In this episode, we'll steer our trusty steeds through the rugged terrain of tech pricing, uncovering the factors that lead to cost fluctuations. We'll take the reins of change management and explore how it can expertly navigate these price shifts.
But hold onto your saddles, because the real game-changer in this equine adventure is communication and transparency for all parties. We'll gallop headfirst into the critical decision-making process of either absorbing tech expenses or passing them on to clients. Amy and Jack will be your trail guides as they trot through the opportunity costs of manual processes versus tech solutions. We'll also ponder the ethical implications of leaving clients hitched to a specific platform.
So get ready for a thought-provoking journey through the world of tech pricing, where communication and transparency reign supreme. It's a ride that's bound to redefine your understanding of costs and investments. So, saddle up, folks, and let's decode the mysteries together!
CHECK US OUT ALL IN Advisory | Chartered accountants, business advisors & transactional experts Illumin8 | Purpose-led cloud-driven accounting humans Clarity Street | Bringing clarity, time & ease to your practice. Your accounting systems, people and processes working together. Simply. Seamlessly. Early Adopters Hub | Bringing together innovative accounting tech startups with the most forward-thinking accountants in the world - Where the Future of AccounTech is Made.
AAAAA IS PROUDLY BROUGHT TO YOU BY OUR SPONSORS My Prosperity |Easily collaborate with your clients. Di
CHECK US OUT ALL IN Advisory | Your squad of award-winning accountants, tax wizards & biz visionaries, perfectly tailored to elevate your biz. Let's soar together! Illumin8 | Purpose-led cloud-driven accounting humans Clarity Street | Bringing clarity, time & ease to your practice. Your accounting systems, people and processes working together. Simply. Seamlessly. Mayday | Revolutionise your finance teams multi-entity month end through real-time accounting
In this episode, we'll steer our trusty steeds through the rugged terrain of tech pricing, uncovering the factors that lead to cost fluctuations. We'll take the reins of change management and explore how it can expertly navigate these price shifts.
But hold onto your saddles, because the real game-changer in this equine adventure is communication and transparency for all parties. We'll gallop headfirst into the critical decision-making process of either absorbing tech expenses or passing them on to clients. Amy and Jack will be your trail guides as they trot through the opportunity costs of manual processes versus tech solutions. We'll also ponder the ethical implications of leaving clients hitched to a specific platform.
So get ready for a thought-provoking journey through the world of tech pricing, where communication and transparency reign supreme. It's a ride that's bound to redefine your understanding of costs and investments. So, saddle up, folks, and let's decode the mysteries together!
CHECK US OUT ALL IN Advisory | Chartered accountants, business advisors & transactional experts Illumin8 | Purpose-led cloud-driven accounting humans Clarity Street | Bringing clarity, time & ease to your practice. Your accounting systems, people and processes working together. Simply. Seamlessly. Early Adopters Hub | Bringing together innovative accounting tech startups with the most forward-thinking accountants in the world - Where the Future of AccounTech is Made.
AAAAA IS PROUDLY BROUGHT TO YOU BY OUR SPONSORS My Prosperity |Easily collaborate with your clients. Di
CHECK US OUT ALL IN Advisory | Your squad of award-winning accountants, tax wizards & biz visionaries, perfectly tailored to elevate your biz. Let's soar together! Illumin8 | Purpose-led cloud-driven accounting humans Clarity Street | Bringing clarity, time & ease to your practice. Your accounting systems, people and processes working together. Simply. Seamlessly. Mayday | Revolutionise your finance teams multi-entity month end through real-time accounting
Amazing, excited, very Interested in the conversation we're gonna have today and and I'm excited for my fun fact- Go for it, shoot. Did you know that Lipizania stallions I've pronounced that correctly Lipizania stallions are known for their elegant and precise movements in classical dressage performances, the embodiment of grace and harmony. You could say and and how is that relevant to our episode?
Speaker 2:
Well, where is this going, jack Pricing?
Speaker 1:
Pricing, tech pricing especially, shares that delicate artistry of horse ballet, the careful balance between value and cost. How did that? How's that?
Speaker 2:
Oh, it was a wonderful intro. I loved it and it's a very good point because that does obviously tie nicely into today's episode on the all Aussie County Adventures Tech Edition. So to everyone, welcome to the grand tech arena where pricing models waltz like horses in a ballet. Hold tight to your reins, just as accountants hold their wallets tight when it comes to price hikes. Oh, I love this topic, jack. Pricing of tech or pricing in general for this industry. I love it. I love it.
Speaker 1:
I know it's good and juicy one, especially topical right now, I think, depending on when you're listening to this. But as of a few weeks ago, dext came out with their latest price increases, which I think are Not the first time they've brought price increases. Obviously, we all expect a price increase from time to time, but I think this one is of particular bother to a lot of people in the industry. I think part of that is just a lack of Transparency and proper communication around the increases and and fair enough, I think that's that's not. Not pricing everybody the same is a massive mistake In a community based industry where people talk to one another and getting a special deal is, you know, kind of hidden and put to the side and you know one person around the corner is paying twice as much as somebody else.
Speaker 1:
It just doesn't feel right. It doesn't feel like tech should be priced that way. It's not not, not anymore. At least I understand that. Maybe that's how things used to get done, but I don't know. I feels a little bit icky to me if I'm understanding that correctly. But at the same time I've spoken to people like, look, I was expecting a price increase. It's one of the best tools that we have in our stack and it wasn't costing us a lot of money. So I think there's there's components here that might be like look, maybe they they earned or deserve to increase their price, but just the way it was done Hasn't been the best yeah, I think transparency is a huge one, like I'm.
Speaker 2:
I could also draw a correlation here to the price of zero ledges, which the advertised price of a zero ledger is one thing, but dependent on the number of ledgers that you are potentially bringing across. If you haven't changed from server-based and you're moving to cloud, that might dictate an alternative price.
Speaker 1:
Just say Well, I think there should be discounts for economies of scale.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, I agree with that.
Speaker 1:
I understand that the bigger the firm or the more clients you have, or something like that, that there's probably going to be a discount at an X number of units, and I think that's fine so long as one firm with 100 staff and 5,000 clients has the same price as the one around the corner who has 100 staff and 5,000 clients.
Speaker 2:
Otherwise, things start to get a little bit muddy, yeah but I think you're right when it comes down to this, like it is all about transparency and it's also about communication and the way that the changes are actually communicated to the industry, I think there's a lot to be said, for I mean, at the end of the day, it's change management. Realistically right, it's a component of change management. So how you handle change is all dependent on how well it's adopted. And if you are transparent and clear and concise with your communication on multiple platforms at multiple times about said change, then whilst people may not necessarily like it, they'll at least accept it a lot better because they've had that clear and concise communication and the company's been transparent around it.
Speaker 1:
And I think a big challenge with DEX is that it's a client-facing tool a lot of the time, and so for a lot of firms there's that juggle of am I supposed to wear this cost or am I on charging this to my client? If I'm on charging it to my client already, well then the fact that they've increased the prices is just a matter for my client to decide whether or not they wanna keep paying for it. When I'm wearing it and you've given me very little notice it's now chewing into my margins until I can figure out a way to change my prices or my packages or whatever it is. So I mean, maybe that's a good, just discussion to have is should firms be bearing the cost of the software that they have on board for their clients?
Speaker 2:
So I think it is an interesting one. Should they be bearing the cost, or should they be on charging it, or do they package it in for their clients? I'm quite a fan of just packaging it all up into one realm, if that makes sense. So for the likes of Ledger's DEX, that kind of thing at the end of the day, you can be completely transparent to your clients and show them the exact cost of the software to run your business, but then that obviously changes the discussion around value-based pricing as well. If you are completely transparent around the cost of software, I think there are pros and cons of both. It does allow you. If you are on charging it to your client and you clearly delineate that that's the cost of your DEX subscription or your zero subscription, as in when there is a price rise well then it's quite easy for you to say well, it's not me doing it, it's the company doing it. So you can very much remove any form of responsibility from that perspective. Having said that, though, if you just say that this is your monthly package and this is what's included, and it just happens to cover the cost of your subscriptions, then that's also an easier way for you to understand what your margins are, but also an easier way for you to obviously up your prices when the time is right, as well Depends. I think there's justification for both.
Speaker 2:
I don't necessarily agree one way or the other. I think it comes down to the personal preference of the firm. I think the bigger thing here is how you're obviously managing that internally from a reporting perspective. And whichever way you choose to go, do it across the board. Don't have half your clients where you're quite transparent about the cost and you're on charging the cost to the client, and then the other half you just bundling it into their monthly fee. It just gets. That's just a minefield for your admin team to manage and take care of, basically. So just pick one way.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, no, no, I agree, and I mean it's a challenge. But I think also, given we are the tech edition of the podcast, we might leave it for Ali and Andrew at some point to have that conversation to a greater degree, unless they've already had it. But maybe we can focus our attention on a little bit more of the behind the scenes, bringing this back to our kind of tech focus and saying, well, maybe we can give you guys, our listeners, a little bit of insight into what's going on behind the scenes and what drives these price increases, and how do startups figure out what their pricing should be and why sometimes that's annoying and frustrating, and what they're trying to do with that pricing and how sometimes they completely miss the mark. Or and I mean maybe that'll just help with respect to how you make a buying decision and whether or not that price increase can be understood from a different angle rather than it just being purely like damn, I got to pay more money. So I mean, is there anywhere in particular you think we should start this conversation, Amy?
Speaker 2:
Well, I was actually going to throw to you on that one, jack, just because you deal with a lot of startups, you deal with a lot of tech businesses that are in their earlier years, and I think there's a lot that goes into how you price tech. I mean, how do you price a piece of software to begin with? I know, for example, we have a service at Clarity Street which is our campus subscription, which is a platform that has self-paced online learning. It has your processes, your procedures. This was not a shameless plug.
Speaker 2:
I promise there was a point to this, but the reason why I'm saying it is because when we first built it, we spent so much time, effort and actual dollars developing all of that coursework, developing all of that content. So when we first created it, the value to us was much higher than what we possibly could have sold it to. Because, all of a sudden, you've got this emotional attachment to it. You've got your time, you've got your blood, sweat and tears into it. You've got the amount of time that your team have spent, obviously, developing those products. So, versus now that we've actually got the product and we've been using it and successfully, we've got a number of clients using the product, the value proposition to us, in so far as the emotional capacity it's greatly diminished and it's a tool that I'm like great.
Speaker 2:
This is a very functional tool, it's a very helpful tool for the industry, but the costs that I would have put initially on the price point versus now, I'm like, yeah, okay, it's different, it's completely different. So I think you speak to a lot of firms in relation a lot of businesses sorry, not firms, but a lot of businesses, tech businesses, especially in those earlier years. So how do you help them price? Because pricing is like I know, for our product, just so you know, we've gone through at least half a dozen iterations of the pricing and I still don't necessarily think I've nailed it, just as a side note, but it's probably going to have another one.
Speaker 1:
And I think that's probably a good call out and that's part of the reason why you do see price changes and price increases and whatever else, because the reality of getting it right with your first go is well, the reality is you're not going to Because there's so much around pricing that's complex, and I think that's why communication and transparency is just you've got to hammer that home. You've got to be transparent as a tech company with your pricing to say, hey, this might change or this, you know, this is what it is today. This is not necessarily guaranteed for life, like I think we know that subconsciously, but at the same time, if it's not communicated regularly, then it can be frustrating. So, number one, it's a very difficult job for any early stage startup, especially to price, I think the bigger you get, the more users. You've got the size of decks, like they've got enough people in house now financial people, modeling wizards that would know exactly what their prices need to be to generate certain customer behavior bits and pieces like that. So I think at that stage they know what they're doing and there's probably good reason behind it. They might have a decision to be made with like look, if we increase our prices by 50%. We forecast we're only going to lose 10% of our customers, so it's worth doing because the numbers add up At that size. It's about that kind of decision making, but for an early stage startup.
Speaker 1:
I just kind of explained some of the logic here. So what we're doing with startups that we work with is we're trying to help them find something called product market fit, which is basically to say there's a group of people who have a need or have a problem, and you've got a product that solves that problem. So that's really like that's the major milestone in early stage. Startup is seeking is to say, does the thing that I built actually solve that problem for that group of people? And how do I know that? Well, they use it every day or they seem pretty happy with the use of it. You know, every time I ask them to rate would it suck if I took this away from you? They say, yes, it would destroy my life. You know I hate that. Well, okay, cool, we're moving in the right direction to what this elusive product market fit looks like.
Speaker 1:
But the other component of that is pricing, because no matter how good your product is and no matter how painful that problem was for your customers if you get that price wrong and they don't quite, they connect the dots on, like the value that you think you're generating and the value that they think they're getting, and it's not gonna work. So for you know, for a lot of, you know, early stage startups, there is a challenge here around pricing and the earlier you wanna keep it simple. So they're probably gonna be running with a per client, per user, per zero connection type of model and it depends for them on what they think is the value driver or what they think is the behavior they wanna create. So, for example, if I'm a tool that for ADA is a great example, it's got a dashboard which the more zero connections you have on that dashboard, the more value there is to the firm. So if I'm charging a little bit per client that you connect, well, you have to think about every single client. You're gonna connect to that platform because you're paying more every single time and so now it stops your users from doing what you want them to do, because you want them to turn on more clients, but you're charging them more money every time you do. So ADA actually went and said well, actually a better approach for us is to change that to a bit more of a tiered pricing model where you've got kind of you pay a set amount for your first 30 clients. Now we're encouraging you to turn on 30 clients because there's no reason why you should just turn on one. It's the same price for one and 30. So turn on 30, get some value out of the product. Then decide whether or not you wanna move up or down to the different tiers. So it's the behavior you wanna create within your users is often how you price.
Speaker 1:
Some softwares are different because some softwares are very heavy users of data. So if they're leveraging zeroes API constantly and there's a lot of data transferred, there's a cost to that. There's actual infrastructure behind the scenes that that tech company is having to pay for store the data to. Maybe some APIs cost money to connect to those kinds of things as well. So they might have to actually price differently. Maybe a per user model doesn't work, has to be a per client or a per zero connection, because once you get that certain volume it becomes very expensive for them to actually run their business now.
Speaker 1:
So if they're not getting enough money it's gonna break the model. It doesn't work. So that's a little bit of the behind the scenes in that early stages. But the recommendation from our side for any early stage tech company is to keep it simple, because it's gonna change, and be transparent on your pricing page and say, hey, this is our beta pricing, this is our early stage pricing, this is subject to change, but if you get on now, we're gonna look after our early users. I think that that's really key is that, even if you do increase prices, if someone comes on board your software early and you say, look, we're gonna give you a 10% lifetime discount. It's like whatever our price ends up being, it might be double this in a year because we don't know but you're gonna get a discount guaranteed because you came on board early, and I think that's the kind of stuff that really sticks with me. But there's so much in pricing, the whole pricing psychology, all that kind of stuff, but maybe it's time for a cheeky break to our sponsors.
Speaker 4:
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Speaker 4:
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Speaker 2:
So, jack, when it comes to the pricing side of things what we were just talking about before, the per user versus, say, per firm I wonder if there's any psychology around. Just because it doesn't cost you, the tech company, anymore to have multiple users, therefore, should you be charging on a user basis, because the value to the client is actually different, right? So on a per firm basis, like it doesn't? For example, it doesn't cost me anymore whether you have one team member versus 10 team members versus 100 team members. I don't care the value to the firm to have One team member versus ten versus a hundred, and I think it is obviously software dependent.
Speaker 2:
I appreciate this, but it's one. I wonder if there's any psychology that comes into it from that perspective, because you know, as you know from my business, I don't like, I don't care how many users you've got, I just I tried one price and that's, you know, for the entire firm, basically because the value is still the same. But should, should you think about, or should there be a concept for any of the startups out there when it comes to pricing, does the consideration around the value to the end user increase and therefore, should the price therefore increase because there's a higher value associated with it. It's an interesting thought process.
Speaker 1:
So I'm just trying to write my head around that. So I mean, for your specific example, the challenge with a set fee is that the bigger the firm, the more value they're getting, as you said, so they're more likely to sign up. One person firm might be like well, that's expensive. So you know, depends on who you're going for there, if you, if you're trying to get bigger firms, and it's a great pricing model because they love the all you can eat for 50 bucks a month or 500 bucks a month, whatever it is.
Speaker 1:
Yeah whereas a smaller firms like well, I just like to pay for what I'm going to use because I don't use very much. So you create your own Ideal customer and target certain segments because of the way you price as well.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, it's in it. Just it all comes down to that pricing Psychology. It's just like, well, where's the value and how are you trying to target your client, end users and things like that as well.
Speaker 1:
And an interesting little, just a little tidbit, on the psychology. I think this is a really important thing for you, for everyone listening to understand, because this is a great, one of the greatest examples. You might know this firsthand, I'm not sure, but I heard that ignition used to price. It was like, let's say, it was $99 a month for a hundred clients and and they were finding certain people weren't signing up and they changed it to $99 per month for 25 clients and more people signed up. So that is, that is where, if you're making a buying decision and you're like, oh, I don't have a hundred clients, I've only got five, that's not really a good plan for me You're deciding that you're wasting too much that plan. You think that's like okay, so it's about a dollar per client, I've only got five. Now I'm paying 95 dollars per client, 95 dollars for my five clients and 99 dollars for my five clients. But if I had 90 clients it'd be a great deal, but for me it's not a right fit. But then they lower it to 25 clients and you sign up.
Speaker 1:
So there are these little tricks that the tech startups play as well. So you know, be on your game, keep a lookout for them. Try to focus on your firm. What is the value to you? What is the outcome to you? What are you paying? Is there a net benefit to you, regardless of how they're pricing? Do not compare it to Microsoft. Do not say, oh, this is more expensive than my whole Microsoft suite. Everything's more expensive than your Microsoft suite because Microsoft have a billion customers, so they can have a low price. So, yeah, I think that's another. There's a couple of little things in there that that are worth thinking about when you're considering whether to pay for something.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, and that also comes down to, as well, considering if you had to do this process manually, how much time is it, how much time am I spending? What's my charge out rate multiply that by your time and then is implementing and therefore paying for that piece of software. Is that a valuable? Is that, you know, a valuable tool? Is that the pricing side of things? And I think To your point around the 25 clients versus a hundred clients. It's, it's that it doesn't matter whether you've got 25 clients, five clients or whatever it is.
Speaker 2:
It comes down to how much time am I saving by implementing this tool? And if I had to do this manually, what is the opportunity cost that I'm missing out of by me focusing my time and energy on something that is per se and non-chargeable, if you want to use those terms Versus something that is obviously going to? You know I can go and spend more time doing other things, speaking with more clients, adding more value to those other clients, because I'm no longer doing this manual process, hypothetically. I think that's something that also comes down to it as well, when it comes to, you know, considering pricing Especially as an accounting practice, and adopting tech and paying for it.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, I mean, how, how would you see it in terms of? I mean, I don't want to make a blanket statement, that's, that's wrong, but I I genuinely feel that the vast vast majority of software is great value for money, like even the more expensive side of it, where you start to go, wow, that's expensive. It's like, actually, if it's returning you five hours a month, that's a huge Valuate on that price you're paying, especially once it like yes, the the cost scales up with your team or your clients and starts to look like a big number on your, your P&L. But Think about, like when it was just you and it was just saving ten dollars a month, it was just costing ten dollars a month and it was saving you three hours a week. Now it scales up and it's on your P&L at three thousand dollars a month and you, you know you're scared of that number, but but it's also returning. You know three hundred times what it was returning to you, so you can't forget that as well 100%.
Speaker 2:
One of the what a really good example of that is A lovely little piece of software called HubSpot. The cost of HubSpot on the free version and I broke the back of it on the free version when I first started out, I didn't pay for it until I really had to and I tried adding zaps and connecting apps as much as I could and Incrementally as time has gone on, as the business has grown and changed. You know the. The cost of the software that we're now paying for is, you know, it's expensive. I'm not gonna sugarcoat it. I've gone from free to you know Around. I think it's about 1500 bucks a month, might even be more than that actually, and every month I'm like, oh God, that hurts so much.
Speaker 2:
However, my goodness, what it does for my business and how it obviously functions and operates our Business is contingent on having, you know, a very strong, powered CRM and whether that was HubSpot, whether that was, you know, salesforce or whatever the platform is it, it's. It's expensive, yes, but it literally allows me to run the business and, you know, have a commercial output and actually make a profit. Yay, that's the whole point of it and that's what you're obviously looking to do, and I know that there are a lot of firms out there that wind your moan about the cost of software, but it's literally allowing you to run your business. If you didn't have the software and the technology in place, how much more would it cost you by having to pay human beings to run those manual processes?
Speaker 1:
Amazing amounts more. That's the short answer.
Speaker 2:
Yes, amazing amounts more. Yeah, yeah, yes, I get it. So what happens? So I guess the you know the, the stickiness component of Price rises and bits and pieces From a tech company. I know that you know. I've just literally given an example of HubSpot, for example, which is what we use, but I know that it is highly unlikely that I'm ever going to change platforms at the moment because I am very embedded in using that. So I Think it's something you know. I'm gonna put a shout out to all of your early adopters and, sorry, all of the the earlier tech companies is Whilst. That's something to consider. Don't take advantage of it either. I think as well. So, like, clients will become sticky if they do get embedded into your platform and of course they should, because that's the whole point of it. Like, that's the whole point of any client success Team is to ensure that your clients remain sticky. But you know pricing If you do out-price your market, that can be a reason to move absolutely.
Speaker 1:
I mean, if you, if you abuse that relationship Just because you know it's gonna be hard for them to leave, I'm gonna increase my prices. That that's that's you signing up for. We are on our way out and we're just trying to squeeze as much as we can out before all of our customers leave us like that is a We've had our run and we're in the last few years of life and we have to get as much out of this for our shareholders as we can. It's just not the sign of a where a forward-thinking, innovative Company that's gonna continue to progress and move forward from here. So for me, it's a massive red flag if you're increasing, like.
Speaker 1:
I understand a price increase for you know, inflation, those kinds of things. I understand a price increase when there's new value added to the product. I think it's a great place for startups to increase prices if they've launched on a price that they think is Actually we didn't price that high enough. Well, maybe launch a few new features and then say, look, there's now a pro plan and it includes a bunch more and it costs more Because there's more value for you. So I think I think price increases are absolutely inevitable. So, please, if you're signing up for a piece of software, expect it to go up in price at some point and and bank on that, but there's there's good ways to do it. Increasing value for your customers is a great one to do it alongside.
Speaker 2:
Well, what drives, I guess what drives startups and or just current, like platforms you know, to increase or change their prices or their pricing model? What do you think some of the driving factors are of that?
Speaker 1:
I mean, if they've got, if they've got a customer base that they really love and they're like, happy with the traction that they're getting with their existing prices and all that kind of stuff, well then it. Then it's probably to do with, okay, we're adding more features, or, you know, inflation, whatever else. It should be simple things like that. If they're, if they're not getting the traction that they expected or they're, you know, they're semi early-stage steel and they're still playing around with things, then you might be changing. You might see price changes that change quite drastically. It might change like a complete model. It might go from per user to tiered pricing or to feature based pricing. And that's when they're still working out. How are our customers using our platform? What behavior do we want to drive? And you know who do we want to target those kinds of things. You know a change in price can change that.
Speaker 1:
So if you implement a to sign up, it's a $2,000 fixed fee and then it's a $50 monthly fee. Well, you're deliberately doing that because you don't want small practices signing up. If you offer a Per value or per client model, well then you do want small practices, sign up, you don't want to turn them away. But if you're not offering any economies of scale, benefits or anything like that, well then maybe you're not for big firms. So you're sending a message and I think for early stage startups that might change Quite drastically there their models. It's because they're still working through who is our target customer and what is the behavior we want to drive, and you know what is it. How do we see the value that we're delivering to them? So that's kind of how I see it a bigger, more Well-known player in the space who's been there for a long time. I don't expect those kinds of drastic changes.
Speaker 2:
It's just more like a bump to the price here and there across the board and back to the stickiness topic, just quickly, what happens, I guess, if you, you know, if they do raise their prices and you're stuck and you're like, oh, I really hate this. And if you use the next example, right, because I know that there's been a lot of unhappy murmurings within the industry and obviously the industry really talks Like I think it's something to consider around, if you're stuck, like when is it worth moving due to a price rise, for example? Or you know like, because, as you know, like accountants hate price rises, we all hate price rises, but especially accountants hate price rises. So I guess you know when is it worth moving.
Speaker 1:
Well, I'll add my two cents, but I'd be keen to hear yours. I think for me, there's a couple of different things. The price can go up and you can be annoyed about it, but you can still stay on the product because you're like well you know, it's still actually really good value for money, even though they up the price or double the price or triple the price. So I think, first and foremost, don't let a price increase distract you from is this still actually good value for money? Maybe it was amazing value for money and now it's just good value for money. I think that does happen a bit when the startups start to realize hang on a minute, everyone loves our pricing. Because it's way too cheap, we should probably increase it, and that's a sad day, but it's also, I think that's fine. You can stay, but keep an eye on that.
Speaker 1:
I think once it teeters towards like, am I really getting value out of this? You might keep paying for it for six months or 12 months, or once you're at that point, you're like I'm sick of this. This is ridiculous. What I'm paying Doesn't mean you have to stop using it tomorrow. Now maybe it becomes a bit of a roadmap or a plan to start to say, okay, I don't like the pricing anymore, I don't think I'm getting good value for money out of this product I'm gonna have. Over the next six months I'm gonna really investigate the alternatives and I'm going to start putting that into place. And you got a plan. Yes, you wear the cost a little bit, but I don't think it makes sense as a business to just like cut out a core piece of tech from your stack overnight. So I mean, I don't know, I'd be keen to get your take.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, I think you need to outweigh or weigh up the you know how costly it is to actually change and how much time and effort it is. To change Like, changing a piece of software is one thing, but the impact to that change is actually quite huge. Insofar as if you are going down the path of communicating and being transparent you know we're talking about the apps doing that, but if you're changing something internally, you still have to do that. You have to do that same thing, right? So, as an end user, if you change platforms, if it's a client facing platform, then you need to do a lot of change management and communication to your client base so that they understand what that change obviously is. If it's an internal platform, then you have to do a lot of internal marketing to your team to make sure that they are all on board with those changes that you make as well. So you do have to consider that you know the time and effort associated with the change might actually not be worth the costs that you're actually you know that you're outlaying for that piece of software.
Speaker 2:
But I think just I think my final like just to kind of thinking about wrapping this up is my biggest takeaway from this is, whilst software, yes, is a cost to your business, it's an investment in the future of your business. So, yes, you can see it as an actual cost because, yes, I get that it is a cost to run your business, but if you didn't have it there, you couldn't run your business. So you need to think of it as more of an investment into the foundations of the business. And it's the same as what you, you know, whilst you liken, you know your headcount and wages as a cost to your business. Yes, of course it is you. It's a similar concept. I look at software as the same, as a team member, you know, from a pricing perspective.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, I was thinking exactly the same thing that you know. It's not that, even if you haven't had a lot of experience with tech price increases, you've had experience with an employee walking through the door and saying, hey, I want to pay rise, and you've had to decide is this person worth it or is there another way around this, or whatever it is. But, yeah, I think it's a good place to wrap it up. My takeaway, or my call out for anyone listening, especially early stage startups, is be transparent, communicate your pricing changes ahead of time to let people prepare, but also, grandfather, where possible, look after your early users. If you've got early users, look after them and they'll look after you. So, yeah, thanks, amy, great chat.
Speaker 2:
Thanks so much, jack.
Speaker 3:
Hey team. It's Ellie and Andrew from All Aussie Accounting Adventures here. I hope you really enjoyed this episode with Amy and Jack. What did you think, Andrew?
Speaker 4:
Oh, stunning as always, the two of them are brilliant minds and are brilliant communicators. So we hope that you have got some incredible learnings out of this episode and if you'd like to continue to follow us, make sure you check out our website. Find us on the socials you'll see Accounting Adventures, or look for All Aussie Accounting Adventures, Wherever good stuff can be found, whether that's conferences, whether that's websites, whether that's podcasts or social media.
Speaker 3:
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