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‍“Willingness to Pay changed our mindset about pricing. We now have a simple, scalable model designed to drive revenue through its strategic structure.”

­– Rene Larsen, Co-Founder and CEO at SafeEx

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1. 40% price increase on SafeEx’s entry level tier
2. Redesigned white label offering to Service Providers
3. Simplified pricing & aligned team to allow scaling

About

‍SafeEx is a global SaaS company that simplifies complex inspection and maintenance operations for explosive or otherwise dangerous assets in mainly oil and gas.

Their flagship product, SafeEx Cloud, streamlines maintenance procedures and improves operational performance. Learn how Willingness to Pay helped SafeEx design a scalable, tiered SaaS pricing structure.

Situation: Maximizing SaaS ARR called for a flexible pricing structure

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“Our roots were in service delivery, and we wanted someone with the expertise to position and price our SaaS solution for revenue growth and market expansion. We needed to translate our product value into a scalable pricing framework.”

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SafeEx had become a global leader in inspection and maintenance services and had built a new software solution, SafeEx Cloud. However, their one-size-fits-all packaging and pricing model was unscalable and did not capture the full value of the SaaS offering.

First, the pricing structure lacked packaging tiers that reflected value across customer segments and sizes, limiting ARR and the potential for market expansion. Focus was on selling functionality and features, not on outcomes and jobs to be done.

This ‘selling features’ created severe discounting pressure and a very high need for technical expertise in the sales, which made the sales process rely too much on founder-led sales.

Second, the model didn’t properly monetize whitelabeled service providers who were reluctant to adopt and roll out the SafeEx product as the solution would reduce the hours needed to do inspections - their primary revenue model.

Finally, SafeEx’s team was internally misaligned and stuck in a discussion where they on the one hand knew they were delivering value above what they charged, but on the other were reluctant to increase pricing because they feared customer churn to lower-cost market solutions.

SafeEx needed a scalable SaaS packaging and pricing framework that would drive ARR, support market expansion, and minimize risk with company-wide alignment.

What we did: Tiered packaging and pricing that maximizes revenue and enables future growth

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“What surprised me the most is how Willingness to Pay simplified our pricing. We went from five tiers in our first iteration to three, and in the process, significantly raised our prices.”

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We joined the SafeEx team as advisors to create a scalable SaaS packaging and pricing model. Working with core management, sales, marketing, and development team members, we guided the design process on SafeEx Cloud’s core value propositions and developed new packaging and pricing concepts.

The group re-worked the packaging into a three-tiered model around the core jobs to be done, rather than just product features – starting with ‘Maintenance,’ moving through ‘Optimization’ and finishing with an enterprise tier.

Key extras like integrations and support was spun out as add-ons to the core structure.

This enabled us to execute effective price discrimination in SafeEx’s structure to capture differing customer value across sizes and segments of customers.

This scalability is further reinforced through usage-based pricing for database items and workspaces, and a pricing floor from flat fees for credits and licenses. We also included structural discount levels to reduce the need for sales teams to craft bespoke deals and still win deals.

Finally, we also redesigned the service provider offering and repositioned it towards larger, global service providers and refocused the core job of the offering from ‘do inspections faster’ to ‘retain clients in profitable recurring revenue relationships’.

To ensure the new model was accepted internally and could be successfully implemented, we first secured consensus through regular meetings with board members and core internal stakeholders. This was followed by validation via incremental market rollout, allowing us to test the model in a real-world sales context and use real customer interactions to manage risk.

Outcome: 40% increase in base pricing

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“Companies are often too conservative when pricing their own value. Working with Willingness to Pay taught us how to be bolder with our product and our positioning in the market.”

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Here’s a snapshot of the impact of the partnership:

1. 40% price increase on SafeEx’s entry level tier
2. Redesigned white label offering to Service Providers
3. Simplified pricing & aligned team to allow scaling

SafeEx’s SaaS pricing model now captures customer value across customers of all sizes, and the new packaging clearly articulates the product's value.

The new price structure rolled out a 40% price increase on the product’s entry-level tier and overall achieved a significant increase in executed ACV across all customer types. This naturally increased gross margin, but SafeEx also saw a decrease in churn on upgraded plans as the plan more directly focused on the job to be done and friction in the pricing model was reduced. 

The new framework also allowed SafeEx to sell white label solutions to some of the world’s largest service providers with a much healthier and profitable relationship. 

All new sales were also done within a new contract framework that supports future price adjustments and reduces the need for heavy renewal negotiations.

This value unlock was further supported by working with SafeEx’s team, giving them the tools and processes to have value based conversations with customers, based on the packaging. This alignment has allowed them to accelerate their go-to-market timeline and de-emphasize focus on their professional services.

At the time of writing, Willingness to Pay continues to support SafeEx by providing guidance on potential M&A opportunities and helping to grow their sales team.