2 Reasons SaaS Enablement Matters
If you’ll recall, in our previous blog post, “What Does a Full Turnkey SaaS Solution Look Like?” we shared a staggering SaaS statistic — this year alone, the SaaS industry is projected to reach nearly $130 billion. As SaaS grows in 2022 and beyond and businesses like yours aim to reap the benefits of this growing industry, embracing SaaS enablement as a vital part of the process will be critical.
SaaS enablement encompasses not only the delivery of the software as a service, but also all the associated automated tasks and operations management procedures needed to effectively and efficiently manage all the responsibilities that come with being a SaaS provider and not simply a software vendor.
Here are two key reasons SaaS enablement matters in your go-to-market SaaS strategy:
1. SaaS Enablement Provides the Power of Convenience
For years, publishing SaaS applications to the cloud marketplace required too much time, energy, and money; now, in more recent years, there’s been a shift toward convenience.
In the past, for example, an application may have been developed with many features up-front, but without the “as a Service” capability consumers desired, leading to a low adoption rate by users. Now, products are much more likely to be offered “as a Service,” with the capability to add features later—good SaaS products evolve to meet customer needs and are scalable and configurable!
SaaS enablement also helps overcome two barriers that have historically prevented the development of robust and fully featured “as a Service” offerings:
- Developers are a scarce and valuable resource and their priority, as assigned by management is on the core features of their software application, not the “as a Service” features.
- It takes time and specific skillsets to develop the mindset and expertise necessary to create a robust and fully featured set of automation and operational capabilities for SaaS—time and effort that neither management nor the developers want to invest in what is often seen as a distraction.
By having SaaS enablement provided by a separate, already developed and tested platform that runs independently of the software being delivered as SaaS, these barriers are eliminated.
2. SaaS Operational Service Delivery Competency
It’s no secret that the talent pool of developers is highly competitive and attracting developers to work on your software applications can be difficult. Building robust software applications with “as a Service” capabilities would also require experience with many complex development capabilities.
How many developers can you name that are experts at ALL of the following capabilities required to create SaaS products for the cloud marketplace?
- Multi-tenancy
- Subscription management
- Monitoring
- Metering
- Monetizing
- Reporting
- Compliance
- Security
- Plus 20+ more development capabilities
On top of these requirements, it is necessary for those developers to have operational experience and the ability to deliver your software products as a service 24/7. Being a SaaS provider means your company now has the responsibility for day-to-day operations. That’s a lot to manage.
SaaS enablement is in effect a “separation of concerns” between the Software application and its “as a Service” capabilities. This approach promotes a synergy between developers of applications and MSPs. MSPs have the organization structure and resources to do operational delivery and can serve as the SaaS providers, creating a new revenue stream for them, and freeing up the developers of the application. The application development staff can focus on
developing the core features of the software applications that enhance its appeal to the market, while the MSPs can leverage the SaaS Enablement platform to deliver a good customer experience with all of the day-to-day support required.
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