Creating, developing and maintaining a software requires huge investment

Technology is in perpetual changing. Making the right technological choice is the biggest challenge for a software company.

To reduce the risk, we need to try different things and do refactorings several times a year to keep the software technologically up to date. Following technological changes requires learning time and personal investment.

Moreover, people want easier and easier user interface. They expect what the largest BtoC software providers in the world offer such as Apple, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat. Making an easy and intuitive user interface requires the best software designers, the best software developers, a lot of thinking and a lot of time to try, fail, try again, several times, to finally succeed.

Nowadays, web application software developers who master the most advanced technologies are rare. In order to attract them to our companies, we need to offer them very interesting projects. Working on an international scale is one of the main attractiveness factors.

Meeting the needs of an international range of customers enhances the quality of the product for every country

Enlarging the range of your potential customers gives access to more and more case studies and user stories. Satisfying the requirements of a wider range of customers naturally enhances the software features and makes the software more competitive.

The French market is not large enough to reach the right ROI

France counts 68 million inhabitants versus 325 million in the USA and 1.4 billion in China. In order to reach a similar market area we need to, at least, become a European player with access to 500 million customers.

Furthermore, when the company revenue comes only from BtoB activity, the potential client base is lower and the necessity to develop the business abroad is even more important. This is one of the reasons why it’s more difficult for a European company than an American one.

Having a better ROI helps to structure the company as a top player in terms of methodology, quality assurance and customer care

Every software company CEO dreams of having a quality assurance department which ensures bug-free software releases. Unfortunately, a lot of companies have to deal with economic and financial realities. Investment dedicated to Quality Assurance is often a percentage of software revenue, consequently, increasing the revenue by selling the software abroad is a means of increasing the Q&A budget.

Selling software in different countries requires an optimized rollout methodology to ensure that the software will be correctly set up, users will be trained in the best conditions and supported by people good enough to be considered experts.

Raising your customer care requirements becomes essential to avoiding non-quality costs. What would be manageable in the domestic market because the team can react faster and correct easier, could have a dramatic impact on an international scale.

Fortunately, from a technological standpoint, the SaaS model makes software rollouts easier worldwide

But the hardest part of the challenge to becoming an international software company is elsewhere. The CEO and management team will need to transform the company mindset involving a deep support for change, allowing everyone everywhere in the company to think globally.

Article by Gerald FERRARO, CEO Solware Group

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