What are you paying for when you buy social business software?

We recently had chance to learn what one of our competitors is charging for their social business software product.

It raised the question about what you are paying for when you purchase social software, and why some companies charge so

much more than we do for Communifire.

We came up with a few ideas.

➤But first, here’s a little background.

A few weeks back our sales team gave a demo of Communifire, our social business software product, to the IT team of a multi-million dollar manufacturing based company in Germany.

The IT director of the company was quite impressed with Communifire, but told us that they have already signed a deal with one of our competitors.

He was shocked to find out the price difference.

He told us that our competitor is charging a minimum of $85,000 USD/year for self-hosted licenses, more than 8 times that of Communifire.

Given the fact that Communifire has almost the same basic feature set, the price difference was quite puzzling.

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He asked us to give him and his team a demo installation of Communifire, so that they could compare the features side-by-side.

After a few weeks he reported back to us.

He told us that his team found Communifire more user friendly and well-suited to their needs. He said he’d raise this issue with his top management and ask them to re-consider.

We were pleased with the positive feedback he sent us, though we wondered why a company would pay tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars to a “giant” in the social business software space when they can get the same features and support at a much lower price point.

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1You’re paying for marketing.

➤

Most of our competitors are publicly traded companies that have all sorts of pressures that privately owned companies like Axero don’t have, pressures that push up prices.

Naturally, they are much more desperate to achieve extravagant profits, increasing quarter on quarter.

So just as soon as they are done selling to you, they are off trying to sell ten more people just like you.

Ironically, even with their high prices, many of them haven’t achieved profitability.

Meanwhile, Axero has remained profitable consistently since we released Communifire in 2009, with our budget-friendly pricing model.

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We’ve done it by focusing on one customer at a time, realizing that our success is tied to your success.

We haven’t spent much on marketing or advertising, while our competitors -- being desperate to get your attention -- spend up to millions a year, if not more ... expenses they have to pass on to you, if they are to have a hope of achieving profitability.

This advertising does provide some value to customers, by making it easier to find a solution and making their brand the safe choice (a person rarely gets challenged for choosing the most advertised product).

But how many tens of thousands of dollars is this worth to you? And how safe is the choice if the company is putting most of their resources into marketing instead of into the product?

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The larger the company you work at, the more likely you are concerned to be about choosing another large company with a safe brand ... and the less concerned you may be about the product itself. It’s just the nature of most large companies and their internal politics and decision-making.

This is why we’ve always focused our attention on the small to medium-sized companies.

We’ll help any large company that comes along, and they’ll get the same great deal, great product, and great support any of our other customers enjoy, but it simply isn’t worth our time to go after them. It costs too much -- costs that we’d have to pass on to our smaller customers.

Even as we consider doing more marketing and advertising, we are conscious of the need to do so strategically (and

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respectfully of your time and attention) ... to avoid incurring costs that we’d have to pass on to you.

We can’t compete against the millions of dollars spent on marketing and advertising by our competitors, which forces us to focus on targeted and more meaningful messages.

We’ll benefit from all the hype our competitors have raised about social business and then move beyond the hype to explain how to use social business software in the real world.

We have plenty of experience in this area, having focused on helping our customers solve their challenges. We feel bad that our competitors’ customers are paying for advertising that benefits us, but there is little we can do about it.

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2You’re paying for future development.

➤

When you purchase social business software, you buy it “as-is,” based on the features provided today. It’s very likely that you gave a thought to the ability of the product to keep up with your (mostly unforseen) needs into the future.

Some of what you’re paying today goes toward this as well.

In the case of Communifire, we’ve focused on building a thoroughly robust foundation that is scalable ... to keep future development costs low.

Meanwhile, many of our customers have been more anxious to rapidly add features that you’ll likely just ‘check off’ in your evaluation period.

And it’s also likely that you may have neglected the core technology choices and the fundamental architecture that the

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platform is built upon.

This increases their costs of future development, compared to the incredible flexibility of Communifire.

We provide the features our customers need to be successful now. It’s not about adding features just because we can and because it’s cool. How the features are implemented are just as important. We pay attention to those details by developing a robust platform and adding features intelligently to it.

Just ask any of our partners or customers that add (or have us add) their own custom functionality.

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3You’re paying for research.

➤

Research is another area where we’ve almost accidentally stumbled into an incredible cost-saving business approach because of who we are and the customers we want to work for.

Since we have always worked closely with our customers, and because the product itself is designed to be responsive to the changing needs of our customers, we don’t have to spend a lot of money to hire all kinds of experts and industry analysts to predict what you’re going to need (with enough lead time to build it for you) and then convince you that you do, in fact, need it.

We seem to be more social with our customers, so we don’t have to spend (and pass on) money to develop relationships with analysts, hiring experts, and paying for polling and surveys in order to understand them.

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We simply talk to our customers, partner with them in a sense, and build what they need today to be successful.

It’s not about what we tell them they need.

And we’re looking to be even more responsive in the future, becoming closer, not more distant to them as we grow together.

You don’t want to have to change social platforms every year or two. You need the confidence that your vendor will stick with you. Axero is privately owned, profitable, and debt-free. So you are our #1 focus. Our roadmap is driven by you, our customers.

You are in charge of Communifire’s future.

You have a choice.

We know that you have a choice.

Surely, you are aware of this too.

Communifire offers one mix of features and business model ... and our competitors offer their own variations. If you find value in the extra costs associated with the other products, then they are likely a better option for you.

Now that you are armed with information and a very feasible gameplan, you’re ready to put an effective social business strategy in place, to the benefit of your company, your customers, and your own bottom line.

We’re glad you found us.

Now you can make an informed decision about what you are paying for.

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Happy hunting.

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Questions? Call us.

sales@axerosolutions.com

1-888-976-4446

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