Beat 39

Let's start today's thought with a tidbit from the Standish Group's 2013 Chaos Report.  In that report, the Standish Group cheerfully shares that IT project success came in at 39%...cheerful because that is an improvement.  In other words, 6 out of 10 IT projects are failing to meet schedule, cost and quality objectives and we're thinking that's good news.  Yikes!!!

If we look at the numbers in SaaS carefully - regardless of vendor - we see a pretty consistent gap between sales and "go live".  Guess how large the gap is?  Yeah, about 61%.  Arithmetic anybody?  Granted that my access to data is somewhat limited here but, even with my small sample size, it's one of those things that make me "stop and go hmmm".

The upshot?  In the developing space of SaaS, I think we may have all underestimated the level of difficulty in implementing those nifty SaaS applications.  At the very least, it seems like we're missing the boat on how to move from vision to achievement.

Enablement.  SaaS customers need tools that ease the implementation and use of the applications.  And preferably things that scale...inventing the tool every time you tackle the project buys nothing but headaches.  But I think good tools for enablement are the key if we're ever going to "Beat 39".

More on this in later posts.  I think I may be focusing on this for a bit.