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Building a successful multiproduct strategy requires careful planning and execution, but with the right approach can be a game changer for your business. We’ve already discussed when SaaS vendors should start thinking about going multiproduct and the considerations for a multiproduct SaaS initiative. In this fourth post in our multiproduct series, we’ll discuss how to start building a multiproduct strategy that will help grow your business.
Deciding to go multiproduct with your SaaS organization has several advantages, including increasing customer retention, becoming more competitive, generating additional revenue streams, and working towards becoming the system of record for the industry you serve.
Check out All SaaS Vendors Should Aspire to Be Multiproduct to learn all the additional advantages going multiproduct can deliver.
How to Start Building a Multiproduct SaaS Strategy
Have Clear Goals
It’s natural to want to expand your product and grow your business to serve customers better and increase revenue. However, it’s crucial to clearly understand your expansion goals before diving in.
Well-defined goals provide direction and focus for your team. With clear goals, there can be alignment and clarity about what the company is trying to achieve. This can lead to wasted resources and effort in initiatives that don’t ultimately move the needle.
Some examples of well-defined multiproduct goals include:
- Adding payroll solutions in order to be the point of entry for your industry.
- You polled your customers and found they are having trouble hiring, so are adding a recruiting solution to help them solve that challenge and increase recurring revenue.
- Embedding fintech to keep your customers on your platform longer.
Remember to have a solid “why” when building a multiproduct strategy. There needs to be a clear reason to launch this initiative. Always ask yourself how you’ll do it better than another company whose core product is the solution you’ll be using to go multiproduct, ensure the addressable market need is big enough now (and in the future), and ensure you’re not just thinking revenue, but how this will help your customers.
Well-defined goals help increase motivation and engagement amongst your team. When a company has a clear vision employees understand, they’re more likely to feel a sense of purpose and be more invested in their work. Goals also provide a roadmap for measuring progress and success. The team can track progress and adjust by setting specific, measurable goals before embarking on a multiproduct initiative. This allows for more agile and data-driven decision-making, which is essential in the fast-paced, constantly evolving SaaS world.
Ensure Financial Stability
Expanding your product line requires significant time, money, and resources. To ensure financial sustainability, companies must carefully assess the potential return on investment for each new product and ensure they have the resources to support product development and marketing efforts. You should have a plan to manage potential risks and challenges, such as product cannibalization or market saturation.
Each company's finances are unique, so we can’t responsibly give you a numeric value on what ensures “financial stability.” However, we can give you insights into how much creating a new market viable product (MVP) costs. Check out our blog, “The Cost of Building an MVP,” for a detailed financial breakdown.
Chart a Clear Development Plan
When a company decides to pursue a multiproduct strategy, it’s essential to have a clear development plan. A development plan provides a roadmap for the company to follow as it works to bring each product to market. Without a clear plan, it’s easy for resources to be spread too thin, resulting in delays, cost overruns, and potential failure.
A development plan involves setting goals, identifying opportunities, and creating a roadmap for product development with clear timelines, delineations, and cross-department needs or input.
A development plan also helps align the different teams involved in the multiproduct strategy. It provides a shared understanding of the goals and objectives of each project and ensures that everyone is working towards the same end goal. This can prevent team conflicts and misunderstandings and help ensure the company works together towards a common purpose.
It’s also important to have a customer success plan in place. Most customers churn because they haven’t been onboarded properly and don’t know how to work their solutions. How will you proactively combat this? Don’t just assume your current customers will know how to use this product or that you can onboard them as you did with your core competency!
Determine Whether You Need to Expand Your Team
Building a strong team is crucial for expanding your product line. You need a team of dedicated, skilled professionals who can work together to develop and launch new products. This includes product managers, developers, designers, and marketers, among others.
As you build your multiproduct strategy, ensure your team has the bandwidth and expertise to complete this undertaking. Do you need to hire additional members? How much will that cost? How long do you foresee it taking? Do teams need to be restructured? All of this will contribute to ensuring your strategy’s success.
Get Your Team On Board
Getting your team on board with adding a new product to your SaaS company is a critical factor in the success of your business. Here are some steps to get your team on board with going multiproduct.
Communicate the Vision
Share your vision for the new product and why it’s important to the company. Explain how the new product aligns with the company’s goals and values and how it will benefit its customers and employees.
Involve the Team
Involve your team in decision-making and encourage them to provide feedback and ideas. This will help them feel more invested in the new product and increase their commitment to its success.
Define Roles and Responsibilities
Clearly define the roles and responsibilities of each team member involved in the new product development and launch, ensuring everyone knows their roles and can work together effectively.
Address Concerns
Address concerns or questions that your team may have about the new product. Be transparent about the risks and challenges involved and discuss ways to mitigate them.
Prepare to Be Agile
SaaS companies preparing to launch a multiproduct strategy must be agile to successfully adapt to the industry's fast-paced and constantly changing landscape. Agility allows companies to respond quickly and effectively to market changes and customer demands, enabling them to stay ahead of the competition.
Agility also allows SaaS vendors to test and iterate their products more rapidly. By adopting an agile approach, companies can quickly release new products and features, get customer feedback, and use that feedback to improve. This enables them to stay ahead of the curve and continuously improve their products, leading to higher customer satisfaction and retention when you launch. Additionally, being flexible and adaptable allows organizations to pivot quickly if a product or strategy isn’t performing as expected (which you need to be prepared for), minimizing the risk of significant losses and enabling pivots to a more promising path.
Consider White Labeling Your New Solution
Here at HiringThing, we white label our applicant tracking system (ATS)—we create hiring software our partners purchase and present to their users as a proprietary solution, often using our white label ATS to become a multiproduct platform. Check out our Ultimate Guide to Establishing a SaaS White Label Partnership if you’d like to learn more about how it all works, or set up a chat with one of our Business Development Representatives if you’re interested in going multiproduct with a hiring solution!
About HiringThing
HiringThing is a modern recruiting and employee onboarding platform as a service that creates seamless talent experiences. Our white label solutions and open API enable technology and service providers to offer hiring and onboarding to their clients. Approachable and adaptable, the platform empowers anyone, anywhere to build their dream team.
