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Thursday, March 01, 2001 By David Radin
A few weeks ago, I wrote about a Silicon Valley-based company called Salesforce.com, which put together an ASP model to deliver its services. As an ASP, or applications service provider, Salesforce.com offers its full services via the Internet using its own servers as the software platform instead of making the end user install and maintain the software. There are a lot of advantages to this approach.
One of the advantages is what I'll call "demoware" -- the ability to demonstrate your product or service using the Internet. By using the ASP model as demoware, a company can show off all it can do for prospects without having to worry about expensive mailers, on-site demonstrations or other expensive sales-oriented processes. Prospects who want to understand more about the product simply open an account, put in some trial data and use it -- often in a real working environment.
A key ingredient in implementing demoware is to be entirely committed to it. If you're not, there's too great a chance that you'll screw it up, resulting in a poor demo and subsequently lost sales.
Salesforce.com is obviously committed to it. The company even gives away the service for 12 months (with a simple limit on the number of trial users). On the 13th month, you start to pay for the service. In a 12-month trial, the customer really gets to exercise the service. Plus he sees the upgrade cycle and the way the company supports its clients. He also can submit suggestions for a better service (presumably some of which get implemented in future releases).
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Oakhurst Systems is a stark contrast. It provides a Web site that has little information about its products, but does provide a download of trial software. I recently downloaded the company's Act!Pak! software trial version. Unfortunately, the trial version was severely restricted to keep individuals from using the software for free. So each time I thought I was going to see it work, I was stopped by the restrictions, making it impossible to see whether it would really do my job. I would have given up the fight had I not spoken with somebody from the company to get a full working version. I found the software worked quite well, but that I needed to test it well beyond what the trial version allowed in order to figure that out.
It is my belief that Oakhurst Systems would probably increase sales dramatically by allowing prospects to sample its software under real world conditions. Even if not through an ASP model, at least through a demo that doesn't keep you from figuring out how good the software is. It shouldn't be that difficult -- especially for a software company. It should try to understand how the prospect might want to test the product instead of how it wants the prospect to test the product.
The ASP model is not restricted to software companies. Many nontechnology companies can use an ASP interface to help their prospects understand how to use their services or products. Federal Express a few years ago led the way by allowing users to determine the status of shipments in process. Over the years, FedEx and its competitors found new ways to hook their clients through ASP delivery of value added services. Similarly banks are now using ASP models to create demonstrations and better customer relationships. Sometimes it takes some deep thinking to figure out how to deliver a great ASP based demonstration or service. If your company can do so, no matter what the industry, you'll be gaining customers, creating stronger bonds to keep from losing customers, and decreasing your ongoing sales and customer support costs.
David Radin is host of the nationally syndicated radio show "Internet Insider," a local version of which is aired on KDKA AM 1020 at noon Saturdays. You can ask him a computer or Internet question by following the instructions at www.post-gazette.com/interact, where you also can find an archive of his previous Q&A columns.
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