Posted by Nick Mehta on Tue, Apr 28, 2009 @ 09:43 PM
Last week, we announced our new LiveOffice Client Bill of Rights for our current and prospective customers.
Any organization thinking about email compliance, email discovery and email hosting in a software-as-a-service model understandably would have a number of questions and concerns around issues like service availability, data ownership and system security. We wanted to address these head-on and be as transparent as possible.
But beyond that, Brian Babineau, analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group, pointed out another important fact on his blog:
This is a very unique way to communicate a company's mission statement, core values, and strategy to multiple audiences - customers, employees, press, analysts, investors, etc.
As Brian points out, for us internally at LiveOffice, this list was really about having a consistent vision to rally around and measure ourselves against.
Michael Osterman, at MessagingWire, points out what we've believed for a long time - that SaaS is about service as much as it is about software:
I wouldn't go so far as to say the rights enumerated by LiveOffice are overly innovative, but they do codify a focus on good customer service. This will be important for many decision makers as they evaluate SaaS-based services, a model in which we have seen substantial growth in customer interest over the past six months, driven in large part by economic pressures that are motivating decision makers to reduce costs wherever they can.
We know we have to continue to do a lot to live up to these rights, but they help us focus on what's important, so we are excited about them.