Skedsheet Blog

Harry pointed out some of the reasons we think taking the risk on a new product makes sense, but there are a couple other points that I think are worth noting. Skedsheet is intended to reach customers who are:

• Downmarket from the JobTracker target market
• Spread across new vertical industries

The Innovator’s Solution explained well the concept of how companies over time tend to keep moving upmarket to capture higher-end customers. But this naturally leaves the bottom end open to competitors. We’ve been doing the same thing: every time we put out a new release of JobTracker, the product keeps getting better. To address this issue we have been releasing new editions of JobTracker to reach out to smaller customers. First we released Standard Edition in 2006, and in 2008 we released Basic Edition. Each of these was targeted at either smaller customers who wouldn’t spend as much money, or who didn’t need all the features of Enterprise Edition.

Another approach we take is selling to markets other than our core countertop fabricator customers. We’ve had moderate success in a few other vertical markets, and we have some customers who are spread around a number of other industries who have not been the direct target of our marketing. (Thanks Google!)

So I look at Skedsheet as a way to expand our reach, leaving us a few ways it could pay off:

• Skedsheet is a profitable product on its own
• Some users of Skedsheet eventually upgrade to JobTracker
• Skedsheet as a marketing tool leads more people to learn about and purchase JobTracker

Hopefully, all three will be true.