Among other internet services, cloud computing services that provide consumers with centralized access have recently gained popularity. The reason? Software as a Service (SaaS) enables businesses to communicate without internal technical assistance in a cloud environment. The SaaS environment in the cloud supports outside SaaS experts who can manage any technological challenges arising from SaaS distribution models (such as private, public, and hybrid delivery).

According to Allied Market Research, the global SaaS market size will expand from $121.33 billion in 2020 to $702.19 billion by 2030, with a CAGR of 18.82 percent between 2021 and 2030. How is a SaaS application built?

The demand for custom software development services is on the rise for a number of key reasons, including adaptability to changing market demands, licensed operational management, smart tools and well-supported data monitoring and reporting, tried-and-true skill advancements, and cloud competency.

What is a SaaS Application?

Let us first understand SaaS systematically before headfirst on how to build a SaaS product. SaaS applications are basically centralized accommodated, customized, web-based software. Obtainability, security, and routine application gateway are all coped with by the cloud service providers.

For instance, a bank is a suitable analogy for the SaaS delivery model that preserves privacy and provides secure facilities to its consumers who are dependent on this model. These customers utilize standardized financial processes while being in the SaaS infrastructure along with the technologies that care about authorized and unauthorized data/information access. This bank could receive the following elements of the SaaS delivery model.

1. Multiple-Tenant Architecture. One of the primary elements of the SaaS delivery model is an architecture where SaaS users, end users, stakeholders, and SaaS developers share a common network to maintain the model. The maintenance occurs under centralized standards that are usually showcased as code written in programming languages – understandable by SaaS developers.
2. Simple Customisation. A subsequent element of the SaaS model in a bank infrastructure would be no off-shell product but on-demand software that could meet business needs.
3. Improved Access. Lastly, anyone can retrieve improved data from shared networks while accessing simplified and controlled rights, keeping track of data usage, and guaranteeing reliable information.

SaaS utilizes the end user’s internet! The emblematic SaaS web app is like My Yahoo or Amazon Web Services (Amazon.com experience. The best thing about these apps is tactics allowing easy customization with frequent (say within months or weeks) upgrades in integrations.

Advantages of Building a SaaS Product

Small to large enterprises build SaaS applications to have a lot of benefits. To list a few, this section has covered some of the prominent benefits companies may relish within a SaaS environment.

1. You can have Access to Cloud-Based Sophisticated Applications. In order to let customers use on-demand integrated applications, SaaS offers kinds of applications that require no installation, update, and management. Even the most complicated software these days are affordable to anyone who requires SaaS integration in their business structure. The catch is if your business lacks in acquiring, deploying, and maintaining requirements, SaaS can meet the gaps.
2. You Only Pay for The Feature You Need/Use. With SaaS, you can save money by using off-shell, customized, and on-demand products depending on your business needs.
3. You may Instantly Mobilise your Staff using SaaS. Since you can access and create SaaS applications from anywhere anytime, you can quickly mobilize your staff (their technical efforts) within moments. With SaaS-based applications, you do not need to worry about rebuilding or maintaining your application. All you need to do is relax about your acquired product.

SaaS App Development And Deployment Steps

Wondering how to build a SaaS application? Follow these simple steps, along with the provided tips and tricks within each heading.

Step 1. Idea Generation and Validation

Know the truth of this world – every solution that exists in this world is to solve (most or at least one) problems whether digital or physical. When it comes to SaaS application development, you can also bring a solution that can solve issues related to SaaS. For instance, the following are a few SaaS platform inherited use cases:

1. Reddit and Facebook Groups that provide users with searching and exploring options
2. Quora let people browse questions in order to know the interest of users.
3. Apps that pay attention to the chat of professional and personal lives of people.
4. Drawing conclusions from other experiences.

All you need to do is start digging the seed (idea) as deep as demanded. For instance, we got the idea and wanted to let people know the steps of building SaaS applications. Most people can read this guide and go with their custom SaaS solutions journey. But people with no knowledge of SaaS won’t use this guide. Therefore, while providing the steps, we also covered SaaS platform-related other terminologies in order to help all readers in their knowledge and integration process.

Step 2. Planning

So, you have explored your idea in the first step. In the next step, you need to brainstorm possible solutions that can go with your identified problem. Your brainstormed ideas may involve:

• Review existing solutions to your identified problem
• Find shortfalls in the existing solutions
• Discuss your idea with technical professionals
• Ask customer-centric questions and know the possible answers
• Find customers who need your proposed solution and have a 1:1 discussion with them. This will help you know the future of your intended solution.

Whatever solution you choose for building SaaS applications, always remember niches get rich with the reference of time. No solution in this world is useless.

Step 3. Discovery Phase

Now is the time to discover what will you do. Make a summary document covering your estimated budget, predicted market size and sales forecasts for at least three years. You can call this document a business plan which may point out:

• Your unique selling proposition USP
• Your identified problem and intended solution
• Your market niche and target market
• Your competitors
• Your partners
• Your revenue-generating model
• Your Minimum Viable Product (MBP)

Step 4. Application Design

Design is the most important aspect of building SaaS applications. Without a user-friendly design, your proposed solution won’t sell – no matter what kind of market segment you have.

Read Also: What is Software as a Service Fee Like?

3 most significant SaaS app design considerations are:

• Mobile app navigation – If you are building SaaS mobile apps, include all types of well-organized navigations in order to make your application appealing.
• Typography in SaaS applications – Make your typo readable, clear and always convenient to human and computer eyes.
• Colour schemes – Not only a SaaS platform application but all types of business applications require standard design and choices of colors.

Since most people are technical experts and most organizations do not have a design team or department in your firm, you can acquire professional UX and UI design services.

Step 5. Architecture Design

Building SaaS applications is not an easy task most beginners think. It requires a solution that meets the complex issues and security challenges. While meeting these cloud challenges, you have to meet your company policies, along with defined compliance standards and security practices. Not only this but meeting SaaS’s also perfect architecture requires excessive knowledge of cloud infrastructure.

Here are a few tips for you to execute this phase properly in your journey of building SaaS applications.

• For security purposes and compliance requirements, make sure to conduct due diligence on your SaaS delivery model.
• Once you conduct due diligence, determine your data’s sensitivity and protection standards.
• Legalize your cloud infrastructure by blocking not necessary solutions. This will prevent shadow technologies in your solution while ensuing light use cases of your defined architecture.
• Ensure cloud endpoint protection using SaaS-compatible technologies for your proposed solution.
• Know the mutual understanding between the cloud service provider and your company to ensure you are doing your part correctly.

Step 6. Software Development

With the perks of SaaS applications, there are some aspects that most web software development services practice. For a cloud-ready SaaS platform development, you must also remember the following points.

• Leverage microservices (cycles of each module in a proposed solution) architecture in your SaaS app development.
• Compartmentalize data accessibility in order to manage as little raw data as possible.
• Remain thrifty with application layers amid data exchange across zones.
• Use cloud scaling approaches to differentiate between vertical and horizontal components.
• Include security features in particular for your software design.

The same strategy goes for professional fintech software development services. Professionals keep these practices in order to meet the canons of SDLC.

Step 7. QA and UX Testing

After evolving your software, you need to test your (to be) developed SaaS application. There are various tools for Quality Assurance (QA) and User Experience (UX) testing that perform really well in the cloud environment. Some of the tools that companies (whether small and large) use for SaaS performance checking and stress & load testing in a cloud environment are:

• AppPerfect
• Cloudslueth
• CloudTestGo
• Jmeter
• LoadStorm
• SOASTA CloudTest

Other security tools for SaaS platform development that are mostly used in the cloud are Wireshark, Nessus, & Nmap.

Step 8. Deploy

At this stage, get DevOps support and launch your product. This stage requires the involvement of a strategic approach. The approach could be anything. As per the organization’s standards, your product should follow and rely on your organization’s defined business processes, marketing tactics, and sales analogies. This is important because you want your consumers to know the SaaS platform development completely and value it in marketing. Your product at this stage works as an authorized digital asset that has a sales focus. Some approaches for you:

1. Customer Onboarding: Provide your customers with an initial training/manual of SaaS platform development software to help them use your product.
2. Products Demos: Make interactive videos on each module to share with your consumers for a better understanding of your deployed SaaS application.
3. Sales: Design pitch decks, sales decks, and promotional plans to display your application in front of your target audience.
4. Marketing: How will people know about your product? Of course, with marketing. Participate in SEO or PPC marketing so that people get aware of your product. You can also offer free trials to get customers involved.

Step 9. App Maintenance and Further Development

Nothing in this world is perfect! Even with the most appealing objects such as the moon, there are some dark spots that we use to see and praise. The same goes for SaaS applications.

Even after professional QA, you may encounter complexities in your deployed SaaS model. You may face issues with your applied approaches in your design and development phase. Whatever you encounter, make sure to maintain your delivered model. Not only does maintenance ensure a better user experience, but it also opens opportunities for further SaaS app development. How come?

When agreeing with a company for SaaS application development, you should ask them for a maintenance package. At the meeting, if you get the project, along with the maintenance, you can simply impress your client (organization) and receive further development requirements within the deployed application.

Step 10: Product Scaling

Gather your consumers’ feedback and measure your solution’s success!

The stage is straightforward. After deploying your SaaS application in the market, you need to decide on your solution’s success. Determine your SaaS application, its success metrics and KPIs to report and analyze the post-launch lifespan of your product.

Your success measures may include:

• Customer acquisition cost (CAC)
• Churn
• Revenue generation model

What’s more? It is important to review your consumers’ feedback on your deployed SaaS version. People mostly share feedback that defines the functionalities of your SaaS-delivered product, its upgrades and useability.

Creating a SaaS solution is a complicated, creative, as well as dynamic process. There seem to be no clear-cut laws but following these recommendations and criteria can assist your goods in success. On the one hand, it requires a superhuman sense of professionalism to keep the faith and keep to a goal while building a successful SaaS firm.

On either hand, it necessitates adaptability and understanding as you get more. To establish a product that satisfactorily serves the needs of your customers, you must frequently modify your perspective, be imaginative, and pivot.

Final Words

In short, the SaaS deployment models provide organizations with various options for delivering software applications as services. Scalability and cost-effectiveness are advantages of public deployment, whereas security and control are advantages of private deployment.

Both benefits are combined in a hybrid deployment, which caters to specific needs by dispersing components across public and private clouds. The suitable model is determined by scalability, security, compliance, and budget considerations. Each model has advantages and disadvantages, allowing organizations to use cloud computing for effective and scalable software solutions.

Ultimately, choosing the best SaaS deployment model matches the organization’s objectives, ensuring optimal performance and customer satisfaction.