a beginning.
5. English is not the only language in the cloud, you could also provide your solutions in Spanish, German, French, Russian and Mandarin and Swahili and more languages to capture the world.
6. Your solutions must be for the world and not for India and India's problems, many countries who have no software solutions will be the fastest adopters of cloud computing solutions, target these countries.
7. You do not have an online chat to answer queries, customers need solutions NOW in the cloud and support has to be proactive through chat and voice.
8. Some of the sites were simple and effective, many still lean on Indian verbose, the English have long left this country, stick to the point so that the eyeballs of your customers freeze at your site and they empty their wallets.
9. Lastly keep up the good work, go social, you need a social media presence to be discovered in the crowded digital marketplace. Get your blog, twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and more into place so the world knows you exist and make sure you use SEO tools.
All the best to you brave entrepreneurs in making the difference to customers who believe in the cloud by providing them the best SAAS solutions in the world.
It is a good list to follow to identify whether the vendor offers true SAAS or ASP.
ReplyDeleteBy seeing the potential, a number of vendors are propagating even ASP as SAAS (we can not find even a signup screen and need to wait for number of days to have the demo account)
Thanks for sharing