Watch the JMP Q3 Update here.
The fourth quarter is upon us, and JMP Founder and Chair John Sall sees things headed up! In his talk during the JMP Q3 Update, he spoke about a few updates from the third quarter and said he’s looking forward to the fourth quarter.
Sall referenced the recent work arrangement survey and asked people to come back to the office if it worked for their situation. “Coming into the office means more in-person interactions, a better sense of community, and better sharing of ideas,” he said.
The “year of change” continues, Sall said, referencing the new flat pricing model that went into effect one year ago. “Change can be hard,” he said. “It’s been a tough year, with the new pricing and systems, but so far it’s gone okay for customers.”
He also acknowledged that the changes have not been easy for sales teams. “With lots of change, sometimes ‘new’ can mean ‘less.’” But Sall says we should be looking forward to the fourth quarter, which is usually our best with the biggest revenue. “It should be comparable to last year since the new pricing went into effect a year ago.”
Next week, Discovery Americas takes place in Indian Wells, CA, with more opportunities to reach goals. “I look forward to seeing you there,” Sall said.
JMP Development updates (watch 2:02 - 3:37)
Next, Sall gave updates on JMP Development. JMP 17.2 shipped in September (you can read more about that here) and is the last release through the SAS systems. Work on JMP 18 continues and is planned for release in March 2024.
As a reminder, in 2024, we will transfer contracts from SAS to JMP. Customers will need to have named users registered and authorized for the JMP 18 release in March.
Some positive feedback! (watch 3:40 – 5:27)
In development, Sall shared, a majority of feedback is often negative (needed fixes and additional features are most common). “Sometimes it’s nice to get positive feedback, and I was delighted to receive a forwarded email from Bob Dixon [SAS R&D] to Dave Richardson [Vice President, JMP Sales],” Sall said.
Richardson was able to connect with Principal Customer Reference Manager Meg Hermes, who is hoping to turn this into a customer success story in the future.
“We love to get this kind of positive feedback,” Sall said.
JMP review (watch 5:35 – 10:19)
JMP CEO Jon Weisz began his review of Q3 with an overview of JMP financials. “John [Sall] talked about what a hard year it is, but I’m kind of blown away by the resilience of our company!” Weisz said. “It’s been a lot of change, but people have embraced it and we’re having a good year.”
Weisz was happy to report that at the end of Q3, JMP is up 13.9% in constant currency over Q3 2022. “Although new sales revenue (NSR) is down, we can keep in mind that we dropped first year fees by about 34%, so we’re expanding our market and finding new users,” Weisz said. “Renewals are up, which is strong in showing the value of JMP to our customers, even with all the pricing changes.”
At the end of Q3, JMP passed the $100M TSR threshold. Weisz says, with a strong Q4, we stand to pass $150 million in 2023. “We’ve got a lot in the sales funnel and a lot of big renewals coming in fourth quarter,” he said. “There’s a lot of work to be done, but it's within our grasp to break $150 million this year.”
In terms of profitability, EBITDA is currently around 21%. “We’re doing a nice job of managing costs, hiring carefully, and watching our travel budget,” he said. In addition, the JMP Rule of 40 stood at 34%. “We’d like that up a little bit, and I think we’ll achieve that next year.”
JMP contracting and licensing systems (watch 10:53 – 14:34)
Before welcoming Digital Operations Director John Jones for a deeper dive, Weisz gave a brief update on the new contracting and licensing systems.
In the United States, the JMP e-commerce (JMP Store) and the UTOF/quote to cash invoicing system are now available (in addition to being already available Germany, Denmark, Singapore, Austria, and Switzerland) for new contracts. These systems will be available for the rest of the JMP world for all new sales by Q1 2024 (excluding China, Japan public sales, and U.S. government sales).
“Right now, I’d like people to really push, especially in the U.S., all new sales through UTOF invoicing system,” Weisz said. “The more volume we put through this system, the better we’ll be in January.”
On the renewal front, beta testing of SAS legacy contracts transition to new JMP UTOF has started. New UTOF assignments must be executed in Q4 2023 for January 2024 effective dates.
JMP First systems update (watch 15:13 – 19:04)
As of Aug. 23, JMP First systems (Store 2.1) are live. This rollout focused on ensuring that transactions flow into JMP First systems. “Since that’s gone live in the U.S., we’ve seen nearly $300k in revenue go directly to our U.S. bank account coming from 180+ orders,” Jones said. “A big chunk of that is new customers flowing through the system. Kudos to [IT Software Development Senior Manager] Falco [Kronmüller] and the e-commerce team for getting that up and running.”
Store 2.2 uses a third-party vendor called Reach as a Merchant of Record (MOR), allowing for global expansion. “This gives us the ability to sell into additional markets, languages, and currencies,” Jones said. “We can also use payment options besides credit card (ACH, bank transfer, etc.).”
JMP Student Subscriptions (watch 19:05 – 20:23)
In early November, our new JMP student subscriptions will make getting JMP frictionless for students. “The goal of the JMP Academic Team is to get JMP used in as many classrooms as possible, and to make JMP easy to get for students, similar to open source competitors like Python and R,” Jones said.
JMP Quote to Cash (watch 20:25 – 22:21)
If you are not already using the JMP Quote to Cash system, you will receive an invitation for training opportunities in November (across multiple time zones).
Customer transition (watch 22:22 - 24:00)
As we look at how we approach the customer transition from SAS contracts to JMP, there are three pieces of communication to follow:
- General notice of transition: A generic notice to customers, it lets them know they are being moved to the JMP system.
- Pre-renewal quote from CPQ: Lets the customer know what their renewal amount will be.
- JMP UTOF: Gets customers into JMP systems so we can fulfill orders in 2024.
Q&A (watch 24:40 – 32:44)
There were several questions submitted during the webcast, which are answered here. If you have additional questions, please add them in the comments and we’ll find the answers for you.
Q: Any thoughts on implementing the new processes in other regions, such as India or South America?
A: The Salesforce Quote to Cash (invoice) system will be available for all new sales on Jan. 1, 2024. The e-commerce store will follow for worldwide sales later in Q1. There may be some countries that will need resellers/distributors for some sales; JMP will work on those go to market plans later in 2024.
Q: Are we still planning to run many contracts through SAS until the end of H1? It sounded like we were back to planning to do the UTOF migration for all SAS contracts in January.
A: We will be transitioning all U.S. and Japanese contracts with renewal dates on or after Jan. 1, 2024, through JMP systems. Other countries will have renewals processed by SAS in H1, but JMP will be beta testing many customers’ contract transitions and increasing transaction volumes so that all renewals after July 1, 2024, will be processed via JMP systems.
Q: Do we have an update on when legacy customers will be able to use MyJMP?
A: Currently, work is being performed to synchronize data from the SAS invoice system to Salesforce. In order for customers who pay renewals to SAS to obtain their license files and software via MyJMP, we need to ensure the data concerning payment and software details are synchronized to JMP systems. We expect that work to be completed soon, but it requires testing. Watch for announcements as completion dates become available.
Q: Asking for a friend: can you comment on large gatherings for next year?
A: There are no large internal gatherings other than JMP Academy in January. There may be another JMP Academy session in the summer. We will continue to offer many coffee carts and lunches for Cary staff. Regional offices are encouraged to schedule their own events.
Each region will have regular midyear meetings, assuming their travel budgets can allow for them. Some regions/departments are also planning to have in-person kickoffs in January or February.
The next global in-person Reunion will be in the spring of 2025.
Q: Will it be possible for sales teams to pre-populate info in the web portal to make it easier for new customers to just click through and purchase?
A: New customers will need to set up user IDs and enter their business and payment information. After doing that, then the only additional work is to select the number of users. A discussion about how sales can help customers to “pre-populate” any information would be good. Please work with Digital Operations to identify the details of this suggestion.
Q: What can you tell us about Ringlead?
A: We’re excited about the capabilities and potential of Ringlead for lead routing. The Salesforce team is aiming to complete configuration for territories in the Americas by the end of October. Pending successful testing, we’ll utilize that for lead routing while also configuring it for use globally. However, since e-commerce transactions come through as orders, we won’t be able to use Ringlead automation on those right away. For the time being, those orders in Salesforce will be assigned to a sales rep based on our territory definitions and the information provided by the customer. Sales should then attribute the order to an opportunity using the process outlined here.
Q: How will you determine who gets a free student subscription? Is simply having a .edu sufficient? There are a lot of folks that are already working for corporations using a paid license but are also going to graduate school. How do we prevent them from using a school email address to take advantage of this instead of getting a paid license?
A: We are not relying solely on a .edu email address. We are using a third-party service called Proxi.Id to validate that a user is a student or faculty member at an accredited institution. Proxi.Id is used by many other software vendors including MindMap, Corel, Qlik, and Parallels. You can read about their verification methodology on their site here.
As for graduate students who might use the student license while working for a corporation, they would be in violation of the end user agreement, but we have no way of determining whether they are using the license for academic or corporate purposes. The Student Subscription does include a special add-in for teaching and learning with JMP, as well as a unique splash screen, so it would be obvious that they are using the student version.
Q: Where can we find email templates in Salesforce to address common questions we will get from customers once they begin receiving the transition/renewal notices?
A: These email templates will soon be available in Salesforce. You will be notified when they are available and told where exactly to find them. We plan to have templates in English and Japanese. Please let Amy Stuart know if customers are frequently asking questions that aren’t covered in the existing templates. We’ll either add new templates or update the existing ones, depending on what information is needed.
Q: How can we ensure that store purchases are attributed to the correct team? We can educate our customers on what to do, but we cannot control what information they ultimately enter into the store.
A: We must rely on the data provided by customers in the store. JMP collects and remits taxes based upon the customer data.
Q: With the new authorization process rolling out for JMP 18, how does the online Salesforce part happen? Is it once a year, requiring that the user have internet access to process their identity and then some sort of functionality (similar to a PER file setting) that is saved locally to hard drive that JMP checks upon subsequent application launches against saved expiry date? Or does the user need internet access every time JMP launches so it can “phone home” and verify identity, allowing JMP app to run?
A: JMP will attempt a connection to verify authorization every time JMP is launched. A failure to connect will not prevent JMP from running. However, after some number (to be determined) of failures to connect, we will require a re-authorization. It will be more than once per year and not tied to the expiration date.
There is an R&D demo that answers all these questions. Sales training on this topic will roll out as we get closer to the release of JMP 18.
