1. SaaS, B2B and Product
Management: Unique
Challenges and
Experiences
ProductCamp Boston, May 2015 1
Goran Begic, @gbegicw

2. About the Presenter / Audience
• How many are in SaaS business
today, including hybrid?
• How many involved in on-
premise?
• How many C-level execs?
2
About the Audience
• 15 years Product Marketing and
Product Management in Software
• Veracode
• SmartBear
• MathWorks
• IBM Rational
• Twitter: @gbegicw

3. 3
• PM in SaaS is different from On-Prem
• At a very high level the objective is the
same - stay engaged and strategic
• Forces dragging one into tactical are
very strong, often unique and certainly
persistent
• Pricing Model
• Deployment Model
• Release Cadence
• Operations
• Managed Services
• Feedback Volume
Overview

4. In Scope and Out of Scope
• One challenge, opposite views
• Disclaimer...
• In Scope
• Practical product management; real life examples and stories
• Out of Scope
• Product owner vs. product manager topics
• Importance of business intelligence and metrics
• Cost of service and cost of customer acquisition
• Glossary
• Product Managers and Product Management
• SaaS
• B2B
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5. PM in SaaS - Is It Really Different
• Point of view
• Struggle between
strategic and tactical
http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/ 5

6. http://pragmaticmarketing.com/ 6
At a Very High Level…
• Same problem
• Getting stuck in tactical

7. Let’s Play
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Anas-Edible-Creations
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8. Hypothetical Situation 1
• Expansion opportunity in year 2
• Enterprise sales lead is all in
• No legal obstacles, budget is there
• Proved value in 1 BU, 15 more to go
• If there would only be this one new special
feature…
• ROI not there, not aligned with roadmap
• Issue is escalated to the executive team
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Each quarter you
may be going
through this with a
significant portion of
your customer base

9. Pricing Model
• Annual subscriptions and
renewal frequency
• Pace of adoption and growth of
your product
• Feature creep and over-
commitment traps
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• Review the planning process
with your team
• The product team must be
on the same page
• Review the escalation
process
• Develop rules of
engagement
Recommendation: Challenges and Opportunities:

10. Hypothetical Situation 2
• Success in the marketplace.
• Landed 15 new accounts with high potential.
• Each account has a slightly different process
and wants your product to fit.
• Buyer used to working with professional
services who made customized on-premise
solutions.
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Your customers likely
do not (want)
understand the
implications of
having one product
deployed in your
data center

11. Deployment Model
• One deployment for all
• Shiny object syndrome: “Why
don’t you just add another field
here?”
• Standardization is a powerful
source of business intelligence
• Concentration of specific
domain knowledge
11
• Develop API strategy
• Services
• Create plugins, examples of
integration
• Enable partners
• Protect product design…
Recommendation: Challenges and Opportunities:

12. Release Cadence
• Feature scope and relevance
• Each improvement is also a
change… Are your enterprise
end-users ready?
• Feature communication – who
needs to know what
• Training…
12
• Feature planning process
• Review release
communication, what to
communicate, to whom and
how?
• Training process - internal
and external
Recommendation: Challenges and Opportunities:

13. Hypothetical Situation 3
• You committed to delivering new functionality
by the end of May
• April 27: PM we need to make a decision…
13
Tactical agility – get
ready, you’ll need it

14. You Now Have OPS
• You host the product on
customer's behalf
• What do you do when
something goes wrong?
• Tactical awareness -
what are we doing, who
is doing it, when...
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• Reserve time (drop other
projects)
• Emergency response team.
Get to know this team.
• Document and practice
what if scenarios
• Communication templates -
ensure that all customer
facing teams know what to
do and what to say
Recommendation: Challenges and Opportunities:

15. Managed Services
• Staying up to speed with
product
• Management of expectations
• Training, training, training...
15
• Review feedback process
(Enhancement requests)
• Self-help
• Technical Account
Managers
Recommendation: Challenges and Opportunities:

16. Volume of Feedback
• "Important customers"
• Subject matter experts
• All of the above
• Approach
• Community
• CAB - Customer
Advisory Board
• Idea board
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17. Conclusion
• Not all SaaS products are $10 a month,
low touch sales, no managed service
• Time Investments
• Process definition and alignment
• Communication management - frequency,
volume, target
• Planning
• Working with a business process around a
conveyor belt
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18. Q/A
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