Situation:
For many years, ACME corp has outsourced Task B
to me. Over the years I've learned the ins and outs of Task A
(manual labor). Together Task A
+ Task B
= finished ACME corp product.
So now I discovered an opportunity to optimize their Task A
process. But to develop a system to help ACME corp to work more efficiently, I need to put in a lot of programming work hours up front. Maybe 1-2 years to prototype, test and finally deploy, then I'll be ready to confront them with my solution. It'll take another 1 year to successfully have them switch from the old way of doing things to my new method.
So in this situation, what is the proper to way to charge? Should I just suck in everything in the beginning? Or charge them for initial development? Ultimately they will be required to pay each time they use my SaaS to complete their Task A
.
Note that my SaaS is only useful for ACME corp, I don't see much use for my SaaS product to the mass market.