Want to end the debate on when your product ship date should be? Make sure your date fits your customer’s interests. Leverage the cloud and the calendar. Hint: Choose March!
Ship Date Dependency
As enterprise applications move to the cloud, their business model is still anchored in scheduled product releases aligned with subscription models for regular updates (sometimes called “maintenance”). If you deliver software in this model, you need to separate minor updates delivered under subscription plans from major innovation in larger modules of new-business generating products.
Assuming a business fiscal schedule is aligned with the calendar year, consider the following factors:
- Customer’s budget in October/November, for spending the following fiscal year
- Spending the IT budget early in the fiscal year usually happens early.
- Deployment of IT technology spend is project-based, through the rest of the year.
- For an annual initiative to be successful, best to have it done by the end of the year.
- IT budget not spent early, is at risk for cuts, pending unpredictable performance.
Delivering major new license products in March times your release with your customers’ spending cycle. As a result:
- Your sales team can help your customer shape a budget at the end of the prior year in anticipation of the release.
- Your customer can go through the approval and business agreement process in January and February.
- IT can deploy solutions across the organization starting in March.
- Value experienced from the investment can start earlier in the same fiscal year that money is spent – call it intra-year ROI.
- If there’s a need for additional services and customization, there’s time before year-end reporting to address any challenges.
- You are a trusted partner to your customer by eliminating project management risk in an ever-changing business environment
- Minimize your risk dependent on your customer running out of budget, or other cuts shifting business away from earlier planning expectations
- Have your marketing teams begin programs, plans, initiatives for selling in the prior year so customers can budget around next year’s innovation.
- Give your sales teams the entire fiscal year to close deals.
Choose the month of March for IT product ship dates…, call it design thinking around the business, and customer experience focused.
Does this work for your business?
