We’ve been writing a lot recently about MSPs and the uspecific requirements they have from PSA platforms. So, to change tack, we thought we’d discuss the niche functionality ISVs require, in particular those selling their software as a service from the cloud.
We think ISVs have been slow to adopt PSA software because of two points:
- They write software themselves so the temptation is always there to build their own solution or write the integration layer between various purchased solutions; and/or
- put bluntly, the PSA market was not really targeting the needs of these companies, so the maturity of the offering was not there.
So, what is so special about ISVs that make then write their own solutions?
Well, PSA solutions historically have fallen into two broad categories; targeted at MSPs with a combination of ticketing, time, equipment sales and billing; or targeted at professional services (PS) companies with an emphasis on projects, time and billing.
What neither of these sectors have needed is fully flexible contract management or deferred revenue management, both of which are essential in the software market. So, when they look at PSA for PS businesses, they find a gap in the commercial modelling and a lack of bug ticketing/feature request support. When they look at PSA for MSP businesses, they find the same commercial modelling gap and possibly the ticketing solution is too pre-configured to be of use for development work.
The key to adoption by ISVs is the ability to model their contracts and associated with that, drive their P&L via deferred revenue management. Without the contract modelling fully integrated into the tickets and time management, invoicing must be manual and that kills the main business benefit of PSA adoption. Also, by adding time recording to ticketing, you have the basis for contract profitability reporting, the other main advantage of an integrated suit solution.
HarmonyPSA was designed with both MSPs and ISVs in mind. Our product engine enables the construction of complex bundled products in minutes that have accounting behaviours built in, powering straight-through-processing from contract initialisation to invoicing. And because we also have fully flexible service desk feature set, we can easily model development process style tickets and ticket dependencies.
Plus, we do the deferred revenue accounting, in the background, automatically.
If you are an ISV and have decided that your development team should focus on your own product, not on internal administration solutions, join the growing trend by calling us and we’ll explain the many benefits of modern enterprise PSA solutions.
