When I founded Host Analytics, the concept of SaaS was in its infancy. As we grew, so did our understanding of the true potential SaaS presented to retain and grow our customers.  Like any young company we struggled to understand what our customers were telling us and how to use that information to be a better company.  But no matter what changed in our business the one thing that stayed constant was the question that keeps me up at night to this day “how do we know if we are delighting our customers?”  One day the answer became clear; the real power of SaaS is the ability to engineer a customer experience directly into our software, services or any touch point with our customer that answers that burning question.

We did two things to achieve this. First, we ourselves became a 100% SaaS company. We could not ask our customers to invest in a new business model that we ourselves were not willing to live by. By being a customer of SaaS we saw what our customers saw and were able to use that to directly shape our own business. Second we started a Customer Success Department. This engineered experience is a self-sharpening blade designed to monitor and change the customer experience by honing our business continually.  The Customer Success Department at Host uses many tools but includes: more…

In many organizations, making decisions is like making sausage. There is little visibility of what goes into them and outcomes may surprise you – not always pleasantly.

Better decisions enable organizations to take advantage of market opportunities more quickly, respond to competitors more effectively, make course corrections earlier and react to changing economic conditions with greater agility.

Conversely, poor decisions are costly. In this fast-moving, knowledge-based global economy, more people in organizations are being asked to make decisions, and their decisions have a broader and more significant impact than ever before. Too much information with too little insight, an incomplete understanding of the full implications of our decisions and too little time for contingency planning adds to the pressure. more…