Benefiting from Customer Association

One of the core benefits for SaaS vendors is the long term association they have with the customer. The value provided by SaaS vendors are same throughout this association, where as in traditional on-premise software the value once software is delivered and implemented gets reduced to mere support.

Now through the continuous association that's possible now, SaaS players should continuously identify ways of delivering enhanced value to their customers. For example consider an offshore services company today - they start their association with their customers say through testing or maintenance of some application, then slowly extend to other parts of customer's IT landscape and try to get as much of applications outsourced and ultimately the value delivered increases over the period of association.

SaaS also is considered to be a form of outsourcing and the vendors have opportunity to serve the customer with more value as they go along.

Consider a HRMS application provider, he can always sell outsourced BPO services related to HR to his existing customers. This not only provides additional revenue opportunity for the service provider, but also enhances relationship with the customer by impacting him across multiple touch-points and could be a positive way to retain your customers.