How the idea transformed in the first year of the project’s life
Hi, participants of Habrasoobshchestva as well as those who read, but do not have an account! Today we started a blog of the IT Arena project in Habré, and in the first post we want to talk about what we are doing. As already written above, our project is called IT Arena. IT Arena - for managers of IT companies, SaaS services development teams and IT managers.
The easiest way to present our project is to tell about the idea from which everything began, why and how the idea was transformed. As a result, it will become clear what we have come to. In addition, the story of the origin of the project is interesting from the point of view of the case for the creators of SaaS-solutions b2b-oriented.
Before the project began, the team was engaged in the development and implementation of large corporate software (we all worked and continue to work at NAUMEN; if you are interested in what the company does, you can see the details in Wikipedia ). The company’s product line includes NAUMEN Service Desk - an automation system for IT service management processes (in simple terms - user support management, IT asset accounting, IT infrastructure change management and other ITSM ). So, this product for automation of activity is used either by IT departments of large companies, or IT outsourcing companies (also large ones). The system, as befits any enterprise-solution, can do a lot, can be customized for the needs of a particular organization, flexible and ... expensive. At the same time, the company received requests from small IT companies that also wanted to use an automation tool for their activities, but the large product NAUMEN Service Desk was expensive (and complicated).
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We get the presence of demand (from small IT companies) and the lack of supply from our side. This was the prerequisite for the project.
We decided on that - we will make a system for small IT companies. It is necessary to make a remark that in small companies (not only in IT) there are no clearly defined roles, and one employee, as a rule, “is both a reaper and a reader and is a player on the dude”. This imposes a requirement on the system. Namely: the system for small companies should cover as much as possible a part of the processes inherent in the company. Therefore, as a long-term roadmap for SmartNUT, we chose the idea of creating a mini-ERP system for IT companies.
And so we started to develop. It is good that almost immediately Captain Obvious visited us, saying the following:
- Guys, you will analyze the market for a month, then choose technologies for a month, write a prototype for a few months, test ... Yes, and you write a system for business, where the sales cycle is longer than in the case of consumer services. Maybe get to start selling now?
And what to sell when there is no product? On the one hand, we are not able and do not want to sell air. On the other hand, the sale process begins long before the transfer of money. This is especially true for the b2b segment. While there is no product - you can collect potential customers around you. To do this, we decided to create a community of IT managers.
By the way, we are still developing SmartNUT. But we are planning to start closed testing in the coming month. And in the beginning of summer - public release.
So, we decided to create a community of IT managers. The target audience were those companies that provide IT services primarily for medium and small businesses: subscriber services for computers, implementation and maintenance of 1C systems, software and hardware, implementation of electronic document management systems, CRM systems, financial systems, development and provision various SaaS services for business and so on.
We sat and thought about the concept and content, wrote the requirements and gave the development to the freelancer ... The story of how we tormented the freelancer (and eventually replaced it with a team of outsourcing developers), about how the selected engine (Drupal) was thrown halfway through and Replaced from scratch CMS (on php), and already this CMS has been rewritten and is being developed to this day on Ruby on Rails deserves separate consideration.
But despite all the troubles, we launched the SmartSourcing community in July 2010. During this time, we conducted a series of training webinars (and continue to hold them) for community members (experts were invited to conduct webinars, who selflessly agreed to take part as teachers). Basically, the subject of webinars is related to sales (however, this is natural), but there was one on the topic of organizing the work of an IT service company (announcements and recordings of webinars are available in the community). During the 9 months of the community’s existence, about 1,500 participants joined us, 70% of whom are either owners or general / commercial / technical directors of IT companies.
Having launched the community, we realized that this is not only a great opportunity to gather an audience of potential customers, but also a way to understand the problems and needs of the industry. Usually how it happens: they wrote a prototype, showed a focus group, rewrote. Discussion of articles and notes in the community (not always directly related to automation) helped us more accurately determine the requirements for the system being developed. But the most interesting conclusion we made was the following. A tool for business automation is certainly cool, but the most urgent task is to find new customers (and, accordingly, sales).
So, if we can help IT companies in attracting new customers, then the value of the project for them will be higher. Part of this task we began to solve in the community - inviting experts to publish articles and conduct free webinars about sales. But then they decided to make an exchange of IT services.
We decided, and still did. At the end of 2010, we launched the IT service exchange Smartvendor . Members of the SmartSourcing community, if desired, add an IT company profile on the exchange: a list of services provided, real customer reviews, a portfolio of projects, and so on. In the near future, it will be possible to place orders on the stock exchange (we are not principally engaged in parsing open tender sites). At the same time, understanding the specifics of b2b-orders, advanced options for managing public order will be implemented on the exchange.
One of the first questions that we were asked after the launch of the exchange: “How will you be different from freelance services exchanges?”. In general, it is clear what. On our exchange will be published orders from the corporate segment for IT companies. Accordingly, higher quality requirements for suppliers. But higher order value. The question is how to make the exchange itself so as to ensure, on the one hand, a high level of suppliers, and on the other hand, normal orders with a normal “price list”.
There were no problems with IT service providers. Community members publish their articles and notes, comment on other people's articles, vote for articles and comments of other participants. The rating of their community members determines the rating of their companies on the exchange. Just a good idea of the company and gives her profile. And what to do with orders? Where to get corporate customers who are ready to place orders for projects with an adequate budget? Search promotion, contextual advertising and online advertising will not help here (if a company representative has never heard of the exchange and got into it from a search engine / clicked on a banner, then it is unlikely that he will immediately take and place an order, say, for 500 thousand rubles ). A long massive promotion in the industry media we can not afford. And the effect of the media is a one-time, but we need to keep potential customers from the IT services exchange. What to do?
And here we are just lucky with the industry. Who in organizations makes the decision to purchase IT services? As a rule, these are IT managers (somewhere they are called CIOs, somewhere IT managers, and somewhere just an IT manager). So, these people have common interests and we can create a community for them! So did.
The community of IT managers of SmartCIOs was launched recently, in early February 2011. The principle is the same as in the SmartSourcing community: blogs, comments, expert opinions and other socialization. Some conclusions and results do early, but we will definitely keep you informed.
Of the interesting: the SmartCIO community is made on the same platform as SmartSourcing, with a single user base. With this, each participant can be in one or two communities at the same time. By this principle, we can create any number of communities (not yet in automatic mode). As a result, in the best traditions of Rework, we got a by-product in the project as a prototype of the SaaS platform for creating communities with a single user base. Perhaps, after analyzing the competitors and identifying our niche, we will begin its development as a separate project. But this is still too early.
As a result, we received 4 Internet projects that are essentially independent from each other, although they are interconnected. You can use at least all at once, you can only one. We do not charge for participation in the SmartConsourcing and SmartCIO communities (still), do not charge for placing information about the company on the IT services exchange (which does not prevent us from providing additional services in the future for a fee) and we promise that in SaaS -system SmartNUT will be a free (and full-featured) tariff for small start-up IT companies
And we also believe that the project helps the development of IT business in the CIS.
The easiest way to present our project is to tell about the idea from which everything began, why and how the idea was transformed. As a result, it will become clear what we have come to. In addition, the story of the origin of the project is interesting from the point of view of the case for the creators of SaaS-solutions b2b-oriented.
Prerequisites
Before the project began, the team was engaged in the development and implementation of large corporate software (we all worked and continue to work at NAUMEN; if you are interested in what the company does, you can see the details in Wikipedia ). The company’s product line includes NAUMEN Service Desk - an automation system for IT service management processes (in simple terms - user support management, IT asset accounting, IT infrastructure change management and other ITSM ). So, this product for automation of activity is used either by IT departments of large companies, or IT outsourcing companies (also large ones). The system, as befits any enterprise-solution, can do a lot, can be customized for the needs of a particular organization, flexible and ... expensive. At the same time, the company received requests from small IT companies that also wanted to use an automation tool for their activities, but the large product NAUMEN Service Desk was expensive (and complicated).
')
We get the presence of demand (from small IT companies) and the lack of supply from our side. This was the prerequisite for the project.
SmartNUT - miniERP-system for small IT companies
We decided on that - we will make a system for small IT companies. It is necessary to make a remark that in small companies (not only in IT) there are no clearly defined roles, and one employee, as a rule, “is both a reaper and a reader and is a player on the dude”. This imposes a requirement on the system. Namely: the system for small companies should cover as much as possible a part of the processes inherent in the company. Therefore, as a long-term roadmap for SmartNUT, we chose the idea of creating a mini-ERP system for IT companies.
And so we started to develop. It is good that almost immediately Captain Obvious visited us, saying the following:
- Guys, you will analyze the market for a month, then choose technologies for a month, write a prototype for a few months, test ... Yes, and you write a system for business, where the sales cycle is longer than in the case of consumer services. Maybe get to start selling now?
And what to sell when there is no product? On the one hand, we are not able and do not want to sell air. On the other hand, the sale process begins long before the transfer of money. This is especially true for the b2b segment. While there is no product - you can collect potential customers around you. To do this, we decided to create a community of IT managers.
By the way, we are still developing SmartNUT. But we are planning to start closed testing in the coming month. And in the beginning of summer - public release.
SmartSourcing - a community of IT executives
So, we decided to create a community of IT managers. The target audience were those companies that provide IT services primarily for medium and small businesses: subscriber services for computers, implementation and maintenance of 1C systems, software and hardware, implementation of electronic document management systems, CRM systems, financial systems, development and provision various SaaS services for business and so on.
We sat and thought about the concept and content, wrote the requirements and gave the development to the freelancer ... The story of how we tormented the freelancer (and eventually replaced it with a team of outsourcing developers), about how the selected engine (Drupal) was thrown halfway through and Replaced from scratch CMS (on php), and already this CMS has been rewritten and is being developed to this day on Ruby on Rails deserves separate consideration.
But despite all the troubles, we launched the SmartSourcing community in July 2010. During this time, we conducted a series of training webinars (and continue to hold them) for community members (experts were invited to conduct webinars, who selflessly agreed to take part as teachers). Basically, the subject of webinars is related to sales (however, this is natural), but there was one on the topic of organizing the work of an IT service company (announcements and recordings of webinars are available in the community). During the 9 months of the community’s existence, about 1,500 participants joined us, 70% of whom are either owners or general / commercial / technical directors of IT companies.
Having launched the community, we realized that this is not only a great opportunity to gather an audience of potential customers, but also a way to understand the problems and needs of the industry. Usually how it happens: they wrote a prototype, showed a focus group, rewrote. Discussion of articles and notes in the community (not always directly related to automation) helped us more accurately determine the requirements for the system being developed. But the most interesting conclusion we made was the following. A tool for business automation is certainly cool, but the most urgent task is to find new customers (and, accordingly, sales).
So, if we can help IT companies in attracting new customers, then the value of the project for them will be higher. Part of this task we began to solve in the community - inviting experts to publish articles and conduct free webinars about sales. But then they decided to make an exchange of IT services.
Smartvendor - Exchange of IT services for business
We decided, and still did. At the end of 2010, we launched the IT service exchange Smartvendor . Members of the SmartSourcing community, if desired, add an IT company profile on the exchange: a list of services provided, real customer reviews, a portfolio of projects, and so on. In the near future, it will be possible to place orders on the stock exchange (we are not principally engaged in parsing open tender sites). At the same time, understanding the specifics of b2b-orders, advanced options for managing public order will be implemented on the exchange.
One of the first questions that we were asked after the launch of the exchange: “How will you be different from freelance services exchanges?”. In general, it is clear what. On our exchange will be published orders from the corporate segment for IT companies. Accordingly, higher quality requirements for suppliers. But higher order value. The question is how to make the exchange itself so as to ensure, on the one hand, a high level of suppliers, and on the other hand, normal orders with a normal “price list”.
There were no problems with IT service providers. Community members publish their articles and notes, comment on other people's articles, vote for articles and comments of other participants. The rating of their community members determines the rating of their companies on the exchange. Just a good idea of the company and gives her profile. And what to do with orders? Where to get corporate customers who are ready to place orders for projects with an adequate budget? Search promotion, contextual advertising and online advertising will not help here (if a company representative has never heard of the exchange and got into it from a search engine / clicked on a banner, then it is unlikely that he will immediately take and place an order, say, for 500 thousand rubles ). A long massive promotion in the industry media we can not afford. And the effect of the media is a one-time, but we need to keep potential customers from the IT services exchange. What to do?
And here we are just lucky with the industry. Who in organizations makes the decision to purchase IT services? As a rule, these are IT managers (somewhere they are called CIOs, somewhere IT managers, and somewhere just an IT manager). So, these people have common interests and we can create a community for them! So did.
SmartCIO - IT Managers Community
The community of IT managers of SmartCIOs was launched recently, in early February 2011. The principle is the same as in the SmartSourcing community: blogs, comments, expert opinions and other socialization. Some conclusions and results do early, but we will definitely keep you informed.
Of the interesting: the SmartCIO community is made on the same platform as SmartSourcing, with a single user base. With this, each participant can be in one or two communities at the same time. By this principle, we can create any number of communities (not yet in automatic mode). As a result, in the best traditions of Rework, we got a by-product in the project as a prototype of the SaaS platform for creating communities with a single user base. Perhaps, after analyzing the competitors and identifying our niche, we will begin its development as a separate project. But this is still too early.
Eventually
As a result, we received 4 Internet projects that are essentially independent from each other, although they are interconnected. You can use at least all at once, you can only one. We do not charge for participation in the SmartConsourcing and SmartCIO communities (still), do not charge for placing information about the company on the IT services exchange (which does not prevent us from providing additional services in the future for a fee) and we promise that in SaaS -system SmartNUT will be a free (and full-featured) tariff for small start-up IT companies
And we also believe that the project helps the development of IT business in the CIS.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/116949/
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