By The Numbers - Tracking Marketing ROI

I just spent a good portion of the day today calling on businesses that have permanent displays set up in a local show room that reminds me of a home show minus the salespeople. The concept is great in that homeowners can wander around without feeling pressured by sales.

The reason for my calls to the business owners was to find out whether or not the display is giving them a return on their investment. Surprisingly many of them had only gut feelings and could not answer a definite yes or no. In fact, several said straight out that they do not track, so they can't say for sure, but they think that maybe yes. Others said straight out that they do not believe they get many sales, but they get a lot of calls anyhow.

Wow. We have said it before and we say it again, WINNERS KNOW THEIR NUMBERS! How can you manage something you can't measure?

Just before I started closing down my computer here, I looked through my email to see what I still had to answer today, and found this interesting article on tracking Marketing ROI. Obviously, we have a software product to offer that tracks all of this, so we don't promote the tedious Excel sheets, but if you are not going to use a software program that gives you the analytics you need, by all means, at least start with an Excel sheet or two or three or four or seven... Whatever you do, track!

I wish you great success!

Susan

By The Numbers, IRE Vegas

It's late Friday evening, and I just returned from spending a tiring but very rewarding week getting ready for and displaying at the Int'l Roofing Expo. I met a lot of really neat people, some great business owners and we had fun sharing about the day-to-days of business. One thing that consistently came up in conversation with some of the most successful business owners was that you have to know your numbers. Businesses are run By The Numbers, and without a knowledge of the numbers that matter, a business shall never grow. I couldn't agree more.

Do you know your numbers?

Susan

By The Numbers will be at Roofing Expo in Vegas

By The Numbers is excited to be exhibiting for the first time at the International Roofing Expo at the Las Vegas Convention Center February 16-18, 2011.

As you may remember, our background began in roofing and home improvements. The main reason By The Numbers was created was because the owner of a roofing company was frustrated with not being able to find a software that was ready upon installation to give the numbers absolutely necessary in order to make marketing and sales people decisions.

Because of our background in roofing, it has seemed a natural to market to the roofing industry (although many of the companies that use By The Numbers have nothing to do with roofing). Going to the Expo will almost be like "Coming Home", and we're looking forward to it.

Stop by booth #1767, take a look at our show special and see how effective lead, sales and marketing management can help your business increase its gross revenues!

WINNERS KNOW THEIR NUMBERS!

For more show information, CLICK HERE.
For more exhibitor information, CLICK HERE.

By The Numbers - SaaS revenue to grow five times faster than traditional packaged software: IDC

Only a few short years ago we didn't even know what SaaS meant. Now today studies show that it has come lightyears and the future looks even bigger for Saas, its use and its sales.

I'm going to let the following article speak for itself:

Written July 28, 2010
By Mark Cox

Pretty much everyone in the IT industry is aware that the Software as a Service (SaaS) model's growth has outstripped conventional software. But a new study by IDC provides a quantitative examination of exactly how much higher the growth rate is, and the amount may surprise some.

The IDC study showed the Software as a Service (SaaS) market had worldwide revenues of $13.1 billion in 2009. IDC forecasts the market to reach $40.5 billion by 2014, representing a compound annual growth rate of 25.3%. By 2012, IDC expects that less than 15% of net-new software firms coming to market will ship a packaged product (on CD). By 2014, about 34% of all new business software purchases will be consumed via SaaS, and SaaS delivery will constitute about 14.5% of worldwide software spending across all primary markets.

"The SaaS model has become mainstream, and is quickly coming to dominate the planning -- from R&D, to sales quotas, to partnering, channels and distribution -- of all software and services vendors," said Robert Mahowald, vice president, SaaS and Cloud Services research at IDC.

"Enterprise IT plans are rapidly shifting to accommodate the growing choices for sourcing most or all IT software functions, from business applications to software development and testing, to service and desktop management, as SaaS services become available from established vendors and new models for accessing functionality in the cloud creates lower-cost options and more tailored models for consuming IT services," Mahowald added.

The study also forecast that by 2012, nearly 85% of net-new software firms coming to market will be built around SaaS service composition and delivery; by 2014, about 65% of new products from established ISVs will be delivered as SaaS services. SaaS-derived revenue will account for nearly 26% of net new growth in the software market in 2014.

Traditional packaged software and perpetual license revenue are clearly in decline, IDC says. They predict that a software industry shift toward subscription models will result in a nearly $7 billion decline in worldwide license revenue in 2010. As a result, a permanent change in software licensing regime will occur.

IDC also says that SaaS segment mix will shift toward infrastructure and application development and deployment/PaaS, and away from U.S. dominance. IDC expects that by 2014, applications will account for just over half of market revenue. This shift will happen in part as a result of increasing IT cloud spending by enterprise IT groups and commercial cloud services providers (cloud SPs) relative to end-user spending.