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#5 Key Steps to be a Pioneer in SaaS Business Market analysis is important homework one should do before actually working on the idea of SaaS

By Chandan Tiwari

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It needs patience and perseverance to grow a SaaS business. Even though SaaS starts at a slow pace, clarity of goals and zero option help SaaS grow steadily. Along with the slow growth of SaaS, imagine a SaaS start-up with no competitors. You have the market and you see opportunity in serving the service providers who are struggling to grow their business. Let us understand the steps for building SaaS product and business in domains with less or no presence of SaaS — domains like Astrology.

Astrology is one such untouched domain and building SaaS for such is a challenge. Providing astrology as service is highly complex a few steps need to be considered. Groundwork and skills required for initiating astrology in SaaS require profound knowledge in astrology and technology, the rarest combination till date.

1. Market Analysis

With no competitor to look upon and no metrics to measure the business, things become a bit messy to start. Market analysis is important homework one should do before actually working on the idea of SaaS. Finding out the market requirements to provide them with unique service that not only meets the requirement criteria but compliment their business should be the objective of the market analysis.

For astrology as service idea, we worked on current market and its trends as first steps. We needed to understand the market requirement such as: Trending horoscope report charts, personalized horoscopes, matchmaking reports, numerology reports and much more. Once the roadmap of achieving requirements is worked, focus can be turned on complimentary services that can enhance SaaS business.

2. Technology Expertise

Technologically strong SaaS business always takes the cake for it has an advantage of faster growth by being global. Technology should help partners serve their customers in a simpler way. Easy technology integration with your partners business should help them enhance and grow their business. Good partner experience can be taken care with technology.

Astrology and technology are the rare combinations as it requires skills in both the domains. Development of astrology algorithms in APIs is the unique feature that can generate dynamic reports for end users. Easy integration of APIs on customer's websites and apps was the key as customers are not much aware of SaaS in the domain.

3. Partner Support

Providing services to partners without support should definitely raise an alarm to have one. Customer/partner support should be exclusively taken care for smooth business run. It guarantees quality of your service and build trust. Providing easy support for your partners through FAQs, feedback helps in improving the quality of service. Support plays major part in SaaS success.

In case of Astrology, support for APIs' integration on partner websites and apps makes unique backup. Similarly, support for any technical queries, sales helps in sustaining business.

4. Pricing

Pricing is the most crucial aspect of SaaS business. Getting the right balance of pricing and features is really complex. Being pioneer in existing domain; Market analysis report shall help to build pricing structure for new domain. Pricing structure should be reviewed for some duration to get the inputs from sales report thus making changes if required.

For Astrology as service, deciding the pricing structure purely depended on market analysis. For few months, we examined our pricing structure and reiterated as per the feedbacks and initial sentiments from the market.

5. Innovation

Innovation along with technology can be the key area of business development. Creating USPs (unique selling proposition) with innovative features for your partners creates value addition for business.

Innovation should be included in every step of SaaS service, for it makes SaaS create unique business value.

Being the pioneer different innovation can be introduced with pricing which helps meeting business goals.

Chandan Tiwari

Founder & CEO, Vedic Rishi

Chandan Tiwari, Founder & CEO of Vedic Rishi. Tiwari who though an Electronics & Telecom engineer by education was raised in a family of astrologers and was influenced, inspired and mentored by his parents in the field of astrology. He combines both Vedic and western astrology and believes that astrology is 75% science and 25% art as one needs to interpret the readings on the basis of their current situation.
 
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