To stay competitive and become the platform of record in their industry, vertical SaaS must consistently improve the value they deliver customers, which means creating new functionalities and products. It also means providing an outstanding—and constantly improving—customer experience. Globally, there are approximately 30,000 SaaS companies with 14 billion customers—it’s imperative to stand out, especially in the vertical SaaS world where markets are smaller.
The business world’s reliance on SaaS products has resulted in more competition than ever from vendors—whereas, at one time, SaaS vendors, especially in the vertical SaaS space, could cruise on their laurels. Now even the most established companies are consistently bettering themselves. This post will share the product enhancements that will help any vertical SaaS become more competitive (and, thus, more successful).
The average company replaces 39% of its SaaS applications with ones with more functionality. Today’s B2B consumers want their SaaS apps to solve as many workplace challenges as possible, not simply offer one solution. While the impetus behind vertical SaaS growth was to find a niche industry with a niche problem to stay competitive, today’s vertical SaaS vendors must be open to expanding their solutions. Look at a platform like Toast, which can justify its $9 billion valuation because it strategically became a multiproduct platform.
There’s a wide breadth of new products and features your vertical SaaS can use to expand, but we’ll start with what we know here at HiringThing: white-labeling HR software.
All businesses require HR tools. However, horizontal HR software might not work for the niche industries vertical SaaS serves. Adding HR capabilities tailored to your industry helps your clients optimize a necessary business component and demonstrates your overarching industry expertise.
Here at HiringThing, we partner with vertical SaaS providers to help them add recruiting solutions to their core competencies. While hiring is a universal business need across industries, there’s a difference between hiring hourly deskless workers for gym franchises, massage therapists, and HVAC engineers. Offering recruiting solutions tailored to the industry you’re already serving has been very beneficial and lucrative for our vertical SaaS partners.
Our solution is a private label applicant tracking system. Applicant tracking systems are software built to automate, streamline, and strengthen recruiting. Private labeling is our premier form of white labeling—licensing our technology and branding it as your own—but private labeling goes beyond branding to customize our technology to fit your business goals.
If you want to learn more about how a private label ATS can benefit vertical SaaS providers, check out Ten Ways Vertical SaaS Providers Can Benefit from a Private Label ATS, but if you’re still unsure what product enhancements will make your vertical SaaS more competitive, but interested in white or private labeling new products check out The Ultimate Guide to Establishing a Private Label SaaS Partnership.
Data security is crucial in today’s highly connected world, but many vendors aren’t prioritizing it. Poor security measures and poorly managed or designed portals can jeopardize consumer privacy and financial data.
Always remember that clients are your most crucial business asset. Because client portals store and manage client information, securing your portal is of the utmost importance. Adding advanced security features to your platform gives your customers peace of mind and differentiates your offering from competitors (see the above stats for proof). Consider adding options like two-factor authentication, encryption, and secure login protocols.
You can add all the new features you can think of, but they won’t be effective if your platform is challenging to use. Conduct frequent useability tests and gather customer feedback to continually identify areas for improvement and make your product more user-friendly.
A guaranteed way to increase useability is to conduct frequent user testing, which only 55% of companies do regularly! Conducting user testing and regularly surveying customers (formally and informally) ensures you have the finger on the pulse of your product and can consistently make improvements and build user-experience solid strategies.
A solid onboarding strategy and implementation is a surefire way to ensure customers know how to use your product from the get-go. Robust onboarding ensures first-time users feel comfortable using your product and are well on their way to becoming experts.
Just because a customer isn’t new doesn’t mean there are no new users. We recommend having frequent “onboarding” webinars or training options to ensure all new platform adopters have a chance to have a proper onboarding.
App fatigue—jumping in and out of applications—is accurate and, as the name suggests, exhausting. Data shows that:
Integrating your product with other tools and platforms can provide even more value to your customers. Adding new integrations or improving existing ones makes your product more versatile and easier to use in conjunction with other tools and established workflows. Additionally, integrations help businesses manage customer data from a single point, reducing errors and allowing all departments to access synchronized data.
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AI is very popular at the moment. 9 out of 10 companies are investing in AI, and most U.S. workers want AI to help them work smarter. Gartner reports that 70% of employees want AI solutions to help them with mistake reduction, problem-solving, information discovery, and process simplification. Half of that group wants AI to do two or more tasks.
HiringThing created an AI Job Description Generator to help our customers simplify the job-description writing process.
AI can also help personalize a platform, and 80% of today’s consumers are more likely to purchase from a vendor that offers tailored experiences.
While many of today’s customers want AI, 43% of respondents to a SmartBrief survey said they weren’t exactly sure what AI was or how it was deployed. If you integrate AI into your product, ensure you have a library of educational collateral to help customers understand its benefits.
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As more and more people use their smartphones for work, having a well-designed and functional mobile version of your platform dramatically improves the user experience—72.6% of internet users will access the web solely through their mobile phones by 2025.
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Excellent customer support is crucial for any business, and adding features like live chat or a comprehensive knowledge base can significantly improve the user experience and customer satisfaction.
Our blog How to Delight SaaS Users, is full of additional tips for up-leveling your customer service.
All the suggestions above are solid ways to make your Vertical SaaS more competitive. However, they are admittedly not out of the box. How can you disrupt your industry and give yourself a competitive advantage? We have an idea:
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.