Five on Friday: Business Plans, Bike Subscriptions & Subscription Apps

Featuring LinkedIn, Inc., Business 2 Community, Hubspot and Computerworld

Five on Friday: Business Plans

Source: Bigstock

TGIF. We’ve made it, and the weekend is just around the corner. To help ease you into the weekend, check out this week’s Five on Friday, sharable information and advice to grow your subscription business.

In this week’s edition, Insight founder Justin Bariso shares advice from LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner on the value of negative feedback, Business 2 Community details the pros and cons of subscription-based apps, Computerworld reviews four SaaS business plan apps, Swapfiets launches a bicycle subscription, and Hubspot offers 10 alternate email signoffs to make a bigger impact.

 

 

Advice from LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner: Negative Feedback is a Gift

In a July 7 column for Inc., Insight founder Justin Bariso shares some simple but profound advice from LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner on criticism.

 Bike Subscriptions & Subscription Apps

Source: LinkedIn

None of us enjoys hearing negative feedback or criticism, even when it is constructive and well-intentioned. However, if we see the information as an opportunity to learn something about ourselves, we can turn what feels like a negative into a positive.

Bariso says, “Most criticism is rooted in truth, meaning there’s something you can take away from it, some insight you can use to improve yourself.”

He says that, by looking at negative feedback with a new lens, we can:

  • Confirm the validity of our ideas and prepare ourselves for similar feedback
  • Craft a better message that addresses the criticism
  • Better define our target audience
  • Make necessary changes

For more advice on negative feedback, read Bariso’s article on Inc.

Business 2 Community: Pros and Cons of Subscription-Based Apps

Five on Friday: Business Plans

Source: Bigstock

Last week Megan Marrs wrote a great article called “Subscription-Based Apps: Pros, Cons, and How to Make the Big Bucks” for Business 2 Community. Marrs explains the reasons for – and against – using the subscription model for apps. Here are a few article highlights:

Pros

  • To entice developers to put their apps in the App Store, last year, Apple reduced its standard 70/30 split to 85/15 after the first year of a subscription. This essentially rewards developers for retention.
  • Marrs quotes a VisionMobile study that showed subscription-based apps earned two to three times more per user than apps that relied on an ad-supported model or that charged a one-time fee at the time of download. Also, subscription-based apps earning almost 50 percent more than apps relying on revenue from in-app purchases.
  • A steady flow of recurring revenue makes it easier for companies to maintain their products and add features down the road.
  • Subscription-based apps have some additional opportunities to reduce churn. For example, when canceling a Hulu subscription, Hulu can offer its canceling subscriber a discount to stick with the service for a little longer.
  • Subscription-based apps have more engaged audiences, says Marrs, because users want to get their money’s worth.

Cons

  • Developers can’t rest on their laurels once the app is created. They need to regularly add new features and content to keep subscribers engaged.
  • Onboarding and free trials need some testing and adjusting to ensure they are doing a good job of retaining subscribers once they’ve signed up.
  • A good app should have good support or subscribers won’t stick around.
  • If you’re going from a different model to a subscription one, existing customers may get upset. For example, Microsoft used to sell software via one-time licenses. Many of its products, like Office 365, are available via subscription. While this has its advantages, those who preferred the one-time cost may not have liked that they were tied forever (seemingly anyway) to Microsoft products.

Read more pros and cons on subscription-based apps in the original article here.

Computerworld Review of Four SaaS Business Planning Tools

Whether you are a small business of 10 or an enterprise user, business planning and productivity are important to your success. There are thousands of tools and apps available to help, but deciphering and testing them can be a bit daunting. In a recent article, Alyson Behr reviewed four SaaS business-planning tools for Computerworld.

 Bike Subscriptions & Subscription Apps

Source: Bigstock

For this article, Behr looked at business planning as a product marketing executive who needed to manage the costs of developing, launching and marketing a new product or service. She was looking for a product that could develop revenue goals with metrics, formulate financial reports, give access to a network of users, and create marketing strategies, pitches and plans. She also noted whether the SaaS tool could integrate with popular tools like Microsoft products and Quickbooks.

The four tools she reviewed were Bizplan, Enloop, LivePlan and StratPad Cloud. Here is a brief summary of each. Read Behr’s full review here.

Bizplan is a step-by-step tool that helps businesses create a business plan in modular sections. The Guided Creator includes drag-and-drop templates, visual layouts and a progress tracker so you know your status throughout the creation of your business plan. It also offers a financial command center with an easy-to-use dashboard, team collaboration and access, online sharing, and integration with Quickbooks, Xero and other Startups.co products. Available via subscription, Bizplan ranges in price from $9.50/month to $49/month, billed annually.

Enloop, a free online business plan builder, starts out with a free plan, and graduates to basic, advanced and professional plans, each with additional features. With AutoWrite™, users can create an editable business plan. Enloop also offers automated financial forecasts, charts, a performance score, report card, multi-currency support, PDF document creation, ratio analysis and, and online sharing. The basic through professional plans range from $6 a month to $39.95 a month with discounts for those who pay annually.

LivePlan is designed by entrepreneurs who want to focus on running their business, not creating fancy business plans or crunching numbers. It comes with 500 business plan templates from different industries, and users can create one-sheets for quick pitching and more elaborate documents for investors. It integrates with Quickbooks and Xero, and can move from the planning stage into goal setting and progress measuring.  Annual packages are $11.66 per month, billed annually, or $19.95 if billed monthly.

StratPadCloud is cloud-based business planning software for professional advisors and business owners who are serious about planning. It goes beyond business planning with robust reports and helping business owners move into project planning, goal setting and implementation. It doesn’t integrate with Excel, however, which means extra data entry for users. It also offers free and paid versions, with the paid plans starting at $19.99/month when billed annually up to $49.99/month when paid monthly.

Behr provides a detailed analysis and letter-grade assessment for each tool, along with a bottom line paragraph outlining her overall view of each product. Enloop and LivePlan were her top two picks. Read her complete analysis here.

SwapFiets’ Bike Subscription Service – Always a Working Bicycle!

In a new twist on the car subscription, a new Netherlands bicycle subscription service – Swapfiets – provides subscribers with a bike, a lock, insurance and support for €15 a month, about $17 U.S., reports PSFK. Damaged or stolen bikes are replaced within 12 hours. Swapfiets’ bikes set themselves apart with a bright blue front tire.

The company was originally started by three students late last year with a small fleet of 30 bikes. The service has grown into nine different Netherlands cities and more than 5,000 bicycles. Their slogan – always a working bicycle!

Check out this cool introductory video about Swapfiets.