Okay then the users aren’t subscribers, thier boss or the boss above that are. And that person doesn’t really care how hard it is to use. They care about the presentation they gave to other leadership about all the great features the software has. And if they drop it now, they look like a fool, so deal with it.
They do care, %100 they care. If you take longer to do task X because the SaaS solution crashes or is unavailable, or causes issues in finance, or a dozen other things then the company will very much care. I literally work at a SaaS company and hear complaints from clients. Money is all that matters, if your solution isn’t as good at making/saving them money as another solution, you get dropped. And reliability is a big part of that. A solution that frequently has issues is not a money-making/saving system that can be relied on.
It’s not about looking like a fool; it’s about what your P&L looks like. That’s what actually matters. Say you made a nice slide deck about product X and got buy-in. Walking that back is MUCH easier to do than having to justify a hit to your P&L.
What experience do you have to be making these claims?
I have 30 years of work experience on both sides of the equation with companies of varying size. Once a company gets to somewhere between 500 and 1000 employees, the 2nd level managment starts to attract professionally ambitious people who prioritize thier career over the work to a more a more extreme degree. They never walk anything back. Every few years they will often replace a solution (even a working one) so that they can take credit for a major change. Anyway, you get enough of these and they start to back each other and squeeze out anyone who cares about the work. I have been told in one position that it doesn’t matter if you are right, you don’t say anything negative about person X’s plan. And many other people from other companies and such have echoed that over the years.
Now small companies often avoid this. But most software targets the big companies for the big paydays. Of the ones I have worked at, some even openly admitted that financially they couldn’t justify fixing a user issue over a new feature that might sell more product because the user issues don’t often lead to churn, where as new features often seal a deal.
You seem to be basing how the entire industry works on some people you’ve encountered who want to climb the ladder. Again, when you stand in front of a board and have to justify your EBITDA, it doesn’t matter how good your PowerPoint slide was. They don’t have to walk it back, the P&L is numbers, they have to justify those numbers or deal with not hitting budget. A company runs off numbers not initiatives people want to push.
You seem to be ignoring the fact that you have to report metrics to investors. Spend, rev, output, etc. And a poor SaaS solution that has poor quality negatively impacts those numbers. Numbers don’t lie, no matter how much spin you put on them. You say you have 30 years of experience both consuming and delivering SaaS solutions but seem to ignore that you have defended your P&L and your performance, all numbers, not office politics. Investors only care about money, dollars and cents, numbers. So what happens when solution X that Bob pushed and no one can talk bad about tanks your topline, or your EBITDA? Then what? You tell the board not to say anything bad about it? That just doesn’t make sense.
Okay then the users aren’t subscribers, thier boss or the boss above that are. And that person doesn’t really care how hard it is to use. They care about the presentation they gave to other leadership about all the great features the software has. And if they drop it now, they look like a fool, so deal with it.
They do care, %100 they care. If you take longer to do task X because the SaaS solution crashes or is unavailable, or causes issues in finance, or a dozen other things then the company will very much care. I literally work at a SaaS company and hear complaints from clients. Money is all that matters, if your solution isn’t as good at making/saving them money as another solution, you get dropped. And reliability is a big part of that. A solution that frequently has issues is not a money-making/saving system that can be relied on.
It’s not about looking like a fool; it’s about what your P&L looks like. That’s what actually matters. Say you made a nice slide deck about product X and got buy-in. Walking that back is MUCH easier to do than having to justify a hit to your P&L.
What experience do you have to be making these claims?
I have 30 years of work experience on both sides of the equation with companies of varying size. Once a company gets to somewhere between 500 and 1000 employees, the 2nd level managment starts to attract professionally ambitious people who prioritize thier career over the work to a more a more extreme degree. They never walk anything back. Every few years they will often replace a solution (even a working one) so that they can take credit for a major change. Anyway, you get enough of these and they start to back each other and squeeze out anyone who cares about the work. I have been told in one position that it doesn’t matter if you are right, you don’t say anything negative about person X’s plan. And many other people from other companies and such have echoed that over the years. Now small companies often avoid this. But most software targets the big companies for the big paydays. Of the ones I have worked at, some even openly admitted that financially they couldn’t justify fixing a user issue over a new feature that might sell more product because the user issues don’t often lead to churn, where as new features often seal a deal.
You seem to be basing how the entire industry works on some people you’ve encountered who want to climb the ladder. Again, when you stand in front of a board and have to justify your EBITDA, it doesn’t matter how good your PowerPoint slide was. They don’t have to walk it back, the P&L is numbers, they have to justify those numbers or deal with not hitting budget. A company runs off numbers not initiatives people want to push.
You seem to be ignoring the fact that you have to report metrics to investors. Spend, rev, output, etc. And a poor SaaS solution that has poor quality negatively impacts those numbers. Numbers don’t lie, no matter how much spin you put on them. You say you have 30 years of experience both consuming and delivering SaaS solutions but seem to ignore that you have defended your P&L and your performance, all numbers, not office politics. Investors only care about money, dollars and cents, numbers. So what happens when solution X that Bob pushed and no one can talk bad about tanks your topline, or your EBITDA? Then what? You tell the board not to say anything bad about it? That just doesn’t make sense.