The SaaS guide for 2021: the trends, tools & stats shaping tech this year

With the immense power of remote work, it brings to its users, the Software as a Service (SaaS) industry is going through immense evolution in all its products. The sudden hit of the COVID-19 to the whole world has only amplified the use of SaaS products, giving much power and flexibility to the remote workforce. To give you a brief background, the SaaS industry revolves around products that distribute data online to be accessible from a browser on any device. Companies can then continue to host the software and provide constant IT support. This allows for stronger network security, greater collaboration, additional features, and straight-forward, upfront prices. SaaS businesses are built in three phases: setup, growth, and stabilization.

Types of SaaS products to include in your stack

To create the most well-rounded SaaS stack, some of the SaaS products that are worth investing in for most types of businesses include Marketing (tools for email marketing, design, social media, lead generation and marketing automation); sales (tools for prospecting, nurturing and closing deals); customer relationship management, customer service, development, proposals, finance, data collection, analytics, operations, communication, project management, e-commerce, and events.

It has been estimated that more than 30% of the remote workforce would continue to work in the same setup even after the end of the pandemic. This only means that the SaaS industry will expand further in the year 2021 and beyond. Keep pace with what’s happening with these points that are shaping the SaaS market.

Centralized Analytics

As digital transformation across industries accelerates, businesses across sectors look to data to streamline their organization while gaining a deeper insight into their customers or users. A centralized analytics will enable users to look into their data from a single point of truth, discovering hidden insights by utilizing modern solutions such as performance dashboards, where every member of the team has access to the most vital business information. The centralized nature of SaaS models will also enable users to access data from any device, at any time, which is imperative for on-the-go settings.

Client Adaptive

The SaaS industry is also developing completely customizable, cost-effective, industry-specific, refined services. This ability to adapt features according to client demand and industry (and effectively address customer needs within their niche) results in more flexibility and upselling opportunities, and lower customer acquisition costs. This type of customized service also provides benefits like customer intelligence, pre-defined metrics and KPIs, a higher degree of business value for company operations and performance, and improved data governance.

Intregration into an existing business system

Some companies may want to migrate all their data to a cloud platform, but many actually would rather harmonize it with their already existing infrastructure in order to improve it. This can pose as a challenge for many SaaS providers, giving them no choice but to redirect their clients to a third party to supply the specific APIs enabling the customer to integrate the cloud solution into their existing system. However, more and more SaaS vendors are now providing greater integration capabilities instead of redirecting their customers to third parties.

Low-Code Capabilities

There seems to be an emergence of ‘no-code’ and ‘low-code’ platforms, allowing startups to bring their SaaS-based content to life with less technical experience. Having less code to write to form the foundations of your platform or solution means that technical staff or contractors can spend more time driving innovation or sweating the stuff that results in a real competitive edge.