How to Build a Successful SaaS Product - Complete Guide [ 2021 ]

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Software

The ATC Guide to Building SaaS Products

SaaS Product Development

Nick Reddin

Published May 5, 2020

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Do you know that 80% of businesses use at least one SaaS application?

The SaaS market and revenue keep growing at an unbelievable pace year-on-year.

There is tense competition, and unless you keep up with the trends and benchmarks, your competition will surpass you. It means that the process of developing SaaS products has to be done right from the word go.

Here’s a video showcasing the SaaS product development cycle followed by us.

Advantages of building a SaaS product

SaaS products can quickly increase sales without much addition to resources or effort. If the products are built in a scalable way, there is no additional effort involved when your customer base grows.

Here are some advantages of developing SaaS products:

  • A centralized SaaS platform is simpler and cheaper to maintain
  • Cloud-based SaaS products can help reduce software piracy
  • You can quickly push out upgrades and security patches
  • It can be instantly accessed from anywhere in the world
  • And most importantly, SaaS products guarantee higher revenue when compared to conventional software

Recommended Steps

Well, to be frank, a great SaaS product is an outcome of a good idea coupled with visionary thinking, hard work, an ambitious organization, and some luck. That said, the approach to development doesn’t change much. Here are a few steps that’ll help kickstart product development.

Validate the Idea

It begins with finding answers to these simple questions:

What problem are you solving?
Who is your target audience?
What makes you different from the existing competition?
What’s your differentiator?

Market research will help you test your ideas and gather valuable information for questions that remain unanswered.

Get the Basics Covered

Discuss and draft a clear plan that covers security & privacy, customization & integration, and finally, scalability.

The PRD

The PRD is the most critical document that communicates your product’s capabilities, including its functions, testing terms, and releases to development. In a nutshell, it contains everything about the product, which makes it the go-to guide for your teams and the reference document for subsequent documents.

The MVP

Minimum Viable Product (MVP) refers to the essential core components such as user personas, actions, and solutions that create instant value with minimal costs involved. MVP is what the stakeholders will test.

Check out: Cost of Building a SaaS Product

The Market Strategy

A clear market strategy is required for the pricing model and if you are releasing your product in patches. The right approach depends on the product, understanding market penetration, long-term plans, target audience, and plenty of other factors.

Technology

With the long-term strategy in place, the next step will be to define the software specifications, platforms, and tools that are required for building your SaaS product.

The A-Team

The success of your product is heavily dependent on your development team. Hence, it is essential to choose the right leaders and a highly-skilled team to bring your ideas to reality.

Development Time

Take into account the time needed to build and go-to-market. Time is the essence of SaaS product development. Plan your budget, and don’t miss to factor hurdles and possible setbacks that may hamper your schedule.

The Workflow

Since product development involves multiple teams, collaboration, and communication are at the forefront. It is crucial to employ the right processes and tools to facilitate teamwork, ensuring that the product documents are available to every single person involved, enabling change requests to be transparent, and curbing detached practices.

At ATC, we turn your idea into a marketable product. Our hands-on experience in creating top-performing robust applications has helped us break down the product development cycle into phases that enable us to create software applications with better usability for our customers.

We deliver secure and scalable SaaS product development solutions with cost-effective strategies that’ll swiftly expand your business.

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