Friday, April 10, 2009
$15,000 in Free Services for Eloqua Implementation
This week, we issued a press release about offering up to $15,000 in free services to support an Eloqua implementation. Our goal is to help marketers get quicker time to value and focus on selecting the most appropriate platform for their needs. It has been the subject of much debate. We believe we can help marketers of all backgrounds be more effective and drive more revenue for their company. True process change takes time in any organization, but with today's SAAS offerings, there is no reason why marketing and sales can't achieve quick returns with the low hanging fruit while they continue to make more measured changes over time.
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4 comments:
Jeff, would you say that other vendors in the same league as Eloqua would merit the same treatment, for example, Engage B2B or Aprimo?
Cheers,
Arturo
Arturo, I certainly think that this offer has merit for multiple platforms; what we are trying to do is to establish immediate value for customers while building a longer term framework that will allow them to introduce process changes in a systematic fashion.
I think it's a smart move on your part, Jeff, and a highly underrated function that you're playing in this space, because marketing/sales SaaS implementations are perceived as being less challenging to execute than they actually turn out to be in large enterprises.
Having said that, don't you think that by making a $15K "freebie" offer, that what you're saying is that integration efforts actually cost well above that?
When I used to hire system integrators to help me launch on-premise solutions like Business Objects or Epiphany, I would factor in a 1.5 times estimate from software purchase price, at the very least, for any integration work. At $15K for your offer, the "software cost" of SaaS would be then at least $10K.
But you gotta make a profit on this (we all do!), so if I bumped you up from this base by a modest 250% minimum, you know, to cover the "free" offer, all overhead and a decent living, now we're talking about a $25K SaaS subscription arrangement -- minimum.
This is on the low end as far as SaaS pricing goes for large account deals, I know. But it proves my point, which is that your offer implies that SaaS ain't cheap to deploy. A $30K SaaS subscription is actually a $95K SaaS deployment. That's big bucks for a Small/Mid-size Business (SMB) attempting to implement Eloqua in particular, as your offer focuses on this vendor.
But given that you believe that your offer has merit for multiple platforms, what do you think this says about the cost of implementing other solutions for SMBs?
Arturo,
My experience in general is that implementations for most mid-sized companies have run about 30K, not 90. So, the 15K credit brings down the initial investment to $15K. I think this is very reasonable for an annual investment of approximately 60K. Sure, larger companies with more complex needs may have a bigger up front investment, but then they are also spending more on license. I do not believe that it costs a lot to implement SAAS based platforms - in fact it is the opposite. They are highly configurable and flexible.
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