Great article and I totally agree. At Mercado, I was running not only a technical “implementation team” but also a “Merchandising Consulting” team which not only helped optimize our solution but also provided general e-merchandising consulting. In fact, it was so important to some of our Enterprise clients in North America and the UK, we were able to place both technical and merchandising teams, on site full-time as experts. They’re willing to pay for it. We also did a very good point consulting business with our SMB customers.

I do think of this as more of a hybrid model than just providing “on demand” software solutions. The big question I have, especially in this economy…is whether most SaaS companies have the appetite to build and provide this level of servicing. We did it and based on your model, it appears Covario provides this value as well. I think there is a fear among some SW companies that it may get them off focus of being a SW/traditional SaaS company (the hope of zero professional services footprint or as close to as possible in order to not degrade their Monthly Minimum Recurring Revenue model). I disagree and would argue that adding optimization services provides the vehicle to long term client retention and most are willing to pay for the expertise.

Enjoyed the reading!

Dave