Five SAAS trends in 2020
SaaS, or ‘Software as a service,’ is taking over the cloud computing market and becoming a much more viable choice for many companies. It’s cost-effective, simple, user-friendly and allows for maximum efficiency in the workplace. So what are the likely SaaS trends in 2020? Let’s take a look at five of them…
Artificial Intelligence
From once being seen as nothing more than a gimmick, AI has quickly become a technological game-changer. In business particularly, machine learning has become commonplace, with data alerts provided as soon as changes occur. Processes have become more automated, and will continue on an upward curve with productivity therefore increasing. Business leaders will be able to, for example, more efficiently address customer service operations, and improve the level of personalisation and responsiveness throughout their processes
Increased Thought Leadership
As of January 2020, only 24% of SaaS businesses publish content to educate or enlighten. Others are solely company-focused. Serving your target audience should be done with education as much as inspiration. Thought leadership is likely to become a prominent trend before the year is out.
From resources such as eBooks, interactive apps, blogs and more, SaaS gives businesses a depth of industry info which will be invaluable in an ever more competitive marketplace.
SaaS Pricing Policy Change
Traditionally, SaaS companies have built their business models based on flexible pricing structures as it’s been easy to drive revenue. However, industry saturation, better competition and the rapid development of SaaS has seen to it that companies have had to at least start to plan how they will reinvent their pricing models according to the needs of their clients or customers.
Vertical SaaS
Vertical SaaS is completely customisable and is an industry-specific and cost-effective option. Such flexibility lowers customer acquisition costs, and allows for more upselling opportunities.
Longer-term processes can be analysed on a daily basis to understand performance, and effectively address any needs. The software will be of industry standard, and therefore provides a higher degree of business value, whilst industry specific data and intelligence gathering will provide increased transparency and allow for sharper customer-focused insights.
API Connections
The need to integrate SaaS solutions into an existing business system is obvious, but initially SaaS providers didn’t come with a complete integration solution. Clients would be redirected to a specific API, which meant a more complicated set up.
The API (Application Programming Interface) has been a fundamental part of software development for years but redirecting customers to a third-party for integration solutions when integration is a requirement in every IT project of substance falls short of meeting your customer requirements.
More SaaS vendors now provide greater integration capabilities instead of redirecting their customers to third parties. Questions that should be asked of any provider in this area are;
Can this provider also integrate the legacy systems I use?
What capabilities is the provider offering me to integrate the SaaS within my existing business system?
Is my data protected while the integration process is worked through?
