Startup Launch In 4 Weeks With The Fast Code Platform: Myth Or Reality
Software as a Service product has been making business easier for over 20 years. In 2020, the SaaS market value was $101.5 billion. Demand creates supply, so today more than 15K companies provide SaaS software to various industries. The question is how to launch new Software as a Service solution rapidly and consider all the conditions necessary for its success simultaneously. Let's try to figure it out.
What Is SaaS? How Can It Help Businesses To Grow?
SaaS definition
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Software as a Service speaks for itself. Such products are created for a wide range of representatives of a specific domain. Such an app usually solves one or more pressing issues relevant to this area. Take the retail industry, for example. You can imagine how many retailers cannot adapt to market conditions because of weak marketing or slow order processing. Software developers have decided to create highly scalable digital solutions to help businesses deal with challenges like the above ones.
How does SaaS work?
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As seen, SaaS services are provided for a wide range of users on a subscription basis. This cooperation is beneficial for the business, which can change the provider at any time. Enterprises do not need special equipment to work with the product. It is enough to pay for a subscription and use the product for several hours. All data are hosted on the vendor's remote servers. Thus, the Software as a Service model is an excellent alternative to custom development most times. Here the user does not need to think about anything other than paying a fee.
Top Software as a Service solution in 2021
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Let's forget about the trite examples like Google, Zoom, and Salesforce. Today the market is so diverse, and many young companies have already managed to strengthen their positions by providing quality SaaS. In 2021, you will probably hear the names Paystone, Quant Retail, Ringover, CoSchedule, or FrankieHealth more often. They are ranked by Crunchbase as some of the best Software as a Service provider in the healthcare, retail, marketing, finance, and telecom industries.
SaaS is equal to a new audience
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It's predicted that in 2021 large enterprises will spend $4.16M on SaaS usage. But they can act not only as users but also as sellers of such products. Let's take the IoT industry, for example. An additional service can be made from the usual core equipment firmware and sold together with the last one.
Large telecom representatives can actively use their 5G resources and create SaaS for smaller providers or corporate customers who want to make communication faster, using this technology.
Retailers can also turn the solution of their issues into a new service and expand their range. Look at Amazon with its AWS. It's an excellent example of how a retailer since 2006, among other things, began to sell cloud computing services.
Thus, why limit ourselves to understanding SaaS as a tool that optimizes processes and resolves issues. The Software as a Service model is also a new opportunity for companies to expand their business by harnessing one more source of income.
What Is Important In Software as a Service Development?
Nobody knows the answer to the above question better than an engineer developing non-standard startups daily. So, we decided to have a talk with an expert - Team Lead at XME.digital Serhii Senko. So, let's SaaS journey begin.
Q1: On what things any company should pay attention to for launching a successful Software as a Service product?
Every powerful SaaS is a good realized idea. So the first things a company should take care of are its idea and how the last one matches the audience's demand.
How exactly can you know what end-users think about your idea? Only actual result testing. Andrew Grove, Co-founder at Intel, once said: “Make mistakes faster”. So management wants to make a mistake faster. It needs to get a prototype and test it ASAP to discover all the drawbacks and eliminate them. That is reasonable because quick and organized actions can help to release the clean product on time.
So, when some product inconsistencies were visible on the testing stage, a company should fix them. Here product flexibility is principal. Only wealthy companies can afford to develop solutions in low-level languages like C++. So it is core to choose the right stack for the most effective solution of your issue. And this choice is the SaaS work. You don't think about it.
And last but not least is scalability. SaaS must be scalable. Today it's used by 10 companies, tomorrow - by 10 million ones. Businesses have to be ready for this situation from the very beginning and design a robust product. It will prevent any emergency updates and support positive UX.
To sum up, any enterprise planning to launch the SaaS has to pay attention to:
its idea and how it matches/covers an audience need;
the opportunity of rapid testing and fixing inconsistencies;
final product scalability, because Software as a Service is always about it.
Q2: Is it true that a business can get a SaaS solution in 4 weeks using XME.fast code platform? How can the environment provide such a rapid result "painlessly"?
The fast code platform usage makes it possible to create worthy MVP within such a crazy time. Moreover, nobody from the IT-team won't feel any pressure. You know, no overtime, backlog, and headache.
Product creation always starts with the business model analysis. Unfortunately, development under ordinary conditions requires adapting the received results to frameworks. It is one of its core difficulties. It seems that engineers have tools that make it easier to code. But working with them, you need to distort the business model analysis results.
XME platform. is a kind of middleware and new level of abstraction over frameworks. You know, there are programming languages, then frameworks, and this platform is even higher. It is its advantage. It allows creating a solution based on undistorted research results. Using the platform, a developer can write a configuration and get a ready-made prototype in a short period. The last one will not be 100% custom in terms of UI, but anyway, a customer can test the hypothesis and evaluate a result.
I agree that one prototype testing is usually not enough. Different scenarios need to be implemented to understand which one is closest to the end-user. SaaS or any other product development based on XME. fast code platform is equal to tenant creation capability. It is a great way to launch several prototypes or already final products with insignificant differences and get a single control center for the above products. At least, it reduces the waste of resources at times. When it comes to product testing, imagine how accurate end-user feedback would be if you test multiple tenants simultaneously.
The audience opinion is principal for a company that wants to launch SaaS. And if the prototype failed miserably, then the goal is achieved. Yes. Developers need to know what is wrong with the idea implementation and fix the shortcomings. With XME. you do not need to create a new product from scratch if the prototype testing failed. You can make a better version of such a prototype by fixing anything that users didn't like. The result will meet customers' requirements.
Now let's get into numbers.
One or more prototype versions based on the platform take approximately 1 week. Plus 1.5 weeks for testing and 1 week for troubleshooting. Thus, a company needs 4 weeks after analyzing the business model to receive a minimum value product ready to work.
Q3: Why would you recommend XME.digital platform for your friends for their project delivery?
I would name my top three.
Multi tenancy
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It is a big advantage in terms of high development cost. But now I would like to draw your attention to something else.
First of all, this environment is a great thing because we made it based on versatile systems development experience. Here a set of features is minimal since we tried to cut off all unnecessary. But in this case, it is more than enough to create robust software rapidly.
Also, the cost of support
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A product launching is just the beginning. It needs to be maintained and improved in order not only to retain users but also attract new ones. Talking about several isolated tenants launching, the platform provides an excellent opportunity to monitor all of them and fix several almost similar inconsistencies in one fell swoop.
And the last thing is a vendor lock absence
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Many companies use platforms to build SaaS products quickly. And, I should admit, they are good at achieving such a goal. But the adventure begins when a startup reaches a new level. The platform on which it was developed begins to set its conditions. For instance, it limits scalability and opens it for an additional fee. In the case of the XME.fast code platform, it will not happen. The open-source feature makes it possible to use and change the final product regardless of the vendor. It doesn't matter what happens to the platform - your SaaS will remain the same high scalable, multifunctional, and easy to improve.
As seen, SaaS development is easier and faster with the fast code platform. A company doesn't have to operate with significant resources or a giant IT team to launch a successful Software as a Service product. It is enough to use available things in the right way and apply the versatile tools to get a result exceeding expectations.
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