This year has been a good one for Leverage Software. While the company didn’t land quite as many customers as in its gangbusters second half of 2008, its 52 new clients from 1H 2009 represent another solid couple of quarters. Leverage’s revenue percentage from services (versus that from software licensing) has increased steadily over the past year. The majority of Leverage’s revenue still comes from the licensing of its SaaS platform, as well it should. But the increase from services is a good sign that the company is adding value for clients via its domain expertise and not leaving dollars on the table that might otherwise go elsewhere.
Leverage’s marketing communications remains strong. In particular, we like how Leverage’s Web site lays out its use cases and solutions. (This is on its "What We Do" page.) Categorizing online communities is a challenging task. Leverage creates clear differentiation via the following phrasing: “Leverage Your Employees,” “Leverage Your Channel,” “Leverage Your Citizens,” and “Leverage Your Customers.” It’s a terrific breakdown that should help get prospective customers to the right Web pages and from there, ideally, into its sales pipeline.
This breakdown also illustrates an expansion in Leverage’s target market, as it is now looking to find a home for its CommunityConnect platform with governmental organizations and advocacy groups, as well as with corporations.
CommunityConnect is an on-demand platform that includes social networking, group forums, file-sharing, opinion polls, blogs, wikis, real-time chat, and many other applications. In August 2009, Leverage released Version 7.0, which included some strong new features and enhancements, such as:
- Enhancements to its GeoMap application (a Google Maps mash-up for finding community members based on their location).
- Status updates with commenting (Twitter-like microblogging application).
- Enhanced access controls, to allow for more granular viewing, access, and sharing among members.
- Improved customization for administrators, including templates, enhanced APIs, and additional Web services.
- Improved identity management.
- Improved email notification management.
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This post a modified excerpt from our PSGroup report Online Community Platform Company and Product Update 1H-2009. For more on this report, see this blog post.
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