eCommerce and SaaS
Building, commercialising, and managing an electronic platform requires a coordinated approach to multiple business aspects. Whether you are selling something online, or building a platform to allow others to do so, it is imperative that you maintain control of the supplies to, and deliverables from, your business.
We help our clients to understand and control supply risks with upstream agreements (such as supply agreements, and licences), and identify and control delivery risks through terms and conditions of supply, and recommendations for managing these risks through operational structures and processes. Some examples include:
- Granting specific rights to different classes of users: Developing a tiered licensing model for SaaS platform owners, and preparing terms and conditions for each class of user.
- Privacy policies: Advising on whether the provisions of the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) applies to a business, or not, and the implications this has on the business’ activities and the terms and conditions that apply to various customers.
- Business to business licences: Large platforms that provide services to other businesses have vastly different service requirements that those that have short term agreements with consumers (such as sale of a product at a web store). However, there are fundamental issues like payment of fees to access the platform that need to be considered based on the platform operator’s requirements. If your platform facilitates another business’ revenues, and the business is late paying its fees – is turning off the service in your interests as the platform operator? We work with our clients to make problems such as these workable for particular situations.