In recent years, the market for software-as-a-service products has developed into an environment in which there is extremely high competitive pressure. For companies that want to survive in this market environment, it is therefore important to grow as quickly as possible and to meet their customers’ requirements in the best possible way.
However, by continuously optimising their own offering and maintaining a constant dialogue with their customers, companies that offer SaaS can meet the ever-changing needs.
This is the only way to gain an advantage over the competition. There are various strategies available for companies to achieve long-term and lasting success. But which are they?
Full-service provider instead of single-product
Many SaaS companies only have a SaaS solution or a single product at the time they are founded. Many hours of work have been invested in product development. However, developers should ensure that this first product does not remain the only one in the future. Rather, a comprehensive product portfolio should be built up as quickly as possible. At the same time, this means that all innovations should not only focus on the first product.
If there is diversification between the different solutions, the SaaS companies get the chance to address a much broader target group and thus continuously increase their number of customers.
Structuring the sales area
In the further course of the company’s growth, the structuring of the sales department is an essential factor. Relying solely on a sales-assisted or self-service system is not necessarily a viable strategy for the majority of companies. After all, the two models serve very different customer requirements. For this reason, a hybrid model has a much greater potential, since the different needs of the customers are taken into account.
For self-service, products that are simpler in structure and therefore generally cheaper are particularly suitable. However, if the products are more cost-intensive and require a lot of effort to implement, personal sales support is usually necessary due to the complexity.
Customer wishes always in focus
For companies in the SaaS sector, customer satisfaction is always the most important factor for their success. However, the needs and requirements of the different target groups are extremely varied.
They can be divided into integration and security requirements, functional requirements and framework requirements. For example, the framework requirements include high reliability, speed and availability. These criteria are important for high product quality and form the basis.
The functionalities of the application itself are defined by the functional requirements, including the design of the workflow, data storage, fields and layouts. Since customer requirements are very complex, high usability, individual design options and flexibility are particularly important.
In order to meet the customer’s desire for the highest possible efficiency, it is also important to have seamless and simple integration as well as defined interfaces to other applications. However, security must never be neglected.
This is essential, especially with regard to legal customer requirements and the storage and processing of personal data. Therefore, the importance of aspects such as revision security, secure interfaces, device and rights management as well as consistent encryption of information is constantly increasing. This is the only way to offer customers the highest level of security and win their trust.
