So is Steve Jobs the Godfather of SaaS?

My son turned three in August. For over half of his young life he has been an avid user of the iPhone. And I mean avid. 


That doesn't mean he's been managing 'contacts' and making calls (on purpose;). But, he does navigate past what's of no interest to him and to what is - using the menus to access his favoured YouTube videos and play his various games etc. 


What I discovered, from speaking to the parents of his peers is that he is far from alone! A poignant quote relayed by JP Rangaswami, on his Confused of Calcutta blog, from a mid-eighties interview with Steve Jobs - "Older people sit down and ask, 'What is it?', but the boy (that SJ mentions in the article) asked 'What can I do with it?'" Poignant and probably why, two decades later, the omnipresent Apple products are so simple a 2 year-old can use them.


The true 'democratisation of software'!



The sad news of Steve Jobs recent passing has led to an insane amount of tributes, epitaphs and bios. A few of these have an understandably, rosey tint. Nevertheless, for a guy who in plain business speak was a salesman (all be it a bloody good one) and to everyone else a mega-successful capitalist, to receive so much 'love' is absolutely incredible: unheard off and likely, never to be repeated.


I've scanned many of the bios and one of the many recurring themes was his emphasis on usability. Fundamental to all the Apple products that are now household names. The same focus on usability that underpins SaaS. Suffice to say it's usability - utter intuitiveness - that defines SaaS for me. Before SaaS I felt like many others - alienated. That's why for me this is the fundamental tenet of SaaS. Sorry, but cloud-based, accessed via a browser etc is just not enough. 


Also, in spite (or because) of the KashFlow office (then) being run entirely on Windows/BlackBerry at the time, we were instantly taken by the synergy in usability of the iPhone Operating System when we first saw it. It was a natural step to marry utterly intuitive online accounting with the utterly intuitive operating system. A commercial success it was too. KashFlow is far from alone in this regard. 


However, I may have been alone in not putting 2 and 2 together and realising the influence of Steve Jobs on SaaS and its respective masterminds.


Usability as a tech business strategy
It seems obvious now that Steve Jobs' adherence to the needs of the consumer (i.e. all being able to use it) driving the development of these iconic products has also strongly influenced a generation of designers and developers, entrepreneurs and online services. Just as profound will be the pervasive influence, akin to how the Beatles continue to influence contemporary music almost fifty years later.


Does this make Steve Jobs the Godfather of SaaS? The SaaSfather even? Probably not. Though he obviously played an influential role like many others. 


Footnote:-
Of course some day (relatively soon) we won't even mention it if services/products are accessed online. This will only be discussed when a service/product isn't delivered so. Installed/desktop/offline will not be the norm and therefore highlighted. Likewise all products will just work and be piss-easy to use. Now that's a legacy!

Twinfield and The Future of Accounting

Check out this excellent video I found in a post by David Terrar on CloudAve. It's from a presentation by given by Twinfield founder and CTO, Andre Kwakernaat at their annual conference in Holland a couple of weeks ago.

I've been watching the recent comings and goings at Twinfield with interest, as they are an integration partner of The Online Payroll Solution, MyPAYE. 


Their recent acquisition by Wolters Kluwer seems to have reinvigorated their efforts to gain traction in the UK. They are already ramping their sales efforts, leveraging the the significant presence that CCH has within the UK accountancy scene and aided by fast-tracking (probably long overdue) UK specific developments.

All in all interesting times for Twinfield. The video shows that they have the vision and explains why services like MyPAYE have invested resources supporting them.

A Meeting of Minds

In one of those strange quirks of fate, last Saturday morning saw me deep in conversation over coffee in the living room of a consultant in the pharmaceutical industry. Very interesting it was too. Working for a top-end consultancy contracted by the major pharmaceutical brands, while pointing out to them what, how and why, and being the difference between their success and failure on a particular project? Fascinating! As was chatting to a guy who does just that.


Without giving too much away, he'd recently been in the Far East as part of a project for a multi-billion pound org, prepping for a launch for a new product in a massive market-place. You  might think that an organisation of that size, with the experience, history and resources that most of us might kill for, would not have need for 'outside help' to do what they've done many times before. It turns out that they are not so arrogant. The big picture has so many aspects. So why leave anything to chance. They understand the need for acute specialisation and blunt, objective honesty. They call in the commercial geeks! 


If your commercial strategy and tactics are absolutely perfect and cannot be improved at all whatsoever, then you have no need for an objective point-of-view from someone who does nothing else but spend all their time researching and understanding what you need to know.


This commercial geek was really interested to hear about the SaaS scene. I just love it when someone from another industry gets why I'm so excited about SaaS. As you might expect in this case, he very quickly got its benefits and what a game-changer it really is and consequently, its massive potential. He became quite envious when he realised that SaaS is at that stage in the cycle where there is so much scope for creativity and innovation in market-play. Such a rapidly shifting scene makes shaping a successful strategy particularly exciting.


Of course his industry is very different. He and his agency are often engaged for six-figure and even seven figures on occasions - for particularly long and involved contracts with a broad remit. On other occasions he can be just a sounding board for the many different ideas a management team already has, hired purely for industry knowledge or intelligence or he might draw up (many strands of) a strategy on a blank piece of paper and so on. Whatever the need, a level of trust is required and found before engaging your consultant. You want a stand-up guy or gets it, not a blagger or a yes man. 


A final thought he left me with before I went on my merry way. Of course there'll be some reluctance in tech/SaaS start-ups to engage consultants. Some may view them as a luxury. But, a different (objective) perspective with a complimentary skill-set can be the difference between success or failure. It's simply another value proposition. Food for thought indeed.

Sometimes 2 Really Is Better Than 1

I'm a soppy, sentimental old soul. I must be cos whenever I hear talk along the lines of proper broadband access being a ‘fundamental human right’ and an ‘essential commodity’, I've always felt a touch uncomfortable. It just don’t feel right, while I’m still frequently being exposed to images of millions of people who can’t even access food and water!

Anyhow this is not to be some kind of political diatribe. I’m not that guy and this is not the platform. Of course, in our reality, the discussion has moved on rapidly. When we talk democratisation, we’re talking 'software'. And of course, we all know how democratised software is delivered. I guess if I’m one thing, I’m some kind of *SaaS fanboi* (*insert as appropriate*). Consequently, I do believe that in this day and age, access to quality broadband should not even be an issue – in the same way that access to food and water etc should not even be an issue.

Simply put, we have 2 carriers in the UK – that’s it. You can pick from a multitude of logos for your bill, but if ain’t Virgin, then you’re using BT. My broadband service is delivered by Virgin Media; in practice (without a doubt) the better service e.g. my service never drops below 80% advertised and is usually over 90%, while my ‘BT’ neighbours rarely get over 10%! 

For about a decade I’ve had no real gripes...until the last month or so. Over the last 5 weeks my broadband has gone AWOL just as many times. On all but one occasion, I was offline for the whole afternoon. It has been driving me crazy! Sorry sentimental types, but this is now my life-blood. 


On one occasion, I was 10 minutes in to a (much-anticipated) 5-way online conference meeting...and I was the 'Presenter' and 'Organiser'. The meeting collapsed of course. Fortunately I was able to use the Skype app on my iPhone (3G) to ping email addresses to a colleague who was able to step into the breach so to speak. And this was not the only uncomfortable moment. Simply put: ‘it’s not funny’!

If your organisation is run in the cloud, then good on you: you know it makes sense. The benefits so leave installed software in its wake, that it’s a no-brainer. So much so that we all know, before too long, it will all be done that way. In a few years time, we’ll be looking back and laughing at the ‘good old days’ - that’s if we’re not already! And so the antiquated ways of accommodating back-ups, disaster recovery et al: nasty, cumbersome and clunky, massively resource intensive processes consigned to the dustbin of history. Nice:)

It may be tempting to think that in the new SaaS reality, we now hand-over responsibility for our service reliability to our carefully selected vendors. Wrong! We all know that, barring rotten apples, service up-times already piss all over the old-guard. But, my experience is far from unique and a stark reminder that there are still some things that are down to us to sort out. 


If you don't have at least 2 separate feeds, one from each of the carriers, to run your business you are being at least negligent and most probably, stupid.

This is the most cost-effective insurance policy you will ever invest in for your cloud-powered business. 

Same goes for the vendors and related providers of course. In the same way that you have multiple back-ups and mirrors located hundreds of miles apart, all set-up to kick-in at the flick-of-a-switch should half the country get blown to smithereens or you are the number one target for tech uber-terrorists a la ‘Die Hard: 4.0’, you also make sure you’re not left prone to the vagaries of the service provision of the ‘monopoly’ that is Virgin/BT. Don’t you? 

Honestly, I know there are still SaaS start-ups out there offering superb, well subscribed solutions to the world, who are leaving themselves vulnerable by having the one feed. For the cost of a handful of users per month! 


Head Office reliant on Virgin or BT, but not both, to stay connected to the world. Seriously, what is that all about??

My experience with Virgin and dealing with their Customer Services raised a few issues worthy of comment - stay tuned. 

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