With the air starting to get a bit crisp at EchoSign headquarters, we've kicked off our 2010 planning process a bit early.
There's still a lot in store for 2009 (including a host of new features next week) but one thing is clear: we're going to stay committed to being the fastest, simplest, most powerful way to sign contracts on the web.
For every company.
A question we often get is why we serve large, medium and small enterprises. It is indeed a challenge. We need multiple levels of support, different sales teams and channels, and a host of different features and business models to serve enterprises of all sizes.
What we've learned though is that for signing on the web, there's a symbiotic relationship between the enterprise and the SMB, and we suspect it exists for somewhat similar, adjacent web services as well.
The largest enterprises have the power of not just the purse, but the power of people. What that means is that it's much easier to get their structured feedback, their product needs, their input on tactical directions for EchoSign. For example, with BT, we regularly have feedback sessions from dozens of managers on improvements to the system. Furthermore, larger enterprises have dedicated personnel assigned to work through and review SaaS and other IT solutions. They are able to provide a longer-term perspective on ways for us to improve.
All told, all of our improvements driven by our large enterprise customers also enure to our 9,000+ small business customers as well. This is what one would expect of SaaS.
That the small businesses also help the enterprise customers even more may be less obvious, but in fact the large enterprises are the bigger winner in this symbiosis. Because the reality is that while it's easier for us to get a rich level of long-term feedback from our enterprise customers, the small businesses simply dwarf them in number. And because they don't have an IT desk, or a support team, or an apps group -- we hear the feedback directly, immediately, and loud and clearly, every day.
And while many of our workflows and nuanced features are only used by our largest customers, our trademark ease of use -- for the sender, the signer, the manager, and his or her boss -- is disproporrtionately influenced by the sheer volume of our small customers. And that inures to the benefit of users and customers of every size.
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