Five steps to succeed your SaaS business in an era of radical change
The COVID-19 pandemic has scripted a horrendous chapter for the economic condition of a country. For businesses, finding a silver lining during a crisis of such magnitude is most definitely an impression of abortive efforts. However, SaaS companies have proven to be an emerging winner from the pandemic. When lockdown measures were enforced prompting businesses to rethink about continuing their commercial operations, SaaS companies rather chose to acclimatize to the crisis and so they improvised their business operations from physical to remote workplace by taking resort to software tools and techniques hosted online. Their strategy to migrate from an on-premise business operation to a Cloud-based environment resulted in great commercial viability. Faster accessibility, reduced costs, and location independence coupled with ease of use are some attributes contributory to thriving the business of SaaS companies.
The conventional wisdom endorses the notion that businesses must stand rooted to their physical establishments. However, today’s radically changing era has prompted businesses to consider shifting from their traditional business functions to something far more futuristic and fittingly viable. And adapting a fully digitalized and automated business approach sounds more appropriate than ever. Though digital and automation are not a new development in the business world, yet the way companies are adopting these tools, we can say rapid adoption is surely a new trend. Given how pandemic impelled people to distance themselves from one another, companies chose to follow the suit and decided to expedite their process of adapting to a new business work model. The result of such dramatic adoption is such that close to 400% boost in the number of U.S. workers doing Work-From-Home has been reported.
Companies migrating to digital workspace in an era still dominated by social and workspace distancing due to pandemic are determined to hold up infrastructure and continue to serve customers by convincing them they are equipped to rapid changes. No doubt, the pandemic has afforded a very significant fallout - that traditional ways of operating business can be changed under sufficient urgency. If seen from the perspective of SaaS, there is no doubt that they are going to play a very pivotal role in dynamically progressive work life.
SaaS being the facilitator of contemporary work is contributing best to facilitate remove workspace. Even though the pandemic may afford some semblance of letting up in near future, many companies, including Twitter and LinkedIn have officiated work from home permanent for their employees. Under such circumstances, the benefits afforded by Cloud-hosted software products have contributed growth even prior to Covid-19 pandemic. And the contribution of SaaS is said to be far-reaching in this context.
Therefore, follow the tips below to succeed your SaaS business in an era of radical change.
1. Innovative beyond what market has at present
To succeed in a SaaS business requires the involvement of various efficacious strategies. However, if you follow one fundamental principle for your business success, then the coveted result is sure to happen and that principle is innovating and going beyond what the market is currently offering. Do you have the reason behind the success of Google? Among many, one of the reasons is that the giant search engine never stopped innovating. Its innovations are virtually dominating the SaaS space today with a total of 137 cloud-hosted software products. The catch is, Google’s cloud-hosted products address a broad suite of topics, ranging from Productivity Software like Google Docs to Advertising Models called Google Ads. While some products cater to business users, others offer solutions to consumers. With the help of these software products, Google has built a solid user base of diverse audiences, an upshot caused by Google’s relentless pursuit of pioneering solutions for businesses and consumers.
2. Dream big
To succeed in a business is not a dreamless pursuit. Apart from introducing innovations through thinking along new tracks, as a SaaS business owner, you must also dream BIG. This involves building solutions that align several functionalities which were unmanageable via a solo interface. Consequently, the upshot of such solutions would mean simplifying the workflows of your customers.
Companies like Shopify are the epitome of exemplifying how dreaming big works. For example, Shopify never stops growing and is now the world’s leading e-commerce solution company. The continuing success of this company is the result of the comprehensiveness of its software that caters to every aspect of e-commerce, ranging from products and inventory to payment and shipping. The company is also engaged in serving a broad range of businesses serving small and midsize businesses (SMBs) and enterprise customers. The motto here is – create a versatile product serving a whole range of things, to help your customers save money and precious time.
3. Nothing inspires better than creativity
Software products lacking creativity soon find themselves replaced by their standard counterparts. As a SaaS business owner, your priority should be enabling creativity in building software solutions that can inspire and empower your target customers. A corporate culture that is the confluence of free thinkers, creators, and builders encourages creativity boosts in building innovative products and apps transcending the expectations of clients. While pandemic has virtually obliterated the physical workspace for professionals to brainstorm ideas creatively among themselves sitting in a room, it has been replaced by cloud-hosted software solutions enabling your teams to work together creatively. Dropbox is a good example of a creative cloud-hosted software solution that simplifies storage and organizing files. When local and cloud storage both are integrated seamlessly, it allows teammates to work creatively.
4. Adapting to a change is long-term survival mantra
The failure of Nokia has many contributory reasons, one of them is that the mobile manufacturing company didn’t acknowledge Android as the biggest market disruptor. While it is okay to focus on innovations, dreaming big, and enabling creativity to succeed in your SaaS business in today’s rapidly changing business landscapes, you must have to keep abreast with trends and adapt to a change. Since digitization emerged, innovations in technology have gone through rapid progression. Apparently, the companies which understood the accelerated technological innovations and adapted to the change consequently survived and thrived. Therefore, be ready to stay ahead of the curve to succeed and build sustainable momentum.
5. Create A Software Solution That Excites
As a SaaS business, the vibe and coolness of your software product largely determines the success of your business. That said, if your target customers are taking interest in your product, enjoying it, the success of the product reaching out to big users’ base is bound to happen. An exemplary role model to this context is Slack, a proprietary business communication platform equipped with innovative design.
Conclusion
To be successful in your SaaS business in an era of rapid change requires adherence to several factors, such as embracing a change, innovating and being creative, apart from dreaming big. These are the attributes that finally constitute eventual success of your business in today’s competitive business landscape.