We recently shared some metrics we've been tracking for the past 3 quarters on how much time it takes our new customers to go from 'subcribe to live'.  Phil Wainewright, the well-known pundit on all things SaaS at ZDNET covered the news his blog this week.  Here's some additional background on why our tracking of this set of metrics is important to us. The post also features our new customer, InterContinental Hotels Group, who discuss their use of Daptiv PPM to manage new hotel openings.  Thanks, IHG!

What is Daptiv Subscribe to Live?

Subscribe to Live is Daptiv’s methodology for helping customers rapidly create value and realize a return on their investment through rapid and streamlined configuration, training and implementation.

Why is it called Subscribe-to-Live?

Subscribe to Live (or Daptiv ‘S2L’) is exactly that.  It’s a measure of the number of business day’s between when the customer signs their subscription agreement with us, and the day that their solution is configured and being used by their user community to manage their day to day business.

Can you provide more background on the numbers in the press release?

We looked at customers that began their subscription and went live during the past three quarters of our operations—Q4 2007, and the first 2 quarters of 2008 ending June 30.  During this period we implemented more than 200 organizations, the largest user community to go live during this time period was 1003 users, and the smallest was 11 users.  The actual average subscribe to live metric is 29.81 days.

Why is Subscribe-to-Live important?

Business software is evolving rapidly.  The advent of web 2.0 technologies and the software as a service business model have enabled vendors like Daptiv to throw out the old way of buying and delivering software.  In the process, we are driving faster time to value and real benefits to customers which is what S2L is all about.  It’s important to note as well that we’re not offering a consumer web tool or a simple product for social network or collaboration although those are elements of our offering.  We are helping organizations manage diverse and complex business processes, and they are taking advantage of the flexibility and configurability of our platform to achieve this speed.

Isn’t Rapid Return on Investment Common to All Cloud Computing?

Not necessarily.  Business applications delivered in the SaaS model still require you to think about and implement features and tools that support and map to your business process.  Not all cloud computing vendors provide the same level of flexibility and configurability.  A key enabler of our fast time to value is the flexibility and rapid configuration tools built into the Daptiv SaaS offerings.

How much is this costing Daptiv customer?

Our typical customer spends approximately 25% of their first year subscription contract price on professional services for configuration, coaching, training and education.  So if you  are paying $100,000 for an annual subscription, you would spend approximately $25,000 to get up and running in less than 30 days, your people would be trained, the software would be configured to your business process needs, and you would be prepared enhance and modify your environment going forward.

Our S2L approach is heavily focused on coaching so that we leave knowledge and power behind when our consultants leave.