It’s been roughly a year since Israel-based Totango began developing an analytics platform to help SaaS providers understand how clients use their solutions. On July 28, Totango moved its platform into public beta. What’s next? Totango CEO and Co-Founder Guy Nirpaz gave me some insights.

“Totango tracks ‘meaningful business activities’,” Nirpaz said. “What are [SaaS] customers doing? Which features are they using? How many people are using them? For how long? Then we come up with an ‘engagement metric’ or an engagement score’.” That score, according to Nirpaz, will give SaaS providers engagement insights  that will help them make business decisions.

We’re curious to see how SaaS providers — and perhaps even channel partners — leverage the analytics system. Two prime examples:

The idea for Totango’s customer analytic solution began with Nirpaz’s curiosity as to how cloud computing was changing how businesses operate. What the team found, said Nirpaz, was that customer relationship management (CRM) solutions were only monitoring companies’ sales teams. The clients were monitoring their own usage.  So Totango’s mission became bringing those customer insights to the SaaS providers. When the Totango team began developing the solution, it though SaaS providers would want deep analytics. But as Nirpaz explains, earlier analytic steps are missing. “They are missing very basic insights into how customers are using their service,” he said. “Our strategy is our customer understanding.”

There are SaaS providers who have developed their own in-house customer analytics solutions, but those solutions are very specific to that provider’s needs. Totango is proposing a solution that works across sectors. So far, more than 30 SaaS providers in the San Francisco Bay Area, New York, Israel, Europe and South America have used Totango’s solution in private beta mode. Totango is targeting more clients in the U.S. and Europe. “We believe in getting the product in front of as many customers as possible,” he said.

Pricing and availability will be announced after the beta.

Additional insights from Joe Panettieri.