I’m a huge fan of Freshbooks so I was really pleased to see they’re providing data points for the value SaaS delivers to the SMB market:
Here are some highlights from the survey:
* Avg. # of hours you spent invoicing/month before FreshBooks: 8.05
* Avg. # of hours you spent invoicing/month using FreshBooks: 3.23Put another way, using FreshBooks, it takes less than half the time (60% less!) to do your invoicing each month.
* Avg. # of days it took to get paid before FreshBooks: 22
* Avg. # of days it takes to get paid using FreshBooks: 14That means the money you’re owed by your clients is in your bank account 8 days faster (39% faster on average). A few other stats:
* 61% of respondents collect more money using FreshBooks
* 43% of those respondents said they collect more than 15% more money using FreshBooks.
* 98% would refer – or have referred – FreshBooks to someone else.
These are the kinds of survey I like to read. They talk direct to customer experience and validate the offering. As an aside, Freshbooks will offer services for SMBs with 10 or more potential users with the release of version 3.7, due out 30th January. As this is a service, it will simply appear once FB have cranked out the new version.
This may sound like the craziest idea you’ve heard from me in a while but even though this is not a full accounting suite, how good might it be to encourage clients to use FB with you and see how it helps? there’s a free trial so if it doesn’t work, no foul.
You get the benefit of building your own network, (don’t think for one minute your client list represents a network. It doesn’t), clients get the benefit of easy billing and collection. It won’t work for all clients and is best suited to service businesses or those that are project based but since we’re told the UK is a service based economy…
Technorati Tags: client relationships, FreshBooks, SaaS
