There has been numerous articles, blogs, whitepapers which highlights the difficulties and challenges involved in building highly Scalable, Profitable and Sustainable SaaS Applications especially Multi-Tenant based solutions. These articles points out very few real challenges which are so obvious and common across any kind of SaaS Applications. The degrees of complexity in building “Pure” Multi-Tenant SaaS application will vary from one domain to another for Example: Building a SaaS Application targeted to HealthCare industry is completely different from SaaS based education or collaboration platform.

2. Customer Acquisition
• Customer is King
• Customer On-
boarding
Follow KISS (Keep it
Simple Silly)
• Automate Customer
On-boarding Process
• Make your registration
page pleasing
• Offer Attractive &
Affordable
Subscription Plans

3. Freemium is Best
• Try before you buy (
Freemium) is Sexy
• All the rest of the
products around offer
freemium
• Analyse if freemium
could work for you
• Plan what your free
plan gotta offer
• Extend free Trial for
prospects

4. Freemium Analytics
• Keep an eye on your
trial Conversions
• Understand who is the
potential customer
• Predict the revenue for
the next month,
quarter
• Understand the
problems of non-
engaging customers

5. Subscription Management
• Identify the Pricing
Plans
• Analyse and increase
the adoption rate of
your pricing plans
• Offer attractive
pricing model
• Choose the best
charging frequency
• Make sure you have
plans to cater for
various segments of
your targeted
segments

6. Recurring Billing
• Analyse and increase
the adoption rate of
your pricing plans
• Offer attractive
pricing model
• Choose the best
charging frequency
• Make sure you have
plans to cater for
various segments of
your targeted
segments
• Incorporate Dunning
• Discounts & Coupons

7. SaaS Security
• RBAC – for granular
access control
• Security in all layers
• Data Security Policies
• Security against
Subscription Plans
• Adhering to OWASP
security Guidelines
• Support for Single
Sign On
• API Security
• SSO & Open Auth

8. Database Isolation • Size database per
customer?
• Targeted Domain
• Schema level
customizations
• Price of your product?
• No. of prospective
customers you are
targeting?
• Average usage
concurrency
• Usage Pattern
• Collaboration
between customers

9. • White Labelling
• Language Preference
• Support for custom
fields
• Customizable
business policies
• Email templates
• Workflow
Customization
• Billing Customization
• Master data
Manipulation
Customizability
&
Configurability

10. • Integratibility is the
key influencer in SaaS
adoption
• Provide Extension &
hooks to integrate
other Apps
• Be independent on
Technology via APIs
• REST & XML Support
Integratibility
&
Extendibility

11. • More the Product Self
Serviceable, the less
cost, effort, churn will
be.
• Keep it Silly & Simple
• Supportive
Documentation
• Customer success
driven
• Identify Customer
needs and automate
Self Servicing

12. • Build distributed, SOA
based architecture
• Scale as and when
needed
• Analyse & understand
the product Demand
• Implement effective
Caching, CDN etc
• Identify Potential
performance
bottlenecks and
address it
Performance, Scalability & Availability

13. • Automate backup
Process
• Keep Customers
informed about
Planned Maintenance
• Do Maintenance on
Off Hours
• Check for Redundancy
• Learn from Service
outages
• Test, Test,Test & Test
Operations & Maintenance

14. Pick the Perfect Cloud• Pricing
• Expertise
• Reliability
• Financial Stability
• Easy Manageability
• Customer Support
• Transparency

15. • Provide support for
customizing email
messages
• Support for Multi
Language
• Support for
configuring dispatch
details such as SMTP,
port no., etc
• Support for Dynamic
Place Holders
Automate Messaging

16. • Identify the right
candidates for WF
• Automate the
Business Process
• Provide Customizable
Process Flows
• 0% Hardcode
• Be ZERO dependant
on IT Folks
• Empower Business
Users with the power
of WF Designers
Dynamic Workflows

17. • % of Active & Inactive
Trial Customers
• % of Paid Customers
• Identify the Potentials
Customers
• Identify Cross Selling
& Upselling
Opportunities
• Predict the LTV &
ARPC(U)
• Predict MRR
Business Analytics

18. Presented by
Ilyas. F, Technical Evangelist, http://www.techcello.com