Fueling Growth: Driving a SaaS-Based CSR Platform to the next level of Sales Growth 

Helping our retail software client define its GTM and product positioning for its SaaS-based employee-driven solution.

 

Our Client’s Problem
Our client – a startup in Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) space – was being told by its Seed Round investors to do due diligence on how other companies in this space are positioning their products, pricing their platforms, and what types of packages and premium features they are offering.

The key question that our client’s investors were asking was whether our client will have product market fit and what monetization strategy would help our client achieve its goal. Our startup client was failing to gain traction in the market based on the app they developed. 

 

Our Brief
Our client wanted us to look at how other vendors in the CSR domain priced their platforms. They wanted to know how these vendors position their product and what types of growth strategies do they have in place. Our client was eager to glean insights from the vendors’ missteps, turning those learnings into opportunities for refinement of their own strategy and innovation.

 

Our Method
At 4D, we are anchored by our four core values: Depth, Verifiability, Transparency, and Innovation. We believe these pillars are instrumental in driving our clients' success.

 

We enlisted four seasoned ex-executives from two top-tier CSR Technology vendors with expertise in both the private and government sectors. Each executive underwent two comprehensive interviews, each lasting between 90 to 120 minutes, to meet our client's specifications.
 

The key to our method, of course, is to verify everything and to be transparent with our clients. By bringing two consultants on-board per vendor and ensuring that the client has a say over who was brought on board while maintaining absolute client and consultant confidentiality was key to the success of this project.
 

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Client Outcomes
Based on our due diligence, we learnt that pricing by most CSR vendors is negotiated directly with potential clients. Rather than having a firm pricing structure or rate card in place, pricing is discussed with prospective clients on a case-by-case basis.

We also learned that CSR Vendors seem to be continually experimenting with different pricing models and tend to me more focused on enterprise clients with a large employee base. This lack of a uniform industry standard, coupled with the prevalent use of service and annual license fees on a tiered per-employee per-month basis indicated to us that our client had the opportunity to capture the small and mid-market segment with a transparent SaaS-based pricing model.

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Furthermore, our analysis revealed a notable gap in the market: a majority of existing vendors neither possess a robust product/platform nor demonstrate a clear product roadmap. This insight equipped our client with a major strategic advantage, offering them the potential to gain a substantial foothold in the market by addressing these unmet needs.

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