ForTheWin
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The Cloud!
Did you grow up dreaming of one day... using business software all-day?
As a kid, what did you want to be when you grew up?
A pilot, pro athlete, firefighter, doctor, actor, lawyer, astronaut… or maybe an artist?
One thing I’ve never heard anyone say is they grew up dreaming of a job where they sat in front on a computer all-day, creating, reading, updating, deleting bits in columns and rows.
I imagine even fewer people dreamed of hiring and managing people who use business software all-day. And yet here we are.
If our childhood selves saw us now, what would they say?
Maybe… “what happened?”
Software started out as a product.
The Cloud made software a service.
A.I. turns software into outcomes.
Grandpa's revolution.
Our grandparents generation experienced the first software revolution. Before the PC, they had two choices for their information-based business jobs-to-be-done.
- Hire someone else to do it.
- Do-it-themself using analog tools (ie. paper, pencil, calculator, typewriter).
But in the 1970s, the PC (personal computer) brought another option, Software! It was a revolution.
The promise of software to our grandparents was that they could become much more productive¹.
The first business model of software followed the traditional product model. Just like buying a T-Shirt, our grandparents bought it from a store or a mail catalog. Although it came with a steep learning curve, if they paid a few hundred dollars for a computer and another few hundred dollars for certain software programs, then installed the software on their PC, maintained the computer and software and lastly used it to try and achieve their winning outcome they could save thousands on hiring other people to do it for them.
Or if they did hire someone, that person would be much more productive.
Software started as CapEx.
SaaS made software OpEx.
WOA makes software Flex.
Dad's Revolution.
In the late 1990s, our parents experienced the second software revolution. “The Cloud” computing concept revolutionized business software.
No longer did our parents have to buy physical software on Compact Discs or servers, install it on their own premises (On-Prem), maintain it ourselves and finally use it. Instead, someone else wrote, hosted and maintained it for us.
All they had to do was login and use it.
The Cloud computing revolution birthed a new business model, SaaS (Software-as-a-Service). Instead of buying software like a T-Shirt, paying upfront, we could just subscribe and pay annually or monthly to use it.
Like that business software went from product to service.
Doing a side-by-side comparison with between Cloud SaaS and it’s predecessor yielded a clear winner. Why pay $300,000 upfront to own Siebel On-Prem, when you could subscribe to Salesforce Cloud for $50/month, minimum 10 users, minimum 1-year contract.
Today, Cloud SaaS is still the default in business software.
But it was never intended to be software’s finish line.
Products demand Enterprise Resource Planning.
Services demand Customer Relationship Management.
Outcomes demand Buyer Win Navigation.
New Revolution.
Today thanks to the A.I. computing revolution we won’t. Soon we’ll hire software for our jobs-to-be-done, instead of renting and using it ourselves.
While some see business software reverting back to the old pay once upfront – ownership model, we see it evolving forward. We see the transition to outcomes.
As we transition from using software to commanding it…
WOA is an acronym for Winning Outcome Achieved.
We exist to power a new movement, the billion-dollar one-person company.
The Birth of BDOPs.
The WOA business model is a simultaneously timeless & radical.
The best — maybe the only? — real, direct measure of “innovation” is change in human behaviour. In fact, it is useful to take this way of thinking as definitional: innovation is the sum of change across the whole system, not a thing which causes a change in how people behave. No small innovation ever caused a large shift in how people spend their time and no large one has ever failed to do so.
Catch the WOA Wave.
In the year 2000, if you just looked at existing software businesses and said I think “x should be SaaS”. Your bet probably paid off.
Soon we’ll release the first ever Business Win Navigator.
Although WOA is the future, don’t expect SaaS lions to pass the torch.
We have two offerings in the research phase that will be moving into development later this year to help you part The Cloud.
- Buyer Win Navigator.
- Win Arena
In the world of A.I. WOA, Buyer Win Navigation rules.
Unlike the software pioneers who sold software as a product and got paid upfront or today’s Cloud SaaS that get paid on a recurring subscription,
[1] The Productivity Paradox, http://ccs.mit.edu/papers/CCSWP130/ccswp130.html
The Live Rich Project.