The Walking Dead and Software Pricing Models

Recently Dish Network continued carrying The Walking Dead and other hit AMC shows when the satellite broadcaster settled a lawsuit with Cablevision Systems Corp.

Diehard fans of the vastly popular and gory show are now able to catch the weekly slaughter if they are Dish Network customers.

As a big fan of the show I followed the story with a great deal of interest. If the show was not back on Dish Network, what were the options?

• Changing cable/dish provider
• Apple TV
• Netflix
• Wait for the DVD
• Watch it at a friend’s or relative’s house

As an aside, great zombie movies, books, or TV shows are not about the gore and the dead rising back to life. They are about the breakdown of society and what happens in its aftermath to characters that you have come to identify with and care about. This is particularly the case with The Walking Dead.

All of this got me to thinking about my monthly cable TV subscription bill in and software pricing in general.

With hundreds of cable and network stations to pick from why can’t I just pick the show or at worst case the channel that I want to watch as opposed to “packages” that lump in tons of content that I have no interest in? If I want HBO give me HBO, not HBO bundled in some premium channel package. Better yet, if I want to watch just Game of Thrones on HBO, charge me for that.

That frustration provided me with empathy for a new customer as we were wrestling with pricing options during a recent software sale. The usual endless emails and phone conversations finally resulted in just the right mix of users, user types, and a la carte functionality to insure that once the actual implementation started the licensing had no relationship with reality and we would have that uncomfortable conversation with the client as to why we guessed wrong.

Ironically we were working with a new and improved pricing model that is so easy that you can do it on the “back of a napkin”! Irony free observation: training on the new pricing model required a visit from a pricing specialist flown in from out of town with a large PowerPoint presentation.

Why can’t we charge users for what they use? Give them all the software functionality that you have in your ERP application and then monitor usage. I am sure it would be easy to write the monitoring capabilities into the software and create a monthly usage report and bill.

Think of all of the pricing problems this would eliminate:

• No more disconnect between sales and consulting on software sold versus required to a new customer
• No more requirement to buy a huge bundle of functionality because you need one little piece
• No more unused software sitting on the shelf

Think of the customer satisfaction. Now this would be a way of delivering software as a service!

Nice idea but I am going to stop thinking about software vendor pricing models and concentrate on the season three…the best so far.

Peter Joeckel is the President and Founder of TurnOnDynamics a Microsoft Dynamics GP (formerly Great Plains) and AX (formerly Axapta) partner primarily servicing the Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana and Arkansas (TOLA) area. While it serves a diverse customer base TurnOnDynamics does have specialized expertise in selecting and implementing advanced ERP solutions for manufacturing and software companies.

Additionally, TurnOnDynamics is an investment and advisory firm that focuses on the strategic concerns of executives and owners with unique Dynamic CFO Services.

by TurnOnDynamics

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