Launch date: Feb 29th
“Are we on track for beta on Feb 29th?” YES. This is the question that all of you wanted to ask. And then.
“Is the ‘Elements Process Knowledge’ application still going to be free?” YES.
So firstly, thank you for your patience and the wide ranging support and input. Delivering a functional, beautiful, scalable, enterprise cloud app using the latest technologies requires solid foundations. Really solid. It just takes time…and people. But we think it will be worth the wait.
Complete product
The Elements team, which is now up to 12, is focused on delivering a complete product. That means more than just the application, but also the supporting tools to power the ecosystem of customers, partners and practitioners; Partner Directory, Q&A Forum, Content Database and Project Exchange… and more in the pipeline.
The scope for the launch is set and we have a roadmap of future functionality that stretches off into the distance, but naturally we will be taking into account feedback from all of you once we have launched. As this is a cloud application we will be able to be responsive, adding new capabilities in regular controlled releases.
Market need is stronger than ever
Talking to industry analysts, potential partners and clients, it is very clear that the market for business process and performance management is as strong as ever – arguably stronger.
Fortune Magazine led in October 2015 with “Every aspect of your business is about to change”, arguing that we live in a new world in which labor, information, and money move easily, cheaply, and almost instantly. They ask “Is your company ready?”. Worth reading. Here is a link to the article.
Strong process capability and responsiveness have never been so critical. 21st century companies need to be laser focused on ever changing customer expectations and operationally lean to be successful. Lean as in “value adding to their customers”. Most companies will have to create value in new ways or lose out to those that do. Companies need a simple approach to capturing and collaborating on process knowledge so that they can rapidly design new ways of working and get the entire organisation to execute.
Even if you can make that step-change to the ‘new world’, a 21st century company needs to develop; consistently great customer experience; integration of customer-facing apps; and the back office, insightful metrics, and tools to support a culture of innovation and continuous improvement.
Freemium is the new normal
What has changed for customers in the new cloud world, is the expectation of hitting the ground running with fit for purpose, subscription based ‘software as a service’ – without big up-front implementation costs. The customers who can justify $20k, $50k or $250k in up-front license fees are becoming scarce. And for process projects, price has been a barrier to getting started in most companies until they experience the value. Hence our decision to offer the core capabilities for free. There should be no barrier for any company of any size to be able to get stuck into (or stay on) their journey towards operational excellence.
A huge number of customers will be able to deliver business transformation projects using the free Elements Process Knowledge capability. And that it a great result and it’s part of our overall objective. Many will benefit hugely from the paid-for “Professional” and “Governance” capabilities we will bring to market later this year. The more customers and partners get to use and benefit from the free capabilities, the more people connected in the ecosystem, the more knowledge, practices, services and success stories. The more value we collectively deliver, the better for everyone.
Excited.
We are in the home straight. It seems such a long time ago that we sat around a kitchen table and sketched out the vision for the company. There’s a ton of work to do over the coming years, but with the launch of the core foundation of Elements Process Knowledge, the Freemium model and the whole ecosystem, we will be a big step closer to our mission to “make work easier, faster and more valuable for millions of people.” We are looking forward to you getting on board and being part of this exciting journey.
