GE 15: The pros and cons of pre-announcing features for Enterprise SaaS

Everyone is excited about the upcoming ideas and features that you are planning on delivering in the year ahead. Let’s get the word out there and get our customers and prospects excited too. Right?

Well, not necessarily. This article will summarise some of the pros and cons of pre-announcing features and enhancements in the world of Enterprise SaaS.

Pros of Pre-Announcing

Ease Competitive Pressures

Perhaps your competitors have already announced the feature or capability or even already delivered it. Your sales team may be claiming lost sales because of the perceived competitive gap. Being able to tell customers that the feature will be matched or surpassed and be available by the time they implement significantly eases this type of pressure. It is not ideal to be a follower in the market — but this could be better than no response at all if the capability is perceived to be high value by your customers.

Ability to Gather Feedback

Communicating features to your customers permits your client facing teams to have meaningful conversations with customers and prospects about your plans. This can provide vital feedback that can be factored into your development, launch, marketing and service plans. Will your customers value the feature? Will they be prepared to pay extra and if so how much? Will there be conversion, migration or backward compatibility issues? All of this information can in theory be collected in other types of research activities, but there is nothing like a planned release date to focus the mind.

Can Provide Motivation

Leading on from the last point, pre-announcing features can provide motivation for the development and delivery teams. Building up demand increases the stakes and makes it less likely that the feature will be de-prioritized. A clear delivery date and launch plan can reduce procrastination, analysis paralysis and over-engineering.

Helps Co-ordinate Launch Activities

If the capability is significant, then you might want to make a big splash for maximum impact. That means co-ordinated marketing activities such as events, website updates, campaigns and demonstrations. They take time to put together, book and sort out logistics. Pre-announcing features allows for a clear future timetable of marketing activities to be constructed and managed.

Allows Customers Planning Time

If there are breaking changes or compatibility issues then your customers will need time to plan. Larger, complex customers may need significant time to implement any required changes within their organisations. Even smaller changes may require users to be re-trained or make other necessary adjustments. Advance notice prevents customers being surprised by changes particularly if they are automatically upgraded and have no choice but to implement the new feature.

Cons of Pre-Announcing

Reduces Short Term Agility

Whilst it is possible to walk-back a pre-announcement, it is not ideal — particularly if you have made a big song and dance about the new feature. Pre-announcing makes it harder to change your mind, pivot or revise your roadmap based on the latest research, sales successes or changing regulatory requirements. Think about how far in advance you really want to make commitments and how firm those commitments should be. Can you really predict what your customers may need in 12 to 18 months time?

Risk of Running Into Implementation Difficulties

If the new capability relies on new technology or is the first time the current team is working with new tools, techniques or technologies, then the risk of running into implementation difficulties is high. A wide pre-announcement with a planned future release date raises the stakes and ramps up the pressure for the team significantly. This can cause key staff turnover, a compromised implementation approach or significant delivery delays.

Waiting Fatigue

Pre-announcing too early before the feature is available could generate waiting fatigue both internally and for your customers and prospects. If the gap is too long between announcement and delivery, then your customers will move on and all of the excitement and momentum that has been created will eventually dissipate.

Limits Iteration and Finessing

Some products just take longer and need a number of iterations and adjustments before they become commercially viable. Avoiding pre-announcements allow these iterations to occur and can be combined with suitable user and marketing testing to increase confidence that the eventual launch will be successful. If the feature or product has been pre-announced too far in advance, the pressure to release is usually too great to allow for such iterations and improvements to occur.

Difficult to Can Bad Ideas

Not all ideas will pan out and many features or products should never be released at all. It can be really hard to can a bad idea when the team are so invested in it after spending days, weeks and months working on it. It gets even harder to kill an initiative that has been pre-announced.

In summary, there is no fully right or wrong answer when it comes to pre-announcing features. The answer for your product will depend on a number of factors including the number and size of your clients, the competitive landscape, your development velocity and where the product is in it’s lifecycle. A hybrid approach is also possible where some features are pre-announced and other capabilities are kept under wraps. Think about when it is appropriate to pre-announce and how long this pre-announcement phase should be (for both internal and external stakeholders). When a feature is launched, reflect on whether you judged these pre-announcement factors correctly.