Channel Web Reports: Midsize CIOs Increasingly Look For SaaS. What’s a VAR to do?
SaaS is very friendly to IT-based VARs!
Channel Web reports that mid-size companies are increasingly looking to embrace SaaS applications to run their business. So, if you are a successful IT-based VAR (and scared to death about SaaS) here are some quick and easy (but very meaningful) steps you can take to help transition your business. http://www.crn.com/software/220100314;jsessionid=XLQRA2YXDYCQPQE1GHPSKHWATMY32J
3 Action Plans You Can Implement Today as a Trusted (SaaS )Advisor:
1) Help the CIO refine (define, in some cases) its security policy. Hint: most companies are grappling with opening up employee use of social networking, citing loss of productivity concerns. Indeed that may or may not be the case. But CIOs are struggling with giving Marketing and Sales (and HR) access to Social Networking to run their businesses while cutting off or limiting these tools across the organization. Help the CIO figure out the policy (and technology mix) that will help them with this seemingly impossible task.
2) Identify and study the relevant SaaS applications that your clients have considered and rejected. Take your client to lunch and understand why these SaaS applications were rejected and what has happened since then. What has changes with your client since then? What about the marketplace. Are there new vendors to discover that might meet their needs today? Be neutral but at the same time educate, counsel and stay close.
3) If your experience has been strictly on the IT side of life and selling (oops there is a non-IT word) SaaS applications to Marketing, Sales, HR, or Finances is not in your comfort zone, take heart. There is a proliferation of IT-based SaaS and Managed Service applications that have come to market in the last year and it looks like we are on the launch pad for growth at nearly light speed; particularly for security related apps. Get to know the security-based SaaS applications that your current IT vendors are talking about or promoting. Help the CIO be a hero.
So with one or all three easy steps, you’ll find SaaS plays right up the proverbial VAR’s valley: a sustained dialogue with the CIO/CTO and technical expertise that showcases your IT skills and experience, bar none!