Monetising Non-Linear Revenues

Cloud computing, on the world-class Force.com platform, opens up a new and significant opportunity for knowledge-intensive firms of all shapes and sizes. This is especially potent for firms who are inherently constrained by billable people time, where Linear Revenues are the order of the day. This includes accountants, architects, designers, lawyers, management consultants and marketing communications firms - in fact, any business operating where people are the most important assets.

To increase revenues, any knowledge-intensive firm has to linearly increase its people resources and thereby, its costs and risks. This leads to 'managing a bench' and, in a challenging economy, this becomes a difficult business model to scale. Unlike a manufacturing or product firm, in a people-based services firm, non-billable time becomes instantly perishable.

By taking the core competencies of a people-based services firm and creating cloud apps from this know-how, a new business model becomes possible: revenues, in the form of subscription fees, for cloud apps extends a people-based services offer. This is Non-Linear Revenue - you can scale billings, without a straight-line increase in related people resources, costs or risks.

Accountants, architects, designers, lawyers, management consultants and marketing communications firms all have the potential to become new cloud ventures in their own right. Joining the more familiar class of cloud ventures, such as ISVs, service firms of all shapes and sizes can monetise their intellectual property (IP) as new, high-value social apps.

Grove Group works with knowledge-intensive firms to create new cloud ventures and revenue streams on the trusted, scalable Force.com cloud platform. Here, the barriers to entry are low, but a strong core competency and IP, translated to a new high-value social app can generate new, profitable Non-Linear Revenues, reaching new markets and customers, typically with 90-180 days.