Preetam, a diagram would be very interesting! There’s nothing like getting a good handle on how different companies have approached this problem.

Ours is a SaaS + IaaS(infrastructure…) offering, both critical pieces in online video delivery.

Our work-flow is something like this:
- free account with limited software features + limited storage/bandwidth
- upgrade required for ‘unlocking’ player functionality
- upgrade required for better pricing rates for incremental bandwidth/storage.

Sign up process is completely self-serviced.
A customer who shows up on our site needs about 3 minutes to sign up for a free account, and can start publishing videos right away.

So I just ended up writing a little more than I was planning on, so if you/your readers are interested in a more detailed perspective, just add in a follow-up comment and I will link up to a nice diagram that outlines all this(and includes references to why we’re taking so much trouble to automate every inch of all this).

Of course, the goal is to be in the lower right quadrant, and we should be there within a few weeks. The first step will be a move to customer-driven acquisition, followed by customer-driven provisioning. This is a natural and intentional progression, and here’s why:

First, it makes sense to start off entirely in the provider-driven world, because we need to test our customer acquisition and provisioning processes. Once we’ve worked out the kinks we can expose them to our adoring fans where even more kinks will likely be discovered. However, the time spent acquiring and provisioning “behind the glass” decreases the risks and increases our peace of mind.

Second, we’re adding customer-driven acquisition before provisioning because, in our case at least, acquisition is less risky and more straightforward. It’s relatively easy to clone a demo instance, collect a few bits of important information about the customer, and let them in.

When you add customer-driven provisioning you better have your billing engine in place as well as a clean and clear subscription model including any potential discounts. These efforts have a higher level of risk in terms of creating bad blood between you and your customer if they’re not flowing smoothly. In addition, if your rate of adoption isn’t high, and can easily be handled by manual accounting until a critical mass is reached, then it makes sense to flesh out those processes before automating and exposing them to the public.

So as we’ll move from upper left, to lower left, to lower right I’m VERY curious to see how each move impacts our acquisition rate.

Good point on identifying the economic feasability (or lack thereof) of a high touch, provider driven provisioning process. That alone should be a “bad smell” to a provider.

Also, thanks for the great links! (the links have given me some ideas about some follow ups to what you wrote)

I agree 100% with your analysis. In fact, I would argue that it doesn’t go nearly far enough.

The core issue is that (most) SaaS prices do not support high touch processes in any stage of the customer lifecycle (from awareness through support)

While some aspects of the business may be effectively augmented by a high touch effort, e.g., a nice personal email to each new trial account or rapid response to support inquiries…these activities should be overlaid on top of self-service automation…not used in place of it.

In my view, 95% of the time…failure to automate SaaS trial and provisioning…are just plain failure
and ultimately lead to slow growth and negative profitability.

by Joel York
at Chaotic Flow

More detailed ideas on this topic here…

http://chaotic-flow.com
http://chaotic-flow.com/2008/09/02/contrasting-software-as-a-service-and-enterprise-software-business-models-2/
http://chaotic-flow.com/2008/07/23/sofware-as-a-service-cost-structure-vision/

The question boils down to:
Do customers prefer to “window shop” for SaaS apps, or would they rather have the ear (and hand) of a sales person up front?

In my experience, which seems to align with your point, adoption is easier (aka I am more likely to become a paying customer) when I have the ability to try before I buy AND avoid a lengthy and high-touch sales process. In fact, if I get the feeling that I will be bombarded with pre-sales pitching and pulling, I’ll tend to stay away. I’d rather try at my own pace, and ‘graduate’ into a paying customer with the solution that best fits my needs.

From the acquisition and provisioning point of view… I think you’re right, a simple automated process that tackles both of these components is ideal for the customer experience.