First, let’s talk about some of the current situations related to SaaS that I have seen and heard recently,
State situation 1. The overall environment is bad, the capital is cold, and financing is not easy to raise. Most companies’ businesses have been affected. Everyone is tightening their belts and their investment in SaaS business has decreased.
Current status 2. A large number of SaaS companies are trying to find ways to increase revenue and reduce expenditure, and one of the main ways to reduce expenditure is layoffs.
Current status 3. The product is not easy to sell, and there are many reasons. It may be that the products you make are not the urgent needs of customers, the competition is too fierce, the product has a weak sense of value, and the sales ability is weak.
Current status 4. Standard products are difficult to make. The more customers they serve, the more customized demands they need, resulting in the more products being made, and they have never been able to make profits. The investment cost is far higher than profits.
and so on.
overall is negative information. Many people who are struggling to persevere in the SaaS track have lost confidence little by little from being full of hope to starting until they are desperate.
However, there is one thing that doesn’t mean that, crisis, crisis means there are opportunities in danger.
Where does the opportunity come from? Some SaaS startups derived from SaaS 2.0 and related to SaaS 2.0 have begun to take root and sprout and grow rapidly. This is an opportunity for a new wave of SaaS.
About SaaS 2.0 related content is mainly divided into the following 5 parts:
- Why do you need SaaS 2.0 solution
- SaaS 2.0 several product solutions
- SaaS 2.0 product entry point
- SaaS 2.0 Product matrix roadmap planning
- Future SaaS evolution
Next, I will talk about it one by one.
(1)
Why does SaaS 2.0 solution need?
Let’s talk about a few related points first:
- . To achieve the evolution of traditional industries, the application of SaaS tools, the construction of B2B platforms, and the innovation of S2b2c models all require joint efforts. Only in this way can the evolutionary industrial value be achieved.
Focus on various vertical industries. The supply-side reform of vertical industries is to meet the needs of consumers, reform the entire supply industry chain and reshape the value elements to achieve rapid, efficient and precise supply of the entire industry.
5. Although most vertical industries have low information level, there are still many SaaS manufacturers that provide the same solution and the competition is fierce.
Through the above 5 related points, the information that can be summarized here is:
The ultimate value of the existence of SaaS software is to help the transformation and upgrading of traditional industries. In order to realize the industrial Internet, the methods that can be used include: the application of SaaS tools, the construction of B2B platforms, and the innovation of the S2b2c model. At the same time, the current market situation is: the level of industrial informatization is low, corporate customers are low willing to pay, and competition is quite fierce.
Faced with such a dilemma, and at the same time, we need to transform and upgrade traditional industries and realize industrial Internet. What should we do?
At this time, the SaaS 1.0 solution needs to be upgraded to a SaaS 2.0 solution.
(2)
SaaS 2.0 solution is: through SaaS 2.0 solution, industrial chain collaboration or industrial chain reconstruction can help the evolution and upgrading of various vertical industrial chains and realize the development of the Internet of the industry.
Through the core idea, we can find 2 keywords: industrial chain collaboration, industrial chain reconstruction, digging deeper around these two words, and corresponding solutions can be dug out.
Here we first sort out the industrial chain diagram of each vertical industry. The framework of each vertical industry is roughly as follows (not representing all industries, here is just an abstract introduction):
The supply chain of raw material suppliers-supplier-producer-end sales store-user.
SaaS 2.0 product solutions that can be obtained after thinking about industrial chain collaboration and industrial chain reconstruction are as follows:
- Ordering SaaS
- Vertical field "marketing + sales" SaaS
- Procurement SaaS
- Supply Chain Collaboration SaaS
- SaaS+B2B Platform
- S2b2c Mode
Other products have the characteristics of connection and industrial collaboration, and the data accumulated through connection will also generate great value in the future.
1. Order SaaS
Through ordering SaaS, one-stop order business processing and information collaboration can be carried out between the manufacturer (supplier) and its distributor (or direct stores, stable customers).
means that suppliers upstream of the industrial chain have purchased a SaaS system for ordering to downstream customers (can be dealers, distributors, terminal stores, etc.) to order.
Order Management SaaS is one of the few products that have both internal management and external collaboration attributes.
As a collaboration, the external collaboration value is generally greater than the internal collaboration value, because the information asymmetry between the inside and outside is more serious and the collaboration cost will be higher.
ordering system is of great value for suppliers and supplier customers.
For suppliers, it can reduce the efficiency of missed orders, missed orders, and order processing, and reduce labor costs.
For supplier customers, they can place orders online at any time, check orders, and follow up on logistics status; they can understand the supply of goods at any time to facilitate the next step of planning.
Regarding ordering SaaS systems, I have seen many SaaS service providers obtain round B financing or above in China.
2. "Marketing + Sales" integration in vertical fields SaaS
"Marketing + Sales" integration" SaaS products (some media in the industry call this type of product "digital new business" Saas products). Problems to be solved for products like
It is:
provides merchants with "sales and marketing integration" system + agency operation services for end users, and enables private domain traffic operations to help merchants achieve the full life cycle closed loop of users who are draining, converting, trading, retention, repurchasing and fission, and ultimately helps merchants increase their revenue.
"sales and marketing integration" products, merchants who are just starting to have market demand, mainly come from e-commerce and retail industries (these industries The natural low price of goods and high consumption frequency is most suitable for private domain traffic operations).
With the influence of factors such as high offline customer acquisition costs, difficulty in acquiring customers, and changes in the business environment,
"Sales and Marketing Integration" product services will gradually develop from e-commerce and retail industries to catering, tourism, education, Home decoration , real estate and other vertical industries.
h Products like tml1, the first echelon, such as Youzan, WeMall ; the second echelon, such as WeDian, all belong to this type of product.
, but due to different business characteristics, the solutions for such products will also be different. There are also some industries in the long-tail market that need differentiated product solutions to solve business problems, which means that such solutions will give new SaaS service providers new opportunities.
Like some industries I have seen, such as the medical industry and the clothing industry, some SaaS service providers that provide integrated solutions for "marketing + sales" have shown their own characteristics and are doing well.
3. Procurement of SaaS
In addition to order management SaaS, purchasing SaaS is also one of the few products that have both internal management and external collaboration attributes.
Procurement system supports all-round online procurement business and online supplier management, helping enterprises achieve "highest execution efficiency and lowest collaboration cost" in procurement business.
The specific value that such products can bring to buyers is as follows:
Suppliers can understand purchase order information, delivery information, payment information, etc. through the platform, ensure efficient and accurate internal and external communication, reduce human errors, and improve the synergy effect outside the enterprise.
- . Online management of the procurement process reduces procurement costs and improves the core competitiveness of enterprises
Using the SRM system can help enterprises shorten the procurement cycle, reduce inventory, reduce delayed delivery, reduce procurement costs, and enhance the company's adaptability and competitiveness in market competition.
Complete supplier access mechanism and evaluation system, business-related data is automatically online in real time, realizing electronic management of the entire life cycle of suppliers, ensuring the orderly, transparent and efficient operation of the enterprise supplier system, achieving the purpose of controllable, manageable and verifiable by suppliers.
4. Supply Chain Collaboration SaaS
Supply Chain Collaboration SaaS can be understood as an upgraded version of purchasing SaaS, one end connected to a large manufacturing terminal enterprise or brand party as the purchaser, and the other end connected to a supplier and foundry factory as the supplier.
By purchasing the content of the SaaS module, we know that the core goal of purchasing SaaS is to have a comprehensive online procurement business and the full life cycle management of suppliers online.
and supply chain collaboration SaaS is the internal and external collaborative management of the supplier's internal and external collaborative management, not just the coordination of the procurement part, but also the coordination of various internal and external multi-scenarios, such as supplier production process collaboration, inventory collaboration, supply chain plan collaboration, and internal collaborative of the purchaser, making the coordination between upstream and downstream stronger.
The value brought to the purchaser is:
- less supply chain procurement costs and inventory costs ;
- faster supply chain reaction speed;
- faster product delivery speed;
- more compliant quality management;
- more accurate supply chain prediction plan;
- visual progress control coordination.
5. SaaS+B2B platform
SaaS+B2B modes mainly have two types:
The first type,
As mentioned at the beginning of the article, many SaaS on the market are not the products that customers need for strong demand. Under such logic, if you want to continue to sell the product on a large scale, you can only make adjustments in pricing and reduce the price to the lowest level, such as opening a tenant for a few thousand yuan. The result of
is that it is difficult for SaaS service providers to make profits, or even break even, and at this time, they need to provide value-added services to traditional enterprise customers to achieve profitability.
. Through the +B2B platform, customers can provide customers with direct source procurement mode of materials, which will bring room for profit and value-added.
The second type,
SaaS service providers enter the market by providing enterprises with a tool-type SaaS. After the development reaches a certain stage, they introduced the B2B platform. Some entrepreneurial teams directly adopted the tool + B2B platform-type idea when they first started their business.
is a bit abstract, so here is an example.
There is a SaaS company, which makes products: agricultural product tools + B2B trading platform. There are agricultural product suppliers and agricultural product buyers on the platform.
Agricultural product suppliers can use their APP to upload products, publish products, and then forward the products to WeChat for marketing and dissemination. At this time, for agricultural product suppliers, this APP is a marketing tool.
After the agricultural product supplier uploads the product, he can purchase promotion resources on their APP. At this time, the agricultural product supplier's products can be exposed and sales will be brought. At this time, for agricultural product suppliers, this APP is a trading platform.
6. S2b2c mode
The sixth idea is to enter the industrial Internet through S2b2c model innovation.
S2b2c mode was proposed by Professor Zeng Ming of Lakeside University. He believes that there are a large number of highly scattered small merchants in the industry (small b represents size), which have the strong ability to contact and handle C-end users, but it is difficult to become stronger and bigger without the support of standardized supply chain S. Therefore, they need an supply chain platform S to provide three-dimensional empowerment (service) and amplify the transaction scale between them and C-end users.
S empowers b mainly include five aspects, as follows:
- SaaS tool; centralized procurement of
- resources;
- common quality assurance;
- service integration;
- data intelligence.
S2b2c model is a model with relatively potential in industrial Internet.
I won’t talk about the specific cases and content related to the S2b2c model here, you can search online.
(3)
When making SaaS 2.0-related products, you can think about the following points when looking for product-related entry points.
- Specify who the customer is
- Evaluate the market size and see if the product is worthy of being a product entry point to do
- Evaluate the urgent needs, clarify what value it brings to customers
- Entering through B2B platform or model innovation
- Experiment controllable
- Open integration
1. Identify who the customer is
As the SaaS of the vertical industry, clarify who the customer is, there are two main dimensions to consider: large, medium and small customers, upstream, midstream and downstream customers of the industrial chain.
First, we must determine whether the product made is sold to upstream customers, midstream customers, or downstream customers.
After determining which link of the industry chain, it will determine whether it is a large customer, a medium-sized customer, or a small customer.
You cannot take it for granted that as soon as you enter a certain industry, you can take it for granted that large, medium and small customers in the upstream, middle and downstream of the industrial chain are their own customers. This must be a problem. You must find a segmented customer group to enter. After you have gained a firm foothold and have your own base, you will consider expanding the market and developing more different types of customers.
Generally speaking, when
selects the upstream, middle and downstream of the industrial chain, it will give priority to the downstream, then select the stream customers, and finally select the upstream customers.
In terms of the strategy of selecting customer size, it will first serve medium-sized customers, then serve large customers, and finally small customers.
2. Evaluate the market size and see if the product is worth it as the product entry point to
When selecting the product entry point, the market size of the customer selected is also an important consideration.
must have a certain market size, so it is worth it to be used as a product entry point.
For example, if the selected customer is the customer at the top of the industrial chain, there are only a few thousand customers in the country, and the charging amount is not high, such a market is obviously not a good choice.
and the more customer base, the better, so that the market ceiling is high and the scalability in the future is strong.
3. Get rid of the urgent needs and clarify what value it brings to customers
For corporate customers, what products are urgent needs?
The answer is: SaaS products that are directly related to money are urgent needs, and products that can directly improve the return on investment of enterprises are urgent needs. How to improve
? You can think from the following two points:
For example, the SaaS+B2B model, by directly connecting the source goods and purchasing from the source, the cost structure of the enterprise can be improved and the procurement costs can be reduced. Such products are popular with customers.
, for example, the S2b2c model, by providing centralized procurement, service integration, SaaS software, etc., is essentially a way to help b-end enterprises improve their operating costs.
- . Increase revenue opportunities
- Product portfolio
- The strategic role and strategic tasks each product plays and undertakes
- The order of product launch, which product to make first, which product to make later
"Marketing + Sales" integrated" SaaS product is to help enterprises increase revenue opportunities. By providing merchants with "sales and marketing integration" system + agency operation services for end users, products like
open private domain traffic operations, help merchants achieve the full life cycle closed loop of users of traffic, conversion, transactions, retention, repurchase and fission, and ultimately help merchants increase revenue.
4. Enter
information level ratio through B2B platform or model innovation or model innovation. In lower industries, if SaaS is directly provided, the early market cultivation cost of
will be very high, and the customers' willingness to pay is also relatively low. At this time, the optimal solution is not to sell SaaS to customers.
is through the innovation of the S2b2c model, or through the B2B platform, because both types of products can directly bring effects and effectively reduce costs.
Through the innovation of the S2b2c model and the B2B platform, it can continuously promote the industry to continuously improve its awareness of informationization. On the contrary, it will be much less difficult to promote SaaS products in the later stage.
5. Experience Controllable
For vertical industries, SaaS service providers are not just a company selling software, but also an industry operation company. They must have the ability to operate SaaS+ industry so that they can do a good job.
Some entrepreneurs do not have a deep understanding of "controllable experience", and the solutions they come up with cannot be controlled (the experience can be controlled, which can also be called value closed-loop satisfaction).
For example, suppose there is a SaaS company that provides a "ordering system" to upstream customers in a certain industry and a "procurement system" to downstream customers. It is intended to realize the online business of upstream and downstream customers through the combination of two systems.
Why does this SaaS company have such a solution?
Because upstream and downstream customers are many-to-many, that is, a downstream buyer will go to N upstream suppliers to purchase; an upstream supplier will provide goods to N downstream customers.
For this reason, when the SaaS service provider company develops an ordering system to the supplier and the supplier starts to open the account to the customer for use, the customer may not use it (the customer believes that all the suppliers he wants to cooperate with have been on the system before he is willing to use it), and then he has to persuade other suppliers to purchase the system, so that the supplier will never be able to use the supplier value closed loop.
The purpose of the supplier to buy the system is to place orders online and collaborate online to help suppliers reduce costs. It is very difficult for suppliers to use the system online. Many other suppliers are also required to introduce many other suppliers to meet the needs of suppliers. All suppliers can use it to meet the needs of suppliers. This is a vicious cycle and the supplier's experience is uncontrollable.
So if the experience is uncontrollable, it means that the product entry point is not found correctly.
6. Open integration
When the products made are products collaborated by upstream and downstream enterprises in the industrial chain, not all products are made by a SaaS supplier (or it can be said that it is impossible that in an industrial chain, all SaaS products are provided by a SaaS service provider).
We should not think about replacing the SaaS software that customers already have. When customers related to the software have used other SaaS software, we can achieve collaboration through open integration instead of replacing the products that customers already have.
(4)
Vertical industries, SaaS 2.0 product matrix roadmap, generally speaking, is three things:
, how do you understand these three things: Here is an example, for example:
Suppose your company is a company that provides digital collaborative solutions for the entire industry chain in a vertical industry.
Then you may provide a variety of SaaS products at this time, or you may not only provide the application of SaaS tools, but also build a B2B platform; or your product logic is innovation in the S2b2c model (not only SaaS software, but also centralized procurement of resources, service integration, etc.).
means that it has ended up. Looking back, the company will provide a variety of products in the future to form a product matrix to penetrate the market.
This is the product portfolio.
At the same time, each product in all product portfolios plays a different strategic role and strategic tasks. For example: some products are for attracting traffic and serving more customers; while some products are for building competitive barriers, and some products are directly for profit.
Since each product plays a strategic role and undertakes different strategic tasks, how do you determine which product to make first and which product to make?
Which product is the first to make? That is to find the first product to enter the market, you can find your ideas in the "Product Entry Points of SaaS 2.0" section of the article.
Which product will be made next? One idea of product promotion is roughly:
first provides more diverse product solutions around existing customers; then sell the same solution to other new customers; then explore the second curve to provide new product solutions to new customers.
(5)
Before, SaaS has been in China for so long, and many are not easy to sell, and the informatization level of most vertical industries is particularly low.
However, through SaaS 2.0 product, business model, and innovation in industrial operation model will allow some scenarios of some industry customers to be digitalized first.
Then, due to the various vertical industrial chains, there is a natural synergistic relationship demand; in this way, some customers who have been digitalized first will drive other digitally backward customers in the industrial chain to carry out information transformation.
Finally, overall improvement of the digital capabilities of the entire industry, promote the evolution of traditional industries, and form a new situation in the industrial Internet.
Finally,
expresses my personal opinion: many people are pessimistic about SaaS and believe that now is not a good time to enter the SaaS track. My understanding is exactly the opposite. I think: entering the market at this time is just right.
Author | Feng Xianfei Share about products, operations, and business operations.
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-