How to bet on a SaaS platform

In this article you will learn about: why SaaS rule our world, what are the risks, how to build your tech stack (for non developers), plus some very practical advices.

In any role, you have to fulfill many missions that require you to often ask yourself: What is the best way to accomplish it? And you are often faced with a binary solution: do internally or rely on a third party. The reality is more complex and often tend to miss a crucial player: software.

Many things we do leverage technology, whether in our daily lives or at work. But we often tend to forget about it. Some experts will say that when technology disappears it means you have a great piece of it. Unfortunately, you should always be aware of it. Indeed, technology is what facilitates most of what we do, and soon what will dictate what we should do (hello A.I.).

So let’s embrace the fact that Software and especially Software As A Service (SaaS) is the answer to many problems… We won’t debate this statement here. But feel free to comment should you feel strongly about it :)

Looking at the offering, you can easily understand that SaaS is here to stay. But there are many pitfalls when it comes to building your technological stack:

1. It becomes very specialized: I’m baffled by how many tools are out there now. 10 years ago, the choice was simple and tools were easy to categorize. It was mostly a matter of choosing between best-of-breed and an ERP-like system, a leader and a challenger. Now, it is easy to have a stack that amounts to dozens (with an “s”) of software. This makes the complexity of the system grow exponentially and the cost too.
2. It’s risky when it comes to data: I’m not talking here about the joys of GDPR or the risk of being hacked. Simply put, when you add software, it is rarely self-sufficient. You often need to plug it on your website, your CRM, a database… and things start to be complicated. SaaS implicates having systems talking together, so you leverage all the data (attributes and events) you gather on a user journey. Data consistency is key and all the tolls don’t organize it the same way and may have some mandatory fields that cannot be changed or removed, meaning that you might have the same data stored under two different labels. There is also the issue of sync. When people use one of the tools, you need to ensure that they don’t create inconsistency in the system that is very hard to trace back.
3. It’s costly: As said previously, the cost is an issue. First, all tools need to charge a minimum fee to be profitable, no matter the width of the scope they cover or their importance. Second, the cost can change vastly between plans. Meaning that a tool that is critical to your work at first might become unaffordable when you need it the most. The total cost means that most of the tools become impossible to afford if you are not working in a high margin or high volume business.
4. It doesn’t grow with you: Not only will some plans become too expensive due to their pricing structure based on volume or number of users, but some tools are not going to grow with you. You need to be comfortable changing tools and understand how far they will go with you.
5. It evolves continuously: SaaS are not static pieces of software, they evolve. And not always in the way you expect. Software companies can decide to sunset a feature, discontinue its development, pivot, etc. Of course, they also develop new features, advanced functionalities, better UI/UX, but it is a two-sided coin, and you don’t know what happens when you flip it. Lastly, the market is very dynamic and acquisitions and mergers are frequent and impact the roadmap of development.

There is a SaaS for everything, whatever your need, you will always come across a tool that does it. My advice is to make the switch to a SaaS once you have wasted all other options and need to scale (you might want to scale directly and need software straight away, that’s A-OK). Finding a low tech solution often forces you to focus on your real objective and what will make a difference. As for all projects, defining the need still is the best first step.

When buying SaaS, it is crucial to understand the “philosophy” of each of the tool.

When it comes to building your stack you need a global approach, you need to identify all the needs and understand when each tool comes into action, also when a tool will have to go. This will help you see the interactions and the overlap. Usually, you need a core tool such as your CRM or equivalent and build around it. Assess the importance of each tool, its impact on your business (and not just your daily tasks), complexity, cost and dependencies. Creating a business case might feel a bit overkill, but it will provide you guidance, help you measure success, and focus on your ROI.

It is crucial to understand the “philosophy” of each of the tools. Indeed, each product follows a vision that clarifies what will be the product capabilities for the years to come. This helps you see if a product will expand horizontally (increasing its scope) or vertically (adding more advanced functionalities). A simple example is an emailing tool like Mailchimp. The product started as a simple emailing software, easy to use. They added automation to make the use more core to marketing workflows and have now landing page capabilities. Pretty hard to predict except if you follow their product news and public announcements.

You need to embrace a tool and be ready to let it guide what you are doing.

The philosophy is also core to better using a tool. A classic mistake is to go heads-on in using a product, creating workarounds to do exactly what you need. Alas, after some months, a new feature that prevents your workaround to keep functioning appears, putting you into a tight spot. Spending time reading the company mission, product vision, accessing the roadmap, talking to customer success will help you comprehend this and make the best choices in using the tool. Overall, talk to your customer success often, explain your challenges, ask to be involved in the product development, get access to all the beta (sometimes more insightful than useful).

Explore the alternatives before committing. There are great websites to find what are the best tools on the market. You can use AlternativeTo or the famous G2 to assess the options. Read the reviews and do not hesitate to reach out to customers/users. To find them independently, you can use SimilarTech which will give you a list of website using the selected technology.

You need to embrace a tool and be ready to let it guide what you are doing. Software capabilities are an opportunity not to leave aside. Indeed, you need to maximize the use and the value you extract from it.

Lastly, a SaaS remains a piece of technology. You need to be comfortable with it. This is a skill that can be learned, understanding a couple of basic concepts is a must:

• Actions have consequences. Options you tick, changes you make might impact many things, so you need to have a good knowledge of how the software works.
• Organization is key. Naming is the most important thing. It simplifies the overall understanding of the object, maintenance, search and expansion (multiple languages or silos). Define the naming rules and enforce them. Beware of the way you can sort info within the product and of the limitation in terms of characters displayed to make it usable.
• Autosave is not a given. Save often, don’t rely on the hope that the software will do it for you.
• All roads lead to Rome. But they won’t all be paved nor allow for U-turns. You can often achieve the same results in multiple ways or gather the same data in different places but each decision you make might impact you later on.

I hope this article will help you approach SaaS with confidence. Do not hesitate to reach out to me to discuss it further!

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Originally published at https://www.linkedin.com.