The SaaS market is highly competitive, with a lot of marketing noise that makes standing out and attracting customers more challenging with each passing day. Since there are little to no switching costs for the customer, SaaS companies have to be on their toes, continuously providing value and ensuring customer satisfaction to prevent churn.
And when you finally communicate your value, stand out, and start attracting customers you need to figure out how to scale your infrastructure and support systems to accommodate the increasing demand while maintaining performance and reliability. In parallel, you must comply with various regulations and standards to ensure data security and fend off cyber attacks.
Overcoming these challenges of the competitive SaaS market requires strategic planning, innovation, and a customer-centric approach to succeed. While you are putting in a lot of blood, sweat, and tears to grow your SaaS business, you certainly don’t want anything to distract you from your business goals.
Wouldn’t it be great if someone held down the IT front, allowing you to focus fully on what matters most - like adding cool features, expanding to new markets, and growing your team? That’s exactly what a Managed IT Services Provider can do for SaaS companies.
This blog post elaborates on the key IT challenges that most SaaS companies face and how a Managed Services Provider (MSP) can help overcome them.
1. Data Security
Data is important for all modern businesses but for SaaS companies, data is the lifeblood. SaaS companies typically handle sensitive customer data, including personal and financial information. Even the most basic SaaS applications store names, email addresses, and credit card numbers, at the very least. Ensuring the security of this data is critical for maintaining customer trust and confidence in the service.
A data breach or security incident can irreparably damage a SaaS company's reputation. News of security breaches spread quickly, leading to loss of customers, negative publicity, and long-term damage to the brand. Take, for example, the aftermath of the security breach suffered by LastPass. In addition, data loss due to any reason, be it cyberattacks, malfunctions, or insider threats, can disrupt business operations, leading to downtime, financial losses, and operational challenges.
Effectively handling data security challenges requires a wide array of security measures, including the following:
Implementing encryption protocols and data privacy measures to safeguard customer data against interception or theft.
Implementing strong authentication mechanisms, such as multi-factor authentication (MFA), and granular access controls to ensure that users only have access to the data they need.
Managing and securing data stored in the cloud requires robust cloud security measures.
Identifying and remedying vulnerabilities in the infrastructure to prevent unauthorized access to the network and sensitive data.
Providing security awareness training to staff to prevent security breaches due to phishing scams and malware infections.
Addressing these challenges requires a comprehensive approach to data security, including implementing robust security protocols, conducting regular security risk assessments and audits, educating users about security best practices, and staying vigilant against emerging threats. While you could manage these in-house, outsourcing to an experienced MSP helps free up a lot of resources that are better spent on product development, promotion, and other activities that directly contribute to the business goals.
2. Compliance
Another challenge that is closely related to data security is compliance. As more and more organizations started collecting, storing, and processing sensitive customer data, in addition to data security, there were growing concerns about privacy. To address these concerns, various regulatory compliances such as HIPAA and reporting frameworks such as SOC 2 came into being.
While compliance is a great tool from the perspective of consumers and regulators, for the business it is a time and resource-consuming project. Therefore, most businesses prefer to outsource part or all of their compliance projects. This is, in general, an excellent option for the business because an experienced MSP can help them achieve and maintain compliance while avoiding common pitfalls.
Here are some of the ways in which an MSP can help SaaS companies meet their compliance requirements:
They have security and compliance experts who can do all the research and prioritization necessary to develop a plan of how you can meet the requirements of each specific regulation or security standard.
They can conduct a security risk assessment to identify, analyze, and evaluate the risks your business faces so that you can choose the most appropriate security controls.
They help you invest in the right technologies that not only meet your security goals but also growth and other business objectives.
They will help you design and implement security controls, including administrative controls like policy documents, endpoint security, Mobile Device Management (MDM ), Identity and Access Management (IAM), etc.
They can help you establish a system for regular internal audits and remediation to ensure the effectiveness of your security controls amid changing technology and threat landscapes.
3. Efficient Use Of The Cloud
Typically, a substantial part of a SaaS company’s IT budget is dedicated to the cloud. Predicting and managing costs associated with cloud deployments is, therefore, an extremely important task. It is quite common for SaaS businesses to be anxious about their cloud costs, how they are overspending, or how a lot of money is being spent on unused services.
While cloud providers do offer tools for optimizing your cloud costs, they don’t help all that much. In fact, cloud optimization is a complex and highly specialized discipline with a number of tools, models, and best practices. An MSP skilled in cloud optimization can help SaaS companies optimize their cloud spending without compromising on performance.
Among other things, they can help you choose the right service and pricing options, match capacity with demand, identify resource waste, and continuously monitor and optimize costs. All this will help you avoid over-provisioning of resources and avoid surprises in your cloud bill.
4. Device Lifecycle Management
Effectively managing devices such as desktops, laptops, tablets, and smartphones is a complex and difficult task. It requires cross-functional collaboration among IT, HR, Procurement, Accounting, and Administration and is especially challenging when companies are growing rapidly or have remote teams working across the globe. What complicates device lifecycle management (DLM) more are the physical services, namely shipping, warehousing, and logistics.
Poorly managed devices are not just a drain on the financial resources of the company but also invite security risks, compliance challenges, and performance bottlenecks. On the other hand, an effective DLM solution offers many benefits in addition to the ease and reduced cost of managing and maintaining your fleet of devices.
A partnership with an MSP that offers a comprehensive DLM solution is really a great find for any SaaS company. Here are some of the key benefits you can expect from such a partnership:
greater visibility and control over devices resulting in improved performance, longevity, and budgeting,
higher return on investment (ROI) by ensuring that devices are being used effectively and efficiently,
enhanced security by ensuring proper configuration and security settings on all deployed devices, and
facilitation for security and compliance audits.
5. Keeping Up With Technology
It is a common practice among SaaS companies to have a complete focus on development, especially in their early stages. This often leaves IT infrastructure neglected, resulting in an outdated infrastructure stack that struggles to meet the requirements of new technologies.
Staying current with the latest technology can be costly, but the investment is necessary to remain competitive in a highly competitive industry. This is especially true for startups since they need to challenge established companies. Given that SaaS revolves around technology, embracing the latest advancements is vital if the company intends to deliver value to its customers.
An experienced MSP can help SaaS companies make informed investment decisions in new technologies so that they remain competitive without breaking the bank. They can also help you effectively manage technical debt in your IT infrastructure by identifying and prioritizing critical technology refreshes and deferring non-critical ones.
6. Cybersecurity
No matter how small or big an organization is, the risk of a security breach is always looming around the corner. We saw this in 2022 when some of the biggest organizations suffered data breaches resulting in the exposure of sensitive data.
As per IBM's Cost of a Data Breach Report for 2023, organizations took roughly nine months on average to detect and mitigate a breach and the global average cost of a data breach was USD 4.45 million. This goes to show how devastating a data breach can be for small, growing companies. SaaS companies are especially at risk of being targeted because, as mentioned earlier, they handle sensitive customer data, including personal and financial information.
So in this day and age, investing in security is a business necessity. But this is easier said than done. Cybercriminals are always creating novel and sophisticated cyberattacks, so unless you can afford to maintain a security team that is up-to-date with the latest developments in cybersecurity and the threat landscape, you can’t really be at ease.
Thankfully, you don’t have to hire an entire team of full-time security specialists because an experienced MSP can provide you with the same level of security expertise at a fraction of the cost. They will help improve your security posture and keep your security measures up to date so that IT systems are always protected from known threats and mitigate threats from newer threats.
Conclusion
Growing a SaaS company is incredibly challenging with many hurdles to overcome. A Managed IT services provider can be an invaluable ally in this struggle. Not only will they ensure efficient day-to-day operations but also help you overcome common obstacles including data security challenges, cost-effective use of the cloud, compliance, efficient investment in IT assets, and cybersecurity.
If you’d like to learn more about Managed IT Services, when to hire them, and how to choose one, here are some useful resources:
If you liked the blog, please share it with your friends
About The Author
Hari SubediMarketing Manager at Jones IT
Hari is an online marketing professional with a focus on content marketing. He writes on topics related to IT, Security, and Small Business. He is also the founder and managing director of Girivar Kft., a business services company located in Budapest, Hungary.