When it comes to smart growth for your SaaS company, Vern Weitzman, founder and CTO of Cira Apps has proof you need to take full advantage of the cloud. Weitzman has seen business-threatening crises come and go - from the days of the dot-com bust to the present crisis - but he and his innovative companies always manage to survive, and prosper.
The cloud is the main revenue enabler for the innovative SaaS company
Cloud-specific applications are cheaper to operate, easier to upgrade, and nearly seamless to your client base, he points out. And with wisely-deployed CX tools and a good content library, the path to SaaS profitability has never been clearer.
Read Vern Weitzman on scaling up your SaaS company with a positive, knowledge-rich customer experience.
“... Existing customers began migrating from on-premise messaging to cloud-based Microsoft Office 365. I wish I could say that we moved faster, but I was initially skeptical about how many medium and large enterprises would migrate to the cloud. After exploring options and cloud technology, we decided to build cloud-specific applications for Office 365. We launched Cira Apps Ltd with its flagship SaaS solution CiraSync in April of 2016.
“ It was a natural evolution from hardware developer, to software developer, to tech team leader -- and then after 9/11, the critical need for our kind of solution became clear. I just enjoy coming up with a minimal viable product, getting something into beta and starting to get users on it.
“From there, you just keep whacking moles until there are no more moles to whack. Finally, you get to production and hopefully can get people to pay for it. I just like the whole process.”
Of course, there are sometimes more moles than hammers to whack ‘em with, as many a fallen SaaS provider has found.
A SaaS company can adapt faster to tumultuous times
This is not an easy business climate for anybody, but as Weitzman notes, good strategic thinking can help you steer through any crisis. For SaaS leaders, having a firm grasp of the cloud technologies involved -- perhaps by taking a course or two in the latest developments-- can also pay off in the long term.
But as Weitzman has noted elsewhere, it’s the critical challenge of differentiating your product from all the others that must underpin all your efforts.
Niche or giant, every SaaS company has to educate the consumer
Weitzman notes that Cira Apps aims to “provide better [customer] education than most… to let clients self-service a lot of the time.” This hints at a truth SaaS managers may not always realize: a large, quality, searchable content library provides strategic efficiency. You can measure its value as it grows. Moreover, you can measure a happy negative -- the customer-service budget you don’t have to spend.
And giving your SaaS company’s potential clients all the product-related blog posts, tips, videos and seminars they could ask for? That’s probably one of the quickest ways to differentiate your product or service.