Using SaaS To Jumpstart Your Startup
With its predicted value of over $140 billion dollars by the year 2022, Software as a Service, or more simply known as SaaS, has emerged as one of the most defining business models in the IT industry in recent years. Businesses are using more and more of these services to streamline their processes and accelerate their growth while also offsetting development and time expenses.
No matter what industry you are in or what business you provide, there are an overwhelming variety of SaaS tools at your disposal, unfortunately with quantity comes the pressure of suitable selection. What most startups fail to realize is that in the initial phase of development not choosing the right SaaS is almost as disadvantageous as not utilizing SaaS at all.
Choosing the right SaaS tools
Does this tool suit the current needs of my startup? Will my startup utilize the tool to its full potential to justify its cost?
There are various requirement questions that should be answered before selection and subsequent integration of SaaS. At the development phase of your startup venture, it is important to select SaaS that can support its launch. Implementing SaaS to your business is not a one-size-fits-all solution.
It is important to:
- Identify your business’ core function.
- Analyze SaaS solutions that fit the size and requirements of your business.
- Never forget the point of using SaaS is to save as much development costs and time as possible.
Identifying and Prioritizing Core Functions
If you are an up and coming startup, expending resources to develop commonly used functions such as content feed, notification, forums, commenting, videos, messaging, spam management and other features that are neither the core function of the product nor your startup’s unique value proposition is an inefficient use of time and resources.
In development, it is more beneficial to integrate pre-made modules to cover those low priority but common functions so your startup may focus resources on building the innovations unique to the startup.
Analyzing SaaS Solutions To Fit Your Startup
Determining whether or not a SaaS solution is a good product/market fit is a continuous process as your business grows. An entrepreneur must decide the SaaS service provider by analyzing the needs of the startup, checking the efficiency of integration and user flow of the service, and ensuring that technical support is reliably on-call for any issues.
When choosing SaaS solutions, consider one of the most innovative service providers to enter the market in recent years, CAN.
CAN SaaS: Helping You Start Your Startup
CAN (Community Alliance Network), as an alliance of startups and developers, collectively provides a comprehensive set of SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) tools for communities, in order to let a variety of organizations, from traditional companies through nonprofits to virtual organizations, build and run a community without an in-house tech team.
For startups with limited resources or small businesses that are looking to scale, CAN tools can be integrated into your service to cover a variety of its functions. If your business requires:
- membership management, account systems,
- reputation system defined by badges, levels or experience points,
- communication methods such as real-time chat, forum, video conference,
- governance tools,
- incentive and economy backed by community tokens, community wallet, and budgeting, compensation distribution, investment, donation, etc.
These functions are all provided through services such as CANpass, CryptoBadge, D.Vote, Code-in-Force, Moim, and other services.
The true value in utilizing CAN SaaS is seen in how these tools are able to be assembled like legos and seamlessly integrated to build a service that is the perfect fit for your startup and its requirements.
Saving Time and Costs Using CAN SaaS
It is obviously less time and cost-intensive to pay a service subscription and be given ready-to-go services than to build from scratch. If the product already exists, there is no justifiable reason to build it again. With SaaS, service providers like CAN, shoulder all the burden of security and performance, which means that these systems are a faster, reliable option for startups looking to build and launch their services.
Become a CAN Ally
CAN (Community Alliance Network) is an alliance of startups and developers collectively developing SaaS tools for communities.
If you are interested in becoming a CAN Ally as a developer partner or mentor, or a startup interested in utilizing our services, please visit communityalliance.network for more information.
We look forward to building with you.
