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The first 5 steps to building your own SaaS application

This post is for non developer founders who want to build a SaaS application.

Software as a Service (SaaS) is a relatively small market – at $19 Billion in total revenues, it seems large, but compared to $250 Billion of the overall software market it seems minuscule. It has grown from nothing to this large number in the last 10 years. Similar to the eCommerce market, which seems large but is less than 15% of overall retail, the opportunities will start to be in the niches is my prediction.

The big question is when and how will it grow and where are the opportunities. While there are many specialist firms focusing on SaaS alone, the incumbent software companies (the largest of who are Microsoft, SAP, Oracle, etc.) are also making their own investments to move their businesses from selling licensed software to services.

One of the key opportunities I see is that ability for smaller, niche markets to be targeted using SaaS. Since the deployment model, time to value and cost are so much lower now than 10 years ago,  it is easy to build a niche product that can gain rapid fan following among the target customers and *if that customer base* does grow and end up having more budget it can be a lucrative market.

I do get the question often about the steps to build a SaaS business. Even if you dont intend to build a Venture funded business, the economics of SaaS are determined by cost of customer acquisition (CAC) and cost of servicing the customer (developing, operating and maintaining the software).

What I am increasingly starting to see is that most prototypes are either built by a developer founder, or outsourced (by a non technical founder) to “prove that the market exists“.

1. The first step I’d recommend before you start development, is to sign up 15-20 beta customers. Target people you know well who will stick through your crappy alpha, beta and version 1, so you can convince them that the value does exist when you iterate quickly.

For early beta customers, there are many techniques you can use including: a) setting up a launch page and promoting that launch page on social media b) setting up a launch page and buying Google adwords to drive signups and following up with signups via email c) blogging about the topic to share what you know about that market d) interviewing influential users before you launch or e) setup an email newsletter of great content for that industry and have many potential users subscribe to that newsletter.

2. The next step is to create an activity model and user flows.

This step is to ensure that you can know exactly what are the top 3 features you need to implement first which will make your product “must have” to solve the problem for your users.

In fact if you can identify the top feature (just one) that people will come back and use everyday, you should be good to go to the next step. Validate the top feature with your beta customer list, so you are building what they will use.

3. The next step is to create a mockup using wireframes. These are typically good to show the screens your user will go through and the experience as well. I would get a lot of feedback on the list of steps and screens before I build the prototype.

Typically in your first pass stick to under 7 screens would be my suggestion. That’s enough for a 45 second to 1 min “demo” and should give your users a feel for what the app will do. If they ask you for “one” feature that matters more to them than the ones you have, dont mock it up yet, but put it on your list until you have enough users interested.

4. Design your database schema. A database schema is good to share with your developers entities that exist in your application and what their relationship are. I tend to use DB Schema or just Freemind to show to fields without the datatypes.

5. Understand and select your “stack”. Even if you want to outsource your application development I’d recommend you talk to a few developer friends who can educate you on the stacks they use – what the front end languages and libraries would be, what the back end language would be and the database options. You will be more confident when you talk to your outsourcing company and also be able to help make tradeoffs when you need them.

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Customer Acquisition Models for a SaaS businesses

Software-as-a-Service is paradigm shift for the software industry. The most profound impact of SaaS is on the software businesses revenue and cost models and therefore the cascading impact it has on the way the business is organised.

Customer Acquisition for a SaaS business therefore requires a complete re-think. Since you are not going to get your money up-front,  how are you going to fund the costs of acquisition? The  conventional customer acquisition model where these costs are a manageable proportion of the cash generated up-front works fine in the old on-premise software business but will bleed you in the SaaS business. As a SaaS business you need to ensure that your CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost) remain under first year revenues (and even less if you are not adequately funded).

CAC starts with the cost of creating awareness and includes the sales effort costs. But what very often is not added to the CAC is the cost spent in getting a new account to revenue (aka implementation) as well as the cost of retaining the account right up to the period to which you calculate your LTV (Life-time Value). Depending upon the nature of the product this could be a few months or a few years. Given that you have signed up an annuity based revenue stream, your cost rightfully must include what you need to spend to ensure the tenure of that annuity.

So what sales model should you adopt? The choices range from a pure web-based one to a the tried and tested feet-on-street model and a hybrid one where you use the web to generate leads and feet-on-street to convert those leads. There is also the option of building a channel partner networks and selling through them.

The choice of the sales model to be adopted must take into account two key dimensions: The complexity of your product and it’s price point. A complex one enterprise application for instance will require substantial sales and pre-sales consulting support to sell as opposed to personal productivity app. Selling the former through a web model may not lead to much sales while trying to sell the the latter through a feet-on-street model will lead to a very high CAC and a drain on cash flows.

Channel partners can be a substitute for company sales reps but only when the product is in a category with a well established business need and the product brand is recognised with some degree of pull.

If the strategy requires using low-price as a differentiator or the market is unable to accept a high price-point for a new entrant, it will be foolhardy to try and build a direct sales model. At least it will be struggle to scale the customer acquisition.

A way out of this is to remove the complexity from the sale and switch to a substantially on-line sales model. In my next post I will talk about the challenges in creating an on-line sales model for a more complex product that is generally expected to be sold through a direct sales model. Meanwhile, I would be waiting to hear from you what you think needs to be thought differently when considering Customer Acquisition for SaaS businesses.

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“For a product business the product roadmap, customer segmentation and a delightful user experience are extremely crucial.”

Started in 2011 with only three employees, Emportant has grown to serve thousands of users with their cloud based end-to-end HR and Payroll products. Co-Founder and CEO, Emportant, Sandeep Todi says his company is focused to appeal to firms that would identify with its motto, ’Employees are Important’.  In an interview with ProductNation, he says his biggest learning is you must always take good care of your customers even as you keep expanding.

How would you describe the shifting paradigm from Outsourcing software to Software as a Service?

Software as a Service (SaaS) allows you to try business class software with ease and without being tied down with painful and expensive procurement and deployment cycles. With no upfront investment, it’s easy to try and buy SaaS products. In that sense, a SaaS network of products mimic the behavior of a ‘technology grid’ that you can tap into. In contrast, building custom software is like installing a captive power generation unit at prohibitive cost that is hardly justified when the grid is at your doorstep.

Companies have also realized that SaaS is not just amortizing costs over several years, but a new way of thinking. You are not selling a box, rather a product that’s constantly on the move. SaaS products see anything around 4-12 releases a year, are built on rapid release cycles. Moreover, customer feedback is acknowledged and incorporated in these rapid release iterations, something which is impossible in outsourced software or licensed software. The customer is therefore always on the latest release and does not suffer from “version fatigue”. Businesses are realizing this by adopting SaaS products with very little risk, tasting success and then quickly going on to embrace this new pedagogy.

In what way does this new model benefit users in terms of effectiveness, cost and support?

This SaaS apps-grid or ecosystem of apps that can co-exist with each other, is becoming more powerful by the day. No outsourced software is able to deliver this as elegantly and as cost effectively as SaaS product delivered over the cloud.

SaaS software is able to deliver benefits rapidly through new releases and eliminates risk of obsolescence. FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) has been used by traditional software vendors, scaring users about impending obsolescence. Having left with little choice, customers had to regardless opt for expensive upgrades and consulting efforts. A transparent SaaS business always keeps users on the latest version and ensures that this version works 100% with all customer environments. This dramatically lowers the cost of maintaining the product because you are no longer dealing with different versions that must be supported for different customers.

Tell us the story about your recently launched web based HRMS and Payroll software, Emportant? How did it happen?

We are in the HR software business for nine years now. Having sold our product PowerApps to several mid-to-large enterprises, we delivered mission critical and high performance HR/Payroll software to customers like Bank of Baroda, Ford, TI Group, ITC, L&T, GTL etc. In 2009, we wanted to adopt cloud computing in a big way and struggled for two years. It was then that we decided to carve out a separate company and a separate product for the cloud – this was the genesis of the birth of Emportant in 2011.

In creating Emportant we initially feared it would cannibalize our own product PowerApps. Thankfully, that did not happen and now both products have a good market presence of their own in two different customer segments.

Emportant.com drives every HR process with the Employee at the center. Every HR / Manager / Employee interaction can be initiated by the Employee and is available on a self-serve platform.

How easy or difficult is it to market a software product in India?

The going was pretty tough in 2011 as cloud was not very well accepted back then. Now it’s different, as CIOs are less wary about the cloud and more concerned about the stability of the vendor, maturity of the cloud product, etc.

Custom software is still viewed as a viable alternative primarily due to the inexpensive cost of hiring programmers. Moreover for a product sold to mid-market and large businesses, you have to traditionally sell one-to-one, engage in multiple meetings and convince customers about the solution fitment without landing into the trap of customization.

What are the factors that make a successful software product and the challenges faced in taking it to the market?

For a product business the product roadmap, customer segmentation and a delightful user experience are extremely crucial.

We have focused on how HR can be employee friendly and have a focus on achieving business results using software tools. The product’s benefits must be easily understood and should quickly demonstrate value. We have successfully kept bringing original thought and real customer feedback into our product, coming out with unique and uncomplicated ways of solving business problems.

Emportant drives HR administration in real time and moves away from the concept of HR software being only a system of record. This model of ours has led to a success rate of > 80% in converting prospects to customers.

We are now looking at stepping up our efforts on social media and on overseas customer acquisitions. Establishing credibility amongst large customers continues to pose interesting challenges and working with business partners means we have to convince them about long term value vs upfront margins.

What is the future of software products vis-a-vis services?

Software products and services will always have their own separate customer segments. I don’t think software products can solve every business problem out there and services have an important part to play. Customers are beginning to realize that service consumption burdens them with unreasonable costs of operation and in an increasingly competitive world they would rather adopt a product if one exists which can meet their requirements. The benefits of products to the customer in terms of cost, sustainability and continuous improvement are already well established.

Look at Dropbox’s recently announced Datastore API. They have just commoditized the offline storage market for independent app makers. In fact, storage is now being turned from a service into a product as will be any service which can be wrapped into a standardized and repeatable delivery.

What learning would you like to share with other product companies?

Every launch of a new version is a learning experience for us. We are faced with the challenge of what to build in the next version, how does it affect pricing and how does it affect our current customers. What we’ve learnt is that you must always take good care of your current customers even as you keep expanding. To ensure this, we reward existing customers with new features for free whenever we release new versions and keep them protected on price changes perpetually.

What role do you foresee ProductNation to play in nurturing the growth of software products?

The biggest obstacle to exponential growth of Indian products is the lack of access to experts in marketing, product growth and cutting edge technology. Too many companies face mortality because of an idea or execution gone wrong.

ProductNation will hopefully help overcome these hurdles quickly and open up the opportunity for Indian products to be recognized globally.