Moving from Services to open-SaaS

How we are spending 500.000 euro to change our Drupal business.

Most Drupal shops offer the same services as we have been doing since 2008:

- Drupal development based on an hourly rate

Sometimes extra services in strategy, design, marketing and support are provided. But mostly all are based on hourly rates. This model were you sell services has issue you are probably familiar with:

• Overrun on hours, you don't get all hours paid you make
• Volatility in planning, sometimes it's super busy, other times slow
• Expectations of clients can't be met compared to platforms they use as Facebook or Google
• Team is stressed under all of the above

Recognisable? You are not alone. Many Drupal shops dream of moving out of services to another business model based on selling scalable (Saas) products.

In the Drupal community there are some examples of companies doing this right; Acquia, CommerceGuys, Pantheon etc. But how can you make this change? We are in the middle of this pivot at GoalGorilla and want to share our views and practical approach with you.

In this session we will discuss:

1. The (hidden) issues that cause the problems stated above
2. What it means to 'scale' your business
3. Discuss the differences between SaaS and open-SaaS (and what we should do with our Drupal 8 Social distro)
4. Talk more about (eternally) funding your project and how we raised 210.000 euro in crowdfunding (in 6 days)
5. Share the difficulties in (cultural) change in moving from a services to a product organization
6. Whether the future of Drupal and it's companies are in Services or Products

By the end of the session we hope you we gave you inspiration of changing your organization, built better Drupal platforms and gave you suggestions how to start making this change in your organisation!

More info at:

https://www.symbid.nl/ideas/7355-award-winning-social-software

https://www.drupal.org/project/social