by Michael P. Binko, APR CEO and President, kloudtrack
With focused attention and considerable resource investment kloudtrack® was one of the first enterprise application software and technology companies to take on a challenge that many traditional software vendors are even now still merely considering.
This challenge was to take an existing “gold-disk” enterprise software platform and transform it into a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) offering. This transformation fundamentally changes the manner in which the technology/product is offered in the market by changing it from a traditional type of software application that is loaded onto server and client PCs, to a Web- based outsourced software application that is then accessible from any Internet-enabled PC.
This task is considerable for any company even if they are a large and fully financed business; however, this task can be monumental for a bootstrap early-stage company with limited resources.
Nevertheless, the kloudtrack® management team took a hard look at the market for enterprise software and realized that SaaS was likely (and rapidly) going to become the preferred model for success.
Indeed, that insight and the commitment to move forward has proven to be critical to kloudtrack® currently being recognized as a leader in SaaS enterprise content management (ECM), workflow and business process management (BPM), compliance and risk mitigation technologies. These technologies, along with the company’s considerable domain expertise, are finding customers in several vertical industries through SaaS technology licenses and Solution Service consulting and integration contracts.
During the transformation from traditional “gold disk” software to SaaS, kloudtrack® also faced the challenge of having existing customers that were quite happy with the traditional annual license model and the client-server kloudtrack® application.
Nonetheless, kloudtrack® undertook a considerable educational and marketing effort (in tandem with the core SaaS engineering effort) to ensure existing clients that the SaaS model would provide improved performance, security and cost while also providing a much more flexible user platform and billing model (monthly).
This flexibility of cost-management and the ability to add additional kloudtrack® features (modules) as-needed and at low costs, proved to be a strong value proposition for these existing customers as well as new prospects.
As a result, kloudtrack® is VERY proud of the fact that during the 18+ month “gold disk”-to-SaaS transformation period ALL existing customers switched over to the SaaS technology and monthly billing model and continued with the company.
This includes more than 20 branch offices of Lincoln Financial-Jefferson-Pilot Securities (currently one of the largest kloudtrack® customers).
Accomplishing this technology and business transformation, set kloudtrack® in a unique class of technology peers — and an even more exclusive class of early-stage companies.
In addition, having accomplished the transformation and having maintained its existing customer base, kloudtrack® has now made another successful transformation from Tested HotShot Bootstrap to Established Market Leader.