Workflow is a keyword in any business, leaving out all the BPM noise and the trendy terms, simply put, workflow is the series of steps and the logic you follow to do your work.
Once upon a time, business was simple. You start as a small team with a vague workflow that changes every day as you learn through trial and error and come up with solutions. Designing a workflow was slow, but was unique to each business, always improving and never written in stone because it wasn’t based on a software.
The world has changed, today running a business is all about data, tools and tech. If you don’t use the latest and greatest tool, you’re told you’ll be put out of business because you will lose the competitive advantage. You will be told not to think, you’re too small to innovate and your business is not unique.
SaaS products come as templates for success in a specific industry, they are marketed as a perfect solution for all issues in that industry. You’ll be swamped with testimonials and stories about how their customers’ workflow has been improved by opting for that SaaS.
There is no debate on the possibilities SaaS solutions bring to small businesses, mainly the access to great tools for unmatched prices in the bespoke solutions market. But the biggest downside is the opinionated nature of a SaaS, it’s always built to fit a specific workflow. The designer followed the feedback from the majority and provided features to please the most, but there is no guarantee you are in that majority.
Nowadays young businesses while trying to figure out their workflow are being sold on the idea of squeezing themselves in a pre-made one-size-fits-all template. But what other choices do they have? Manage the business in spreadsheets like cavemen? Or invest in a bespoke solution for a workflow they don’t know if it works?
There is no perfection, only beautiful versions of brokenness.
― Shannon L. Alder
To use SaaS products to your advantage, you need to understand what they truly are, not a workflow provider but building blocks for your workflow. A SaaS shouldn’t dictate your workflow, but your workflow should decide which SaaS to use and how exactly it should contribute to the global workflow.
As a small business, you don’t get the luxury of an abstract workflow, because at the end you have to choose from a set of building blocks. Thinking about SaaS as building blocks, opens a new world of possibilities.
Instead of seeking perfection by asking “I’m starting a business, what SaaS will solve all my problems and work for my small operation yet scale infinitely”. You ask realistic questions like “I’m starting a business, my business in the short term will need to deal with aspects X,Y and Z, then what combination of SaaS products (or other solutions) will work for me the most and how can I make it as seamless as possible”
You can’t afford to create your own full-blown blocks. But you can still glue those blocks together and fill the in-betweens for a polished workflow. The glue we talk about here is a software layer that joins multiple SaaS products to work together seamlessly.
We become what we behold. We shape our tools, and thereafter our tools shape us.
― Marshall McLuhan
SaaS solutions understand their own limitations, they can’t make everyone happy so they allow their products to be extensible via APIs or other means. The openness — what we’d like to call gluability — is a mandatory requirement in choosing a product, a closed system is a dead end that you should never take.
You might have used this gluability before as a Zap from Zapier, an Applet from IFTTT, an integration provided by one SaaS to talk to another, or a custom software that talks to a SaaS or two.
The beauty of gluability lies in the componentization of your workflow. As long as you have gluable components you can arrange them in any flow you think works best. If not, changing things isn’t as hard nor expensive as redesigning a rigid system. Also, each component becomes replaceable, by changing the glue interface, you can switch between similar products and harvest the power of a better tool with less effort.
Time to address the elephant in the room, cost! The cost-effectiveness of SaaS products is undeniable, thus you should use that to your advantage. Depending on what subset of features you use, building and maintaining an alternative from scratch will cost the same as years of subscription payments.
There is no need to reinvent available decent wheels when you can add a few components to make it good, then great, don’t be afraid to move through the beautiful versions of brokenness because one day you’ll find one you like and might even call perfect!
If you are having troubles gluing together your workflow, we are SaaS Glue saas-glue.com, we have made it our mission to build efficient integrated workflows. Feel free to reach out, we helped many businesses refine their workflows and would be glad to help you as well.
