What is your organizations name worth? Something, right? You’ve spent time, energy, effort and dollars to grow your organization while showcasing the great work it’s doing. This is the reason why SaaS/Cloud technology providers often include contract clauses that permit them to use your name as a reference, both internally (i.e. sales training etc.) as well as externally (i.e. to win business with new customers, analyst reports or even on earnings calls etc.). To the technology provider, there is value in being able to speak freely about the various customers that have purchased their solution. In certain cases, there can sometimes be an unwanted onus (real or imagined) put on the customer to fulfill requirements for reference calls. For those renewing an existing technology subscription; if you’re unhappy with the solution or a particular portion of it, this can make for an awkward discussion.  The point here is to be transparent and discuss clauses like this upfront. It doesn’

On Jan 12th, we had the opportunity to kick off the TechSoup Connect Western Canada session on Tech Trends for 2022. Our opening 5-minute window focused on the growing requirement to quantifiably prove the ROI of your spend on SaaS/Cloud (something we recently posted about here ). We titled our presentation, “Quantifying Your Desired Outcomes from Investments in SaaS/Cloud”. It’s an area that is near and dear to our hearts which is why we’ve developed an advisory service offering focused on supporting non-profits and SMB’s with creating and managing mutually beneficial contractual relationships with SaaS/Cloud providers.    Remember, those that are unable to quickly prove that they have achieved their KPI’s/Metrics/Required Outcomes from their investment in a technology solution, will be in for some challenging internal conversations the next time budgets are revisited, particularly if/when leadership changes and/or key stakeholders have different perspectives on what processes an

    Contractual transparency is like having good insurance.   We’ve all got home insurance, car insurance, life insurance, heck even smartphone insurance. We purchase and agree to these types of insurance as they are meant to help protect us should things take a turn for the worse. I’d challenge non-profit organizations and small business owners to have the same viewpoint when it comes to the negotiation of subscription SaaS contracts. Especially for those applications that will be a critical and integral part of your day to day going forward.    Why this perspective? We’ve all heard of scenarios in which a poorly written agreement comes back to surprise one or both parties that entered into it. This could be anything from poor support, lack of integration capabilities, data ownership, customer reference-ability and a whole host of others.    While nobody really wants to view a new and exciting partnership with a service provider in this light, it’s got to be taken seriously as a