An overview of the five stages a business goes through when transitioning to the 'cloud'.

1. The Five Stages of Cloud Transition
Presented by: George Brown
www.salesworks.com
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2. Five Stages of Partner Transition
Denial Awareness Proactivity Operationalization Optimization
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3. The Denial Stage – up to 2012
Business Management The customers need and want us. The Cloud is just another
deployment option. Nothing will really change regarding service
consumption. Our business model is safe.
Finance & Admin The same controls and procedures will continue to do just fine.
Marketing Marketing? Isn’t that what Microsoft is supposed to do for us?
Sales Dazzle the prospect with demos until we hit on something they want
to buy.
Professional Services Let’s design a solution a tailored solution just for your company. It
will serve us all best that way.
R&D IP? We build custom-tailored solutions and leave R&D for the ISV’s.
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4. The Awareness Stage
Business Management • Understanding business model impact
• Understanding the shift in human resources
Finance & Admin • Cash flow impact
• Capital requirements
• Change in contracts & billing mechanisms
Marketing • Shift from sales to marketing (facilitating the buying process)
• Shift to increased volume of new customer adds
• Shift from interrupt to on-demand marketing tactics
Sales • Cost of sale reduction
• Sales cycle reduction
• Prescriptive approach versus solution selling
Professional Services • Repeatable rapid delivery
• Reduced (and different) labor inputs per project
• Cost structure reduction
• Increased remote delivery
R&D • Overall vertical competency assessment
• Formalization of owned IP
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5. The Proactivity Stage
Business Management • Align resources and planning processes
• Identify target markets
• Vertical, Customer scenario, Geography
• Establish Volume offering set
• Product suite
• Packaged services
Finance & Admin • Build financial model & business plan
• Product, marketing, sales , services
• Pro forma P&L’s
• Set pricing structure
Marketing • Set promotional price structure (including discounts)
• Ready marketing
• Keyword research, Domain acquisition(s)
• Conversion content, SEO/SEM
• Trial strategy
• Marketing automation & data mining tools
• Social media strategy identified
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6. The Proactivity Stage - 2012
Sales • Escalate sales readiness
• Build volume sales muscle (new hires)
• Develop skill sets and competencies needed
• Adjust compensation to reward behaviour
• Adopt new sales methodology
• Train on new value proposition
Professional Services • Escalate delivery readiness – set solid service ratios
• Identify and test streamlined implementation process
• Prepare data migration procedures
• Design packaged services and managed services offering
• Deploy volume solutions to learn
R&D • Development is assessing Agile programming methods
• Build Solution Matrix by vertical, including packaged services &
identify fit / gap with your current IP
• Crystalize existing IP into repeatable functionality
• Test with end customers in appropriate vertical(s)
• Incorporate into each vertical offering
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7. The Operationalization Stage
Business Management • Cloud/Volume product and packaged service offerings
crystalized
• Discreet teams created to pursue each one, leadership driving
new business model
Finance & Admin • Cash flow deficits identified & funded
• Management controls and infrastructure in place
• Contracts & billing engine in place
Marketing • Marketing machine in place
• Social media strategy in active
• Keyword research ongoing
• PPC campaigns are producing
• SEO (off page and on page)
• Data mining & marketing automation tools working
• Initial marketing wave active
• Vertically oriented PPC campaigns
• Squeeze pages, offers, capture mechanism
• Trail management in place
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8. The Operationalization Stage
Sales Sales machine in place, including:
• Sales methodology with embedded support tools
• Compensation models
• New hires
• Collateral and sales support materials for managing trial
• Active recorded demo scenes and sequences
• Capable of live functional demos
Professional Services Service delivery machine deploying solutions
• Implementation packaged service offered
• 50% or more of services delivered remotely
• Training videos V1
• Demo video V1
• Configuration image used by vertical
• Service margin is targeted above 45%
R&D R&D has fully adopted Agile programming methods
• Customer feedback and marketing driving functional changes
• Next “builds” identified
• R&D synched with marketing on contract renewal releases
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9. The Optimization Stage
Business • Manage and refine core KPI’s:
Management • Gross margin (services, packaged services,
“subscribable” IP)
• Customer add rate and market penetration
• Customer acquisition cost
• Customer satisfaction
• Churn rate
• Labour cost
Finance & Admin • Billings and collections running smoothly
• Cash flow healthy
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10. The Optimization Stage
Marketing • Refine and adjust ongoing marketing activities
• Social media ongoing
• Blogging
• Off Page SEO (Link building)
• Keyword strategy ongoing
• On-page SEO
• Ongoing PPC campaign refinement based on
results experienced
• Nurture email active “campaigns of 1”
• Tight integration/handoff with Sales
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11. The Optimization Stage
Sales • Continuous “wave” selling as part of inside sales & support function to:
• Defined revenue per subscriber targets set
• Grow solution footprint & share of wallet
• Create “sticky” customer experience
• Manage churn below 10%
Professional • Streamlines customer onboarding process:
• Provision an instance in less than 30 minutes
Services • Remote training & support
• Other value-added consulting revenue streams identified and working
R&D • Continuous functionality upgrades, components and point solutions
targeted
• Agile development fully adopted
• Code quality high
• Bug reports low
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12. Presented by: George Brown
www.salesworks.com
Brought to you by HowToSellCloud.com