Many businesses are adopting cloud services which include cloud applications for their business processes. These are available through various APIs that allow businesses to use individual SaaS products or combine a few into one through various integrations. SaaS vendors have to find a way to get their software in the hands of the businesses that need them, and this entails ensuring high customer adoption. There are some strategies businesses can use to enable this, and we will be talking about three of them below.
Having an API-first Strategy
SaaS businesses should consider making APIs the cornerstone of their businesses. This is because these APIs are crucial for integrations, partnerships, and ecosystems that make people want to use their products in the first place. All three make for software solutions that are not standalone because that would mean the business would not get much out of the SaaS solution.
An API-first strategy means exposing all capabilities of a platform through APIs. Doing so is crucial for ensuring customers can discover new use cases for the provided solutions, increasing customer retention and adding value to the platform.
Businesses that adopt this strategy must be open to working with a SaaS API management service that affords them benefits such as providing a management interface, customer support, real-time visibility, API security, and much more.
Connect to an IPaaS
An Integrated Platform as a Service (IPaaS) allows businesses to expand the adoption of their SaaS solutions by exposing them to a bigger audience. Integrating with an IPaaS is relatively easy and requires little development cost. Once the connection between the SaaS APIs and the IPaaS is established, published, and tested, the API becomes available to customers who can do much more with it.
Users can create simple and complex integration workflows or use the capabilities provided by the IPaaS to build automated workflows. More technical and experienced developers can use their access to the IPaaS to include the SaaS API in complex workflows that include integrating data from multiple sources.
Native Integrations
An IPaaS is a great option for customers who would like to create their own workflows using the available APIs exposed by the service. But what happens if the customer cannot do so or does not want to hire a developer? The SaaS business can offer to build native integrations instead.
Native integrations are available inside the SaaS platform’s UI from where customers can activate them. The SaaS can make these integrations available for free depending on the plan a customer has paid for or bought as and when the customer needs them.
There are numerous native integrations already available which include ready-to-use integrations for accounting, marketing, customer management, and much more.
Native integrations are great for adoption and customer retention because customers have to integrate their tech stack with your cloud solutions. Also, a business might be willing to build one or two integrations through an IPaaS, but they will save a lot of money and time taking advantage of the native integrations offered by the SaaS.
Getting customers to adopt and use your SaaS solutions is crucial for business success. The strategies discussed above are a great place to start for SaaS businesses looking to increase adoption, customer retention, and revenues.
