At the recent SaaStr:Enterprise event, almost 100,000 of you across all social media tuned into to hear 20+ enterprise Cloud leaders sharing what they’re hearing, seeing … and doing differently.
To me, perhaps the most interesting discussion was the one I had with Aaron Levie, CEO of Box. Why? Because Box is broad and horizontal. Box is everywhere, and it’s been around for 15+ years. So yes, it benefits from micro-trends such as “gotta work from home … today”. But it will also see the broader impacts of an economy that in many ways, is in free fall.
You can watch the A+ discussion above. I particularly loved how he simplified what’s going on in Cloud right now. CIOs are buying:
- Collaboration software. Whatever is needed to work from home. More call center software, more Zoom, more Atlassian, etc. Perhaps we can broader this to Need It Right Now to Work Software, and include Shopify and other e-commerce platforms that have been pulled ahead a decade.
- Security software. With everyone working from home, security becomes a much bigger risk, with 1000s of more endpoints to secure. Box is benefitting from this, and Aaron pointed out they’ve evolved and titlted that messaging. They sell Box into the enterprise as a way to secure your content — which it absolutely is. Something on Box is 100x more secure than emailing around docs. But that’s a different tagline for Box than the older days of Enterprise Content Management. That may not be a Top 3-10 priority anymore.
- Software that saves money. No matter how it may look with Cloud stocks at record highs, the companies themselves are under tremendous economic pressure. So software that saves the CIO’s office money is high on the list today. E.g., Coupa which optimizes spend management is on fire (see that presentation here).
So if you’re still working on your post-Covid selling prop and deck, this is a good simple summary. How do you help make workers more productive at home? How do you make them more secure? And how do you cut overall expenses?
Flip through Box’s current website. What do they list? Frictionless security as the #1 value prop. Seamless collaboration as #3. And Simplified workflows as #3 (sort of cost savings, really). They’ve hit on all 3:
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If you can, maybe you too should have a good answer for all 3. Right on your homepage. And in your sales decks.
