To run your business smoothly and successfully, you need to reduce operational costs while increasing productivity. This can be achieved by choosing the technology that is most appropriate for your business. Today, many companies, especially smaller ones, have been steering towards SaaS to run their business smoothly and successfully.
Times have changed and SaaS companies have realized that in the post-Covid era, the ability of companies to survive and scale despite a lack of resources or other disruptions is what actually makes or breaks brands. SaaS platforms have turned out to be the go-to option for small and medium-sized businesses to outdo their competitors in the hyper-competitive market.
What Is SaaS (Software as a Service)?
SaaS is a method adopted by companies to deliver their applications over the internet – to offer their service to any device with an internet connection and a web browser. Therefore, by adopting SaaS, you can make your applications available to all employees within your organization without needing to purchase multiple expensive full-price licenses.
SaaS integration provides flexibility in services, makes it easier to achieve crucial objectives, and ultimately helps you fulfill your vision by achieving your organizational goals. Many businesses heavily rely on SaaS as it lets them completely concentrate on their core tasks without being overly concerned about software upgrades and updates. The SaaS model enhances workflow, improves coordination and encourages employees to collaborate, and gives customers the freedom to use the software on a cloud-based app.
5 Ways SaaS Can Help Your Business Grow
Here are five ways in which your business can gain benefits from Cloud technology.
1. You Get Seamless, Automatic Updates
Adopting the SaaS model enables you to receive software upgrades, updates, and new functions immediately upon their release. This will not just boost efficiency, but will also provide you with important and up-to-date business statistics, figures, and information. It will keep you updated on the latest industry trends and business insights. Security of data is something that concerns business owners and companies more than almost anything; however, SaaS solutions take care of this, as they get automatically updated, which secures your data effectively.
These automatic updates will also make your system seamless as they fix mission-critical bugs. Automatic upgrades allow employees to use the latest innovative features of your business applications, helping them carry out their day-to-day tasks smoothly. Companies that do not adopt the SaaS model may be forced to follow the traditional approach of manual upgrading, which requires a higher investment of time and resources.
2. Your Team Gets Easy Remote Access
An important benefit of cloud technology is that it allows businesses to get started immediately without the need for any manual setup, installation, or updating. This is especially helpful for small businesses or start-ups as it makes them location independent, as they may not have the budget to set up a location-dependent office environment.
Once you have signed up for a cloud service and gained access for all your employees, you can get started right away and conduct your entire business operation on a cloud computing platform. Your employees can work remotely, helping them avoid long and tiring commutes.
Cloud technology provides flexibility to employees as it allows them to work from the comfort of their homes. Remote work, when done right, can do wonders for your business as it helps the employees be more focused, thereby improving their productivity.
3. You Save Time and Money
SaaS solutions can reduce application costs, which is something every business looks for. Cloud technology can help you cut down on several costs such as IT infrastructure costs, transportation costs (like subsidizing commute fees for employees), and other maintenance costs.
One main reason for the popularity of SaaS among business units is that it allows scalability and tailored solutions for specific needs. Minimum initial investment and lesser hardware costs will not only reduce your investment risks but will also allow you to control your full business functionality.
The SaaS business model avoids the need for on-premises installation or infrastructure that is usually needed for traditional software development. Installation costs can be heavy on the wallet for business owners, especially for small business owners, as they may have to shell out a comparative fortune. Therefore, they should adopt cloud technology by using SaaS integration, which will help them save money on installation costs.
The process of installation, upgradation, migration, testing, and development can take up a long time and may even exceed the deadlines. With a SaaS business model in place, SaaS applications can be deployed quickly without any need for infrastructure management and maintenance.
SaaS business models will help business owners save their precious time and money, allowing them to focus on business strategies, sales, customer satisfaction, and other core areas of their business.
4. Your Business Gets Much More Flexibility
In order to survive and thrive in today's competitive world, flexibility is a must. You should ensure that your business is flexible so that it gains a competitive advantage in the higher-level market – including everything from its culture and strategy to its business model. Your business's flexibility is determined in part by its approach toward system upgradation and updation, added users and features, and new applications.
New user addition, new customized business solutions, and feature customization are some incredible aspects of a SaaS business model that allows multiple users to work together.
Access can be provided in such a way that data can be shared between employees in the same department – or even across departments – providing a seamless workflow.
Adding new services and solutions allows information to be shared between teams at any time, at any place, and from any device. This will improve collaboration and work coordination, and will ultimately improve your overall business efficiency.
Collaboration is important to avoid any kind of dependency. Your business team analyzes the reports and data provided by the marketing department for things like website traffic, for instance – who in turn got that data from the IT team? They depend on these details to see and get an understanding of the real-time picture of the business.
SaaS solutions allow multiple users from different teams and departments to work together under the same software suite. This allows multiple users to work on the same document. So, an individual from the business team can access the cloud report prepared by the IT department and analyze it, instead of waiting for them to email the document, making a copy of the file and editing it, and returning it – and in the process creating a duplicate file that could cause confusion in the long term. SaaS solutions reduce the dependency of the business team on the IT department, as SaaS applications are powerful and efficient.
5. Your Business Becomes More Secure and Reliable
When compared to on-premise solutions, SaaS is more secure and reliable, as SaaS service providers make no compromise when it comes to the safety of the systems. They invest heavily in security and also have teams of experts whose expertise and dedication ensure that safety is not compromised.
“Information is wealth.” Businesses rely heavily on data to understand where they stand and what needs to be done next. Every business owner wants to be assured that data will always be available. Sometimes, an outage or any other problem can wipe out almost the entire data you have collected so far, putting your business at risk of being shut down. If your business relies on the cloud and SaaS services, you don't have to worry about this as their robust disaster recovery plan ensures that your data will be available in case an outage occurs.
Cloud technology has been instrumental in addressing security concerns by creating redundancy in an organization's information management approach. SaaS solutions have not just been backing up the local data to the cloud in real-time, but have also been providing protection mechanisms against security breaches. At a time when potential threats have been evolving quickly, this has come as a boon for companies, especially smaller IT workforces, as it has helped them reduce their dependence on physical infrastructure and manual backups.
Final Thoughts
If you are a SaaS business, the market remains fertile for the reasons outlined above – since the industry is constantly evolving, you should try to be as innovative as possible, especially because customers are always on the lookout for solutions that offer value and resolve their pain points quickly.
If you are a business looking to modernize your technology in a way that makes you more productive, secure, and efficient, it is clear that you should be looking towards cloud services and SaaS.
Quick deployment, lower investment risk, and data security are some important reasons why many companies have SaaS solutions as their primary choice to fulfill their organizational requirements.
Adopting SaaS is the ideal option for businesses, especially small businesses as it allows customers to subscribe to robust SaaS solutions for a much lower cost.
Author bio
Andy Beohar is the Managing Partner of SevenAtoms, a Google and HubSpot-certified agency in San Francisco. Andy develops and manages ROI-positive inbound and paid marketing campaigns for B2B & Tech companies. Connect with Andy on LinkedIn or Twitter.
