What is SaaS?
Are you a small business owner looking to begin a new business with a few others or employees? This article will provide an understanding of how SaaS can improve your business.
But what is SaaS? Maybe you’ve heard the acronym spoken out loud, seen it on other content, or thought it was short for the word sassy, but you never really thought much of it. It means Software as a Service.
A simple way to put it, it’s software that you can use over the internet that helps you accomplish a task without you or the software needing to be located in a specific place.
If you remember in the 90s and early 2000s in order to use a software application, you had to order the disk or CD, wait for its arrival, and load it onto the internal company system or even your personal PC. If you wanted to share a document that used that software with someone else, they also had to have it installed on their computer.
SAAS products or applications work in a cloud environment or over the internet, so the end-user does not need to maintain any hardware or software.
You’ve probably used SaaS applications and may not have known it. For example, a big one is Microsoft Office. At one point you needed to install the disk to use the software. Now it has transitioned and is part of the Microsoft 365 suite which is on cloud technology. You just need a subscription and the internet to use it.
Now I’m oversimplifying the underlying workings of it, but all you need to do is use the application from an internet browser and get to work on making your small business better than it was before.
So let’s talk about why you need it and give a few SAAS products that can support your business.
Why do you need it? Here are 4 reasons it can help you build your business.
- Location Agnostic
- Scalability
- Pre-built features
- Focus on the business objective
Location Agnostic
That’s right. SaaS is location agnostic. It doesn’t care where you are located. And if you have adopted the mindset of being able to run a business from anywhere, your daily use of applications shouldn’t have a specific location either.
One of the qualities of a SaaS product is that as long as you have internet service and typically a subscription (unless you are using a free version somewhere), then you are not bound to a specific location.
And that’s great for your business if you are not looking to have a centralized hub location where all your IT employees need to reside.
Scaleability
One of the important aspects of any business, whether big or small is the ability to scale at the right time.
A lot of that has to do with making sure you have the right team, getting the right customers, and automating processes that were typically slowing you down.
Let’s say you have a team of three to four people but now your business is starting to produce some income and more volume and clients. It was fine to do business tasks manually but now you don’t have the time to focus on the smaller tasks that come with growing a new team.
Features to build your business
One of the many reasons to use a SaaS product is that it prevents you from having to go out and buy multiple applications to help you do the same thing.
For example, if you want to keep track of client profile information and you want to send out marketing emails to the same clients, you can get one product that does both (and more).
It simplifies your processes by using one product for your day-to-day business tasks. Gone are the days of having to learn multiple applications in order to run your business.
Stay Focused
When you are running a business, especially if it’s not an IT-focused business or accounting firm, having software to support those underlying processes allows you to focus on your main product or service.
There is a quote by T. Harv Ecker that goes “What you focus on expands”. If you want your business to grow you must focus on what’s bringing in the money. Let the supporting tasks be handled by an application that you don’t need to think twice about.
4 SAAS solutions you can use today
Listed below are just a fraction of the SaaS solutions that are on the market today. If there is an aspect of one or more solutions that sound promising to you, you can get started on implementing them in your business without delay.
Notion
Notion was founded in 2018 but has been seeing more traction since 2023. It is a productivity and note-taking application but it doesn’t stop there. This powerful and flexible tool allows you to create business processes the way you envision.
Here you can use it for the simplest tasks such as a way to capture ideas or something more advanced like making your own dashboards and landing pages on multiple topics. No need to have multiple Excel worksheets or folders on your machine. Everything is in one place in the cloud.
There are various templates you can use if you don’t have the time to build your own process. The goal is to streamline your business and Notion is waiting to do that for you. It’s free to get started.
Dubsado
Dubsado is a Business Management System founded in 2016. If you need something that manages your clients but also your day-to-day business activities, this could be the solution for you.
Everything can be navigated from the Dashboard. You can look at invoices, calendars, financial information, leads, and more.
Workflows used in Dubsado can propel your business to the next level. These allow you to automate and streamline your business processes. For example, you can follow up on a lead, send them a proposal, accept their signature on a document and send out a questionnaire all while you are out to lunch.
You can start using this solution today and start customizing it to fit the needs of your small business.
HubSpot
HubSpot is a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) tool that handles Marketing, Sales, and Service all in one solution.
It’s been around since 2006. The goal is to deliver a seamless experience to customers while also being able to work across internal teams.
You can create deals within HubSpot that support sales and progress. This allows you to move a deal through the pipeline until it’s closed visually. Its ticket functionality works the same way but is meant for more internal usage.
HubSpot tags its features as hubs. The Marketing hub handles items like email and social media. The Sales hub delivers quotes and schedules meetings. And the Services hub provides a way to reach out to customers using methods like email and surveys.
Other HubSpot hubs focus on the internal side of the business. The CMS hub is there to support website creation and the Operations hub allows management to review data analytics. It also integrates with 3rd party tools such as Google Meeting to support scheduling web meetings.
In business, the best decisions are usually based on the data that is collected. With HubSpot, all the data feeds into the same location and you get the reporting and data you need to determine the best direction for your business.
Trello
Trello is a Kanban-style application that allows projects to be organized into boards. You can easily see who is assigned a task and the progress of a project. The beauty is that all of the project items can be seen on one dashboard.
This solution can be customized and built from scratch or you can use any of the myriad of templates pre-selected for you. With this Kanban-style system, the different topics or cards can move across multiple lists to show the progression of a task or project until it’s complete.
Within each card, details can be added and tagged to team members allowing the assigned person to see those updates. Trello allows for attachments, checklists, due dates and more to be associated with a card providing the detail needed for a task. It’s a collaborative tool that team members can use on a regular basis for all to be aligned on the current project.
As with the other solutions provided here today, this tool can be used right away with standard functionality. If more functionality is needed, then you can upgrade for an additional cost.
Get Started
If you have a small business or if you are a solopreneur, I encourage you to start using a SaaS solution for your business. The products I’ve described are just a subset of what is available for use.
A SaaS solution will save you time so that you can focus your energy on money-making efforts. A quick signup is typically what is needed to get started and you are on your way.
