#136 - Is your SaaS product ready to be a platform? With David Burnand, CMO at Staffbase

From Adobe to Staffbase, David Burnand is the expert in SaaS product evolution.

On this episode, Jodi and David discuss when a SaaS product is ready to become a platform, if it ever will be, and how that evolution should be led by strategic marketing.

For our more junior listeners, we start the conversation by outlining what's the difference between a SaaS product and a SaaS platform. 

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- Clarity: the fast growing, global marketing communications agency working with leading technology brands.
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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:06

Hey everyone. Glad to have you back for another finite podcast episode. I'm Jody , community Manager at Finite. This episode speaks to a common yet undiscussed point that most B two B marketers will encounter in their careers. It happens when you get to a strong stage with your product and customers begin asking for you to solve more of their challenges. It's at this point when you decide is your product purely one SaaS tool, or should you expand it to be a multi-purpose platform embedded in the working ways of many business departments To explore this topic further today I'm talking to the amazing David Beand . Having led enterprise marketing at Adobe, David's career as a marketing leader, span some of the most successful tech platforms, including staff base where he is currently C M O . David knows all about this evolution, knowing where companies are ready to expand, how they should, and all the elements marketers need to consider on and after this journey. Right ? I hope that's enough buildup to make you as excited to hear from David as I am. Once you've listened to this episode, make sure you head to our website to check out our community. We even have an in-person meetup this Thursday in London with a panel discussion on navigating purpose-driven mixing in tech. In the meantime, I hope you enjoy this episode.

Speaker 2: 1:25

The finite community is supported by clarity, the fast-growing global marketing communications agency working with leading technology brands. We are living through an unprecedented era of change, driven by advancements in technology, technology that has the power to be an impetus for good and that will drive us towards a healthier, more prosperous, sustainable and equitable future. Clarity exists to tell the stories of these companies blending the science of data, with the art of storytelling to enact measurable with marketing and communications campaigns, and deliver results to the bottom line. Visit Clarity Global to find out more.

Speaker 1: 1:58

Hi David, welcome to the Finite podcast. Thank

Speaker 3: 2:01

You, I'm glad to be here.

Speaker 1: 2:02

It's a pleasure to have you. I'm really excited about our conversation today. We're talking about evolving Assess brand to become a platform, which I believe is something you have a lot of experience in having been CMOs at a few CES companies and including C M O at Staff Base . Now, what we always do on the podcast is introduce our guest by letting you explain a bit about your background, how you got here, what kind of road you've paved through marketing, and about your current role and team.

Speaker 3: 2:32

Sure. So yeah, I've been in B two B Tech for most of my career. My career started in Germany. I worked for Siemens back when Siemens had a communications business. So I , my career started out there, had a long stint with Siemens, a few different stints actually in different areas of the business, culminating in being part of the team that did the marketing transformations at their enterprise comms business and their IT services business, which was then ultimately sold to atos. I then went on to do a stint at atos and in fact was the leader for their London 2012 Olympic campaign. They were the IT partner, which was a lot of fun. Probably one of my , uh, one of my career highlights and uh, yeah, in 20 at time agency side as well with a B two B agency called Stein. And then in 2015 I moved into SaaS for the first time. I spent , uh, three and a half years with Adobe. So I went and I led the marketing for Northern Europe for their enterprise side of their business. So basically when Adobe was moving to start to sell digital marketing solutions, so not just the kind of the Photoshops and Creative Clouds, but actually what ultimately became Experience Cloud. Then went on from their two box and where I ran both the European marketing but also ran their global digital strategy. Then had a stint with Veeva Systems, the Life Sciences Cloud. Very niche, but very, very strong, absolute dominant player in life sciences SaaS. And then since six months now I've been the C M O at Staff base .

Speaker 1: 4:14

Cool. That sounds like a really exciting career so far. I can't believe you were involved in the Olympics and especially Adobe. It sounds like you had experience evolving their brand to become more of a enterprise platform even back then in 2015. So yeah, we're really lucky to have you on to talk about this subject just to give us a better idea of your role now. Sure . And staff base in general and your team, what you're working with, what you have in your artillery. Could you give us more information about your current role and team? Yeah,

Speaker 3: 4:48

Of course. So maybe just to, just to speak briefly about staff base . So Staff base is the world's leading employee communications platform. So I think what we do is we provide companies like Dominoes, Aldi , D H L , Samsung, with a single platform and channels to enable them to communicate with their employees. So basically to plan, to deliver and then to measure communications through different channels like an employee app and modern intranet , email, digital signage, those kind of things. So basically all the touch points that employees have with how they interact directly with their brand. And so staff base has been around for quite a few years now, since around 2014. So, but really starting to accelerate now is a dominant player in Germany. So we're headquartered in Germany. We're actually East Germany's only unicorn at this stage, but also increasingly growing in North America. Uh, we acquired a company called Banana Tag a couple of years ago and to add email into our portfolio. And so now it's really about evolving that whole thing and leveraging what is a fantastic customer base in North America and helping to expand what we offer into that market, but then also continuing to build the business in Europe as well. In terms of my team, I have a team of around 60, so, and , uh, really spread between Germany, north America and the uk and really covering the full marketing mix. So everything from , uh, product marketing through to campaigns, digital demand , uh, customer marketing, communications, I've doubtless forgotten something <laugh> . But yeah, so really kind of end to end really everything from the center right down to the field and the events and , uh, all of our, all of our , um, customer engagement. And we're pretty heavily involved in the business. Like we're not really siloed from the rest of the business in any , any way, shape or form. Brand is very important to us to what we do. So we really put that development of an interesting brand at the heart of all of our work, and it really touches in many different areas. So we'll work very closely with the product team, for example. We also work very closely with customer success, really trying to craft a really strong customer experience through all of our touchpoints, not just the ones that that marketing directly , uh, deliver. So,

Speaker 1: 7:23

Cool. Well, thank you for explaining that. I think that that kind of gives us a bit more context into the topic and where you're coming from. So I think to start, let's define, let's put some very rigid definitions on what you mean by assess tool versus a platform.

Speaker 3: 7:43

I think this is something I've seen through the last eight years of working in SaaS and you , it's really interesting. I talk, not obviously have the brands that I've worked , uh, for and with, but also talking to a lot of other organizations as well. And you really see two different types of SaaS company and two different types of SaaS products. So one is the kind of SaaS that comes from the starting point is we want to be very good in a very simple way of, in solving a relatively simple problem. And so that's what I would class as the kind of the tool or the app led organizations. And then you have the other organizations at the other end of the , of the spectrum, which are the ones that have kind of evolved over time into platform. So they recognize pretty early doors. Actually the problem that we're trying to solve is maybe not as simple as we thought it was. You know, they're , and or , or they'll build a customer base and the customers will go, this is great, but could you also do x? We really like you, we know that you understand what we do. Could you also help us to solve this adjacent problem? And so then they'll start evolving their offering either by , um, kind of organic growth. So they'll develop additional tools or apps or maybe they'll acquire some, some businesses to kind of start to build out their offering. Over time though, what you'll see is that that will have , will reach a point at which in the case of some companies, if you think about the really great, what I would class as the really great platform companies in SaaS, Adobe, Salesforce, Workday, probably SS a P back in the day, maybe less so these days, ServiceNow, what they recognize is , okay, we can have a broad offering here. And actually the links between the different areas that we cover unlock a different level of value. So for example, at Adobe, you know, Adobe started that what is now with the Adobe experience cloud. That started as a few different applications that they bought. So they bought, acquired a few companies and they had an offering in , uh, email. So they started to do email marketing. They bought a web content management offering and they bought an analytics offering. Then over time, that evolved because they started to realize actually there's huge value here. If we can connect all of these things together, if as a marketer I can understand the impact of everything that's happening across all my touchpoints and not just each touchpoint in a silo, then actually that unlocks a whole new level of what I can do in terms of the complexity of campaigns. I can run my understanding of the insights of how customers are engaging because I'm not trying to join the dots. The dots are joined for me and I can spend less time worrying about how those things connect and more time thinking about the kind of the more creative things, the strategic campaigns that I want to run, trying to gather customer insights and understand how people are engaging with things. So that was when, you know, for me, that's the moment at which you shift from tools or apps to a platform. Workday have done the same thing in the HR space where they've started to kind of join the dots and staff base . Obviously we're trying to do the same thing now for employee communications, where we realized that actually originally what you would see is you people would, internal communicators would have an intranet and then they would send some email maybe using kind of like some Gmail or Outlook or whatever, and it would be okay, but actually what they never really understood was what's the impact of the overall strategy that I'm trying to drive here. So let's say you were driving a change program, you know, and you were about to relocate some sites, or you're about to merge some entities. How do you know it's fine to send out an email or it's fine to update your intranet or for your c e O to make a video, but how do you actually know if you're moving hearts and minds? How do you understand if you're shifting sentiment? And I think what we see now is that actually by evolving in our space into a platform, we really start to understand, okay, what's the sentiment? What's the mindset of employees in different areas, in different teams, in different locations? And that helps organizations to unlock a lot of value because in the same way as Adobe would do it with customers or Salesforce would do it within customers, we can try and do it now with employees. So that's what we are driving towards. But that's what I, that's what I think about when I think about the difference between a single app and a platform.

Speaker 1: 12:32

Well, thank you for such an intricate definition. I think our listeners will really understand that journey and how it is a natural evolution. I like how you started with challenges and how it's about realizing that not only do your audience have more challenges, but you can solve those as well. The finite podcast wouldn't be possible without the support of disclaimer, the leading email signature solution. On average, each of your colleagues sends around 40 external emails every day. Take charge of this opportunity to promote your products, events, campaigns, and content, and grow your business by embedding consistent branded messages into each one. Visit disclaimer.com for more information. So let's picture, you've just realized you've got the capacity to build out your tool into a platform, and as a marketer you're thinking there's acquisitions we can do, there's more development. How do we, you said there was more complexity with, or less complexity, but more campaigns. How do you think marketers should embrace this journey and start embarking on the process?

Speaker 3: 13:46

I think the first thing is understanding, do we have the capacity to be a platform? You know, is, is what we're trying to solve sufficiently complex that it has business value? You know , so it starts with that level of insight into your customers. I had , uh, A C M O , uh, that I used to work for, and she would often say, well , we would look at different SaaS applications in the market. And she would go, that's never gonna be a platform. That's always an app. And she was oftentimes right, you know, because it would be like, this is solving a very specific solid problem and it's very good at that, but it's vulnerable because actually , uh, you know, it , it could easily be replaced because effect effectively, she'd be like, that's a feature. You know, that's not a platform. So actually you have to understand actually is the problem that I'm solving complex enough to be a platform or actually am I building a effectively a feature that ultimately will be acquired by somebody else and put into their platform? So I think that's the the starting point because otherwise, if you are not solving a problem that's complex enough, then actually people won't pay for it. There's not enough business value in it for people to pay for it. So , um, so I think though starting with insights is really important, but I think then once you've made that decision and actually gone , you know, this is where we want to be as an organization, this is the the shift that we want to make. I think that it really starts with understanding, okay, if what we're doing is shifting into that platform space, then what does that mean in terms of different elements of my marketing mix? So to start with like , who is it that I'm targeting? So if you think about when you're working at the app or the tool level, typically those kind of applications will be sold to a specific person. It might be an individual contributor or it might be a line manager, but it'll be in a specific line of business. It won't be crossing, you know, the impact is in a very specific space. It won't cross multiple spaces . So that's a much simpler sell because potentially people will literally just pay for that application with credit card and expense even, you know, or they don't have to worry about how does this integrate into the broader IT stack or have I got security implications, you know, and all of those kind of things. But as you become a platform, then you have to realize, okay, the value that I'm, that I'm trying to position here goes beyond the budget of that individual potentially, but also I have to think about the business impact that I'm trying to create. And that's not going to land with that one person because actually they're not interested in the rest of the problem that I want to solve here. They're still interested in their lane. So it's like, actually, do I then have to climb up an organization or do I have to go across an organization or do I have to do both? So, you know, in the case of those digital experience platforms, I think what a number of the vendors found was actually, whereas in the past they were speaking to specific marketers, you know, so the person in charge of email campaigns or the person in charge of analytics, all of a sudden they were speak having to speak to multiple audiences and the layer above. And then the next thing they realized was actually no, this isn't enough anymore because the amount of data that we are now dealing with means that this has security implications. You know, I have to bring the c i o along with me, you know , this strategic importance of what we're delivering actually has a massive impact on the broader business. So actually this isn't just a topic for them, you know , this then becomes strategic for their whole business. You know, if your website is your main platform for trading with customers, you know, if you're evolving into a , a direct to consumer brand for example, then actually the website becomes corti your offering. So those digital experience platforms like Adobe, like Salesforce, they then suddenly become okay, they become really integral and really strategic. And so it's important that you're not just known , uh, within the individual C-level spheres, but maybe also at c e O level. So things start to change over time and you have to think about how am I gonna do that? How do I structure that targeting? But then I think the next thing is, okay, well if I'm gonna go after different audiences, then I have to have messaging that actually hits home with those audiences. You know, it's um, you can't just be in a situation where I take the message, for example, for us at the moment, you know, we are heavily involved our main audiences communications, so internal communicators, corporate communicators, and I think our brand is very well honed for that audience. It resonates well with them . But if we're also having to talk to the C I O , then we have to make sure that our pitch is on. Like we have a version of our pitch, our message, our website, you know, pages on our website and so on and so forth, that actually also speak to that audience so that we're not alienating them and they feel like that their concerns are being addressed as well, and that they understand the value from their perspective and not just, you know, they're not having to kind of translate in their own heads and think, okay, well, you know, that's fine for, for the chief comms officer, but what does that actually mean for me? So I think moving that message is really important. And then I think just in terms of what that then ultimately means in terms of taking a message out to market, well , you have to get smarter. Your budgets don't grow infinitely just because you realize I've got another audience. So then it's like, well, how do I make sure that I'm able to cost effectively and efficiently target each of the audiences? And that's where, you know, marketing especially B two B marketing has evolved massively in the last five years. And that our ability now to target at segment, at persona level is really evolved , um, thanks to platforms like six ends where actually we can start for the first time to really start to understand how we reach those audiences, but then also how we capture demand from those audiences in a very different way to how we've done traditionally.

Speaker 1: 20:00

Awesome. It sounds like you kind of have to take a step back to move forward and redefine your target audience. And it gets more complex, doesn't it? There's more segmentation involved. Very much so. And I, I think the, the resourcing and budget conversation is also very interesting. We could probably go into that a little bit later, but I wanna draw attention to the kind of wider brand side. If you've got all these new messagings, all of these new campaigns, new audiences, potentially new acquired companies, how do you think about your overall branding and positioning and how to retain that core of the business while expanding?

Speaker 3: 20:38

Yeah, it's, it's definitely tough and you do have to place your betts to a degree. And as I say, for , uh, for us, for staff base , we think about, well, we always, you know, at the heart of everything we do is communications and how do we reach those communicators and inspire those communicators to kind of go into their trenches and run the employee comms for their companies every single day. But , uh, I think, as I said before, one of the things that you, you can do is you can get much more effective now in terms of segmenting audiences. 'cause we have the tech that enables us to do that. But also in terms of branding, I think it's then about understanding, okay, where are those other audiences? Like where do they show up? We did Gartner Digital Workplace recently in San Diego, and it's the first time we've done something like that with such a hard focus on the, on the c I o and uh , heads of Digital Workplace. And we did it because we realized actually we have to bring that IT audience with us. So where do they go? They go to Gartner Fine. So if they go to Gartner, then that's, we, we can't rely on people to come to us. We have to show up where they are as well. So it's, it's just about thinking through, okay, now I understand who those audiences are, where do they go, how can I engage with them? How could I add value to them in a way that actually makes them more open to talking to us, to looking at, at us and, and our brand? It's , um, and I think you learn as you go, you know, you have to test things. You're not gonna be, one thing that you've realize is you may know your own, your audience very, very well, but that doesn't necessarily mean that you know those adjacent audiences. So you have to just keep testing, keep learning, and, and try new things.

Speaker 1: 22:26

Awesome. So you've mentioned events. I know that you have also a really big community. Yes. How does that come into play when you're expanding?

Speaker 3: 22:37

I think that is, for me, that's one of the most important things that sets aside the great SaaS platforms from everybody else. Now, it's actually a huge part of what makes a SaaS platform valuable, is the ecosystem. You want to bring people together in a community so that they can learn from one another and so that they can find new ways of solving their problems. Because many of them will have common problems. They might be in very different businesses. Now , Domino's is in some ways very different to D H L in other ways. It's very similar, right? Both ultimately about getting goods to people, you know, one's pizza and the other one is the packages that we, that we all buy So voraciously online every day . But, you know, fundamentally it's about making sure that if, if I say that you are getting your goods at this time, then you're getting your goods at that time. And that actually the frontline workers that deliver that experience, that that actually, that they really understand your brand and they really understand what you're about and they want to deliver a great service because they feel inspired to work for Domino's, for D H L or Samsung for Sephora, you know, whoever it is. So bringing people together so that they can actually understand how to, you know, how to engage with their customers in a better way and how they can, you know, drive change through their employees in order to do that. I think that is really, that's at the heart of any great SaaS ecosystem. And if you look at what Salesforce obviously do with things like Dreamforce, where they bring together, you know , 30,000, 40,000, 50,000 people depending on where they're doing , where they're running these things, they're a great example of that, that connectivity. And I think that, so I think that community is really at the heart of everything. And for us, it's, it's about the communicators. And we recently ran our Voices conference in Berlin, and that really is about German speaking communicators. So German language communicators. So really it's predominantly German brands, but there were 2000 people there and they just spent two days learning from one another, you know, and, and listening to case studies from one another and watching things from us where we'd show them , okay, this is, this is how you get the best from the technology. All of this is what delivers value for me. Because actually it becomes more of the , it's not just about the software anymore, it's also about how I can deliver my job, how I can deliver value so much better that as a result of being part of that ecosystem. And so we like to give people platforms to do that, whether that's the Events, voices, comms Club in our case, or whether it's our online communities. So I mean, we have one community Slack community, which has 30,000 members. In the meantime it's just internal communicators and they just talk to each other about their problems and how they're solving those problems, you know, and it's just like, it's not directly part of our software, but having that ecosystem, I think delivers them value, which is ultimately what we're about. And I think is what any SaaS leader ultimately wants to be about. It's about how do you help your customers solve their problems. So

Speaker 1: 25:56

Definitely, and I think that's so important in B two B when roles are so specialized and these challenges can be so niche. Yeah . It's so important to have peer led communities. 'cause brands aren't , sometimes can't keep up and No , that's right . It's , it comes back to you being and your brand being challenge driven and meeting those challenges however they can. And whether that be connecting them with others. Yeah. That's the way

Speaker 3: 26:20

It , it definitely is. And it can become a real virtuous circle. Veeva systems are unbelievable at that, that , you know, the whole life sciences community basically runs on Veeva Software and you know, a huge part of the value that they offer is they bring together that life sciences community. So if you go to a Viva summit, effectively that is like 2000 life sciences professionals all in their very specific niches because life sciences is obviously extremely specialized and you know, so they will go, there'll be 2000 people there that they'll be interested in meeting 30 people, but they'll be the 30 people who'd have the exact same challenges as them. And it becomes this virtuous circle whereby they talk about problems the vendor picks up on those problems, delivers better software to , you know, as well. So it becomes this great thing whereby they will help each other solve problems. And if you are a , a good platform provider, you learn as well, okay, well actually there's an opportunity there for us to help these customers even more. If we were to do X, Y, or Z, then we can do, then we can deliver much, much more value. So , um, yeah, extremely powerful community as part of any SaaS brand. So,

Speaker 1: 27:31

Awesome. I'm loving these examples. It really brings to life the, the points and the , the theories that you're making. We're coming to the end of the episode, unfortunately, it's absolutely blown by it has <laugh> . Yeah. Wonder for a final question. Looking forward, once you've established this platform, you've got all your campaigns in place, you've defined your news target audiences, what do marketers need to think about then?

Speaker 3: 27:57

Ooh , that's an interesting one. So I think firstly, it never stands still. So, you know, a , a SaaS company that is standing still is actually a SaaS company that's going backwards. So yeah , I think there will always be new challenges to solve. And I think as well as marketing leaders, we also have to be honest and say that not everybody in our marketing teams is gonna enjoy every part of that ride . Right? You know, not everyone's gonna feel inspired. Now , if you are , if you've come from that tool background and you are really deep in your tool, it's a big shift to suddenly be thrown If you're, if you're part of an acquihire , it's only a big thing to be part of, of something much bigger. And some people will love it and they'll thrive on it and other people will go, actually it's not for me. I'll go, you know, back into startup world or whatever it is and, you know, and, and maybe do this adventure again with, with some other company. Totally fine. You know, we all have our different ways, but I think the challenge for marketers ultimately , uh, once they get to that platform space is then continuing to bring new innovation, to bring new excitement. Because you know, that's both the beauty and the challenge of sas, right? Companies sign on every single year to use your solution. And on the one hand, it's a revenue stream that should theoretically be pretty secure if you do a great job. But at the same time, if you are not the one continuing to innovate and to really show customers how you are delivering value, then you are vulnerable. So I think always being alert and always trying to keep things really , really fresh for customers in how you communicate with them , in how you deliver value on an ongoing basis and giving them fresh ideas for how they get the most value from software. Those are the things that ultimately once you are in that platform space, they're the things that will keep you in that leadership slot.

Speaker 1: 29:48

Awesome. And you bring up so many points that I would love to ask further about, but we'll have to save it for another episode. Thank you so much, David, for coming on . Thanks for having on the finite podcast. It's been a pleasure.

Speaker 3: 29:59

I've enjoyed it. Thanks very much.

Speaker 4: 30:01

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