Third, according to Ajay Goel, the company’s CEO, JangoMail has developed a clear system for continuously improving its service and ensuring that customers recognize this ongoing innovation. “We try to have a significant feature enhancement that we can announce each month. We want our customers to see that we are continuously adding value to the service at no extra cost.” Jan-goMail’s development efforts follow clear, customer-focused goals. Goel says, “Our first priority is to add the features customers tell us they want. Next, we look to add the features that we see our competitors are offering that we don’t have yet. The last item on the list are the features that we think are valuable.”

There is a fourth phenomenon, one not yet discussed in this book: In many cases, the addition of new features to an application will spark ideas for new business initiatives on the part of ASP subscribers. I have experienced this myself. An ASP that supports my business will announce a new feature, and I will start to think, I can increase my business by using this feature to . . . So another value of using ASPs is that they can kick-start your plans for improving your own business. It’s a lot of work to develop a new marketing idea from scratch. It’s far easier when you are looking at an easy-to-use capability that is already part of your business and think, Now I can use this to _____ at no additional cost, and my total time investment will be ____.

THE NEW SPECIALIZATION

What I am about to write probably classifies me as extremist or, at minimum, effusive. But I’ll say it anyway: I believe that we have entered the beginning of a new era of specialization that, for better or worse, may rival Henry Ford’s creation of the automobile.

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