Cloud SaaS

Manoj.R

Full Stack Developer

Introduction:

Over the last decade, businesses have continued to move their sales, marketing, and operations further into the cloud. With constantly evolving SaaS products, it's never been simpler to power a business from anywhere.
Overall SaaS spend per company was up 50% in 2020 compared to 2018, according to Blissfully's SaaS Trends Report.
Even the smallest businesses are using SaaS products without giving much thought to it, be it a CRM, email marketing tool, or automation software. And for larger enterprises, SaaS is a no-brainer for keeping your teams on track, both individually and collaboratively.
As we continue into the new decade, here are the SaaS trends, tools, and best practices to know about in 2021 and beyond.

What is SaaS?

Software as a Service (SaaS) is a software distribution model giving customers access to applications over the internet rather than requiring physical media and custom installation. As the software is centrally hosted and maintained by a provider, updates are automatic and instant. You don't need to download anything to use a SaaS product and you can log in via web and mobile browsers.

Defining Key SaaS Terms

Vertical SaaS solutions are created for a specific industry's needs, goals, and pain points — such as tourism, retail, or agencies. One example is Veeva, a cloud-computing company focused on pharmaceutical and life sciences.

Horizontal SaaS products are used across all industries rather than niches, catering to a general business need. For example, QuickBooks for accounting software.

Packaged SaaS products are designed for certain business goals and processes, such as boosting marketing results or improving customer satisfaction. An example is HubSpot's all-in-one software solutions for sales, marketing, and service.

Collaborative SaaS applications help teams work together more effectively, such as by offering video conferencing or collaborative documents. Examples are Slack for communication and Teamwork for project management.

Types of SaaS Products

The growth in SaaS spans every department, and it's no longer IT's job to select and implement technology. SaaS has become so accessible that anyone in a company can choose, subscribe to, and implement new apps.

To create the most well-rounded SaaS stack, here are the types of SaaS products that are worth investing in for most types of businesses:

  • Marketing – including tools for email marketing, design, social media, lead generation, and marketing automation
  • Sales – including tools for prospecting, nurturing, and closing deals
  • Customer relationship management, or CRM
  • Customer service
  • Development
  • Proposals and contracts
  • Finance, billing, and invoicing
  • Data collection and contact enrichment
  • Analytics
  • Operations
  • Communication and VoIP
  • Project management
  • Ecommerce
  • Events

Many SaaS tools are multi-purpose and can tick many of these boxes, so you certainly don't need a tool for each one. Whether you have a few apps or a ton of them, it's important to sync your apps to avoid data silos and errors.

20 of the Best SaaS Products for 2022

Which SaaS tools should your business try in 2021? Here are some of the most popular SaaS products according to popular review sites.

  1. Slack – Collaboration software to centralize your team's conversations.
  2. Mailchimp – The top email marketing software according to user satisfaction on G2.
  3. Shopify – The ecommerce platform with everything you need to sell online, on social media, or in person.
  4. SurveyMonkey – The popular survey creation and sharing tool.
  5. HubSpot – One of the most popular CRMs with a fantastic free plan that scales to advanced software for sales, marketing, and support.
  6. ActiveCampaign – A top-rated marketing automation software for user satisfaction that streamlines your workflows and email sequences.
  7. LastPass – The app that remembers all your passwords so you don't have to.
  8. Zoom – Software for online meetings, webinars, and conference rooms that's exploded in popularity during the surge of remote work in 2020.
  9. G Suite – Collaboration and productivity apps for business from Google, including Drive and Calendar.
  10. Jira – For agile teams to plan, track and release great software.
  11. Tableau – Connect to almost any database, drag and drop to create visualizations, and share with a click.
  12. DocuSign – An easy and fast way to get your documents signed.
  13. Canva – Create beautiful designs with a few clicks, whether you're a beginner or expert, team or individual.
  14. RingCentral – An easy-to-use and powerful phone system with many extra features.
  15. Freshdesk – Intuitive, feature-rich, affordable customer support software trusted by over 150,000 businesses of all sizes.
  16. Wootric – Customer experience (CX) management software to collect feedback via tools like NPS and CSAT.
  17. Xero – Beautiful business and accounting software.
  18. Buffer – Plan and schedule your social media calendar in one place; pivot your strategy with engagement insights.
  19. Trello – By far one of the easiest task and project management tools to get started with.
  20. Pipedrive – A sales CRM built for minimum input and maximum output.

Follow SaaS influencers.

To stay on top of what's going on in SaaS, we love following...

  • Noah Kagan – Chief Sumo at Sumo, blogger at OkDork.com, and employee #30 at Facebook.
  • SaaStr – The world’s largest community of SaaS executives, founders, and entrepreneurs.
  • Hiten Shah – Founder of Crazy Egg, KISSmetrics, and Quick Sprout.

How to Sync SaaS Apps to Enrich Data Everywhere

PieSync is an iPaaS (Integration Platform as a Service) designed to help your SaaS apps play nicely together. Simply put, you choose the apps you want to connect and determine how customer data should flow between them.

You could sync new customer data from Zendesk to your CRM, so your sales team can stay on top of updates. Or you might sync unsubscribes from your email marketing app with your other communication tools to avoid frustrating prospects with unwanted messages.

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