I'd like to hear from anyone that has an on prem hardware product and how you are measuring the risk

Melissa Logothetis

Areya Dargahi

Hey Melissa,

I wrote about this yesterday: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/activity-6661982159974264832-110e

While our product is SaaS, many of our customers' are on-prem, and this is what we've helped them through.

1. Create an industry risk score: We used this to identify how bad their industry was affected, written my Tomasz Tunguz, VS at Redpoint Ventures: https://tomtunguz.com/layoff-categories-2020-04-06

2. Create a "Covid Score" that is not largely dependent on usage: Things like, size of company, size of department, tenure with you, time until payment/renewal, trends in tickets and support, etc.

3. Combine them to put together a plan of action. 

In terms of how your POCs are affected, this one is a little more tricky. You could:

1. Get a LinkedIn Sales Navigator license which will give you alerts if your POC leaves
2. Based on the results of the combination of Industry Risk and Covid Score, but together an action plan to be much more proactive with your POC than before.

Hope that helps :-)

Melissa Logothetis

Thanks!  I will review these items. Regarding poc’s I was actually referring to proof of concepts. 

Effie Mansdorf

Hi Melissa,

We do on-prem security software products. A tad easier, but still challenging when implementation, sales and POCs are typically done on premises. One of the ways we are trying to deal with the challenge is an opt out clause. I am not a fan of this at all, and it usually is an easier way for sales to sell and a higher risk of churn for CS. However, this was done as a COVID hail mary to see if it will shorten the sales process. You can see my post about it here.

 

Melissa Logothetis

Thanks. Do still have issues getting the product actually up and running at the customer site?

Effie Mansdorf

Currently many of our customers themselves are not on site and are VPN'd in. They can use existing or virtual servers, some have been purchasing them. Once they have this, we can connect remotely with them for installation of our software. Not ideal, as it's best done in person, but we are working with what we can. Again, this is an easier scenario than on-prem hardware.

Jim Jones

I'm going to be transitioning to a head of CS role with on prem solutions, so I found your advice very helpful - thanks!