Phase One Ventures’ developers break down their workflow into layman’s language.

If you are a business owner trying to understand SaaS, we have created the ultimate checklist that will give you a clearer perspective on how we build market-leading SaaS platforms.

Download it for FREE here.

Read on to learn more about how we build industry-disrupting SaaS platforms from scratch.

What kind of SaaS platforms are there?

Before we get into the breakdown of building a SaaS platform, it is helpful to first understand what kind of SaaS applications there are. The kind of SaaS model a partner wants will dictate how it is built.

B2B software

The first is Business-to-Business (B2B) software which is designed to meet the needs of business entities. It typically involves services like supply chain management, business analytics, and enterprise software, facilitating interactions between companies.

Phase One Ventures builds software for other businesses. The industries that our partners have worked in vary greatly from e-commerce to credit repair. The beauty of SaaS is that it can benefit everyone from any industry.

B2C software

Business-to-Consumer (B2C) software directly targets end customers, offering services that enhance their interaction with businesses. This could include consumer apps, online retail platforms, or customer service tools.

Horizontal software

SaaS platforms that are designed to serve multiple industries or business types belong to the horizontal software category. Similar to B2B software, horizontal software is not industry-specific, but rather designed to be useful for companies as a whole. They typically offer solutions for common business functions such as email, accounting, or HR management.

Vertical software

In contrast, vertical software caters to the specific needs of a single industry or niche. It provides customized solutions to unique challenges or requirements of that industry, such as healthcare, manufacturing, or real estate.

CRM software

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software is designed to manage and improve business relationships. It aids in tracking interactions with customers, improving customer service, and analyzing customer patterns and trends.

HubSpot, Salesforce, Zoho CRM, Freshworks, and SugarCRM are examples of companies and tools that fall under this category.

Project management software

This is a SaaS tool that assists teams in organizing, planning, and managing companies' work. It offers features like task assignment, progress tracking, and collaboration tools, enabling teams to achieve their goals more efficiently and collaborate seamlessly regardless of location. They can include features for communication, file sharing, simultaneous editing, and task management.

Examples of this kind of software include Evernote Business, Asana, Trello, and Monday.com.

Ecommerce

These platforms allow businesses to sell products or services online. They provide functionalities for listing products, processing payments, and managing inventory in order to facilitate better online shopping experiences.

You have no doubt used some of these SaaS platforms like Shopify, Wix, Adobe Commerce, and BigCommerce.

ERP software

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software integrates various business processes into one system. It streamlines operations across finance, human resources, procurement, and other departments, promoting data consistency and operational efficiency.

Examples of these kinds of companies include ProShop ERP, Oracle Netsuite, Microsoft Dynamics 365, and SAP Business One.

Billing software

This type of SaaS application provides tools to automate and manage the billing process. It can generate invoices, process payments, track expenses, and provide financial reports, making financial management easier for businesses.

Examples of this kind of software include Quickbooks, FastSpring, and Wave.

Marketing software

Lastly marketing software assists businesses in executing and tracking marketing campaigns across various channels. It can manage tasks such as email marketing, social media management, SEO optimization, and analytics.

Ahrefs, Hubspot, Marketo, and Textedly are some of the most well-known marketing automation software.

What are the advantages of SaaS platforms?

Software-as-a-Service brings numerous advantages to businesses.

Having a SaaS platform translates into having a 24/7 business that runs even when you go to sleep at night helping you bring in more revenue. They also reduce the need for staffing costs helping business owners save money.

SaaS applications are accessible from any location, enhancing mobility and flexibility in operations. With cloud based software, SaaS platforms ensure data security, facilitate real-time collaboration, and make it easier to scale up or down based on demand. Upgrades are automatic, relieving the burden of software maintenance and keeping systems up-to-date without any downtime.

SaaS platforms usually have a pay-as-you-go model, ensuring businesses only pay for what they use. This also makes scaling convenient and affordable since you will not pay for more than you need.

Moreover, a SaaS provider will handle all technical issues, freeing up the internal IT team for strategic tasks.

Finally, the ability to integrate with other SaaS applications helps streamline workflows, improve productivity, and enables data sharing across platforms. These benefits combine to make SaaS an attractive proposition for businesses of all sizes.

If you want to hear about the benefits of SaaS from the perspective of a business owner, read this blog.

How to build a SaaS platform?

Phase One Ventures' software developers are experts at building fully functioning SaaS platforms in impressive times.

We have created a 5 step checklist for building market-leading SaaS platforms. It contains the exact process our own developers follow.

Download it for FREE here.

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Note that each project differs from one another depending on the requirements and specifications given from the industry and partner. Here, they explain their process from start to finish.

Phase One Ventures follows this SaaS model for all of our partners. Read the Cellyce case study or Dispute Panda case study to see how we successfully build each SaaS company.

Industry and Market Research

The entire process is rooted in research. It begins by examining a specific industry and the most common pain points a customer from this industry might experience. The top pain points are then established and the perimeters for the platform are laid out.

UI and UX designers work on building out the flow of the platform. They research features and determine the most important and urgent of all of them that the MVP will contain.

Development

While the designers are laying out the features and building wireframes, the developers also do research and development to decipher how their approach will work. In R&D, they answer the following questions:

• Who will be using it?
• What are customers already accustomed to?
• What are the partner's frustrations or expectations?
• What features are urgent? What can wait?
• Can we integrate with our partner's software?
• What tech can we use to solve our partner's problems?
• What is the timeline for this project?

When the developers receive the project, they begin by designing the code, that is, the foundation of the platform. During this time, they also provision the infrastructure of anything physical where the code will run like the servers and database. To provision means to create or request from the cloud vendor.

Next, the developers begin system design which is understanding the requirements of the platform. This allows them to provision different aspects of the system. For example, if the system is more read-heavy, like X (formerly known as Twitter), the database needs to be optimized for that.

In these beginning stages, developers will set up automations. Whenever developers accept changes from each other, they need to test it and deploy to a server. This is called Continuous Integration Continuous Deployment (CICD).

Additionally, developers have to accommodate how they host AI since almost all platforms choose to integrate it by determining which servers and databases they will use. If a SaaS platform will be hosting AI, they will need more powerful servers. The developers must consider how the backend will connect whether that's through a message queue or an API call. They need to know how to communicate to it as well as know how much memory and resources to allocate to it. Lastly, they decide if they will use GPT or an open source model.

All of this happens in the span of 7-30 days. While all of these technical steps are occurring, developers must be mindful to stay in constant communication with the designers so that the development heads in the right direction.

From here, they add initial app navigation and routing. The designers focus on the flow of the pages from a user perspective, but the developers build the flow to work from a technical standpoint.

They divide the application into modules and start distributing the work amongst developers so developers can be in charge of their own features. They prioritize the most important features that won't block future progress or slow them down later. Authentication is an example of a feature that is necessary to build out front first.

Launching the MVP

When the MVP is launched, the developers' work doesn't stop there. They begin to work in different environments: staging and production. The staging environment involves everything that happens in the backend. It exists for when a developer needs to test a feature or route, they can do so in a safe place without interfering with what users actually see.

The production environment is the front end that faces the public. As a customer, when you interact with a website or shop on a platform, you are using the front end. Once a new feature has been tested, it is then rolled out to the production stage and made available to the public.

Building and launching an MVP is the key to Phase One Ventures' speed. This minimum viable product allows our team to focus and test the most urgent features responsively in the market. This phase is critical to the progress of the platform since we collect even more research and feedback. This data is given to the developers and designers who make adjustments and improvements to the platform for further launches.

Maintenance

At this point, everything is automated meaning there is no more setup. Yet it is vital to understand that software is never in a complete state, rather it is a living organism. Consequently, there are always updates and maintenance that need to be checked periodically.

A common example is if the developers integrate an API from another company that changes their policy which in turn changes their API. In response, the developers must update their application programming interfaces to ensure smooth communication.

...software is never in a complete state, rather it's a living organism.

What to be cautious of?

There are multiple developers coding on each SaaS platform which means the framework must function correctly and be intuitive for others to work on simultaneously. When developers do this properly, their scaffolding is built effectively.

One of the most important aspects to be cautious of is making the code maintainable at every step in the process. If code becomes unreadable or untraceable, developers call this spaghetti code. Developers will leave crumbs that help prevent unmaintainable code where they can pick up what they were last working on. To fix spaghetti code, it must either be refactored, destroyed, or rebuilt.

The last detail that is the most critical is security. A developer's biggest fear is a breach in security. This is especially essential when launching the MVP.

When any SaaS platform involves monetary transactions, there must be procedures and policy in place. Developers must meet the merchant's requirements and have a legal team review the policy before it can even be requested from the merchant. Then developers will write check-out forms and materials in order to include integrations.

Conclusion

From its inception to its maintenance, the journey of creating a SaaS platform is a meticulously engineered process that requires industry and market research, comprehensive UI/UX design, and precise development. The spectrum of SaaS applications range from B2B and B2C software to specialized tools like CRM, ERP, and marketing software. Each platform, though unique, shares the objective of solving specific problems and improving the lives of its users.

However, it is not just the development process that sets SaaS platforms apart; it is the host of benefits they bring compared to traditional software and business.

It takes a team to build an industry disrupting SaaS platform; thankfully the team at Phase One Ventures has plentiful experience in this line of work. From ensuring a smooth user experience to preventing spaghetti code and maintaining the highest security protocols, every step is given its due diligence.

The continual evolution of SaaS platforms speaks to the dynamic and changing nature of tech. A platform is never truly 'finished'; it is an evolving entity that requires constant updates, upgrades, and maintenance to stay relevant and operational.

Ultimately, the journey of building a SaaS platform is a blend of technological expertise, market understanding, and the pursuit of customer satisfaction. Iti's a testament to human ingenuity and the drive to leverage technology in solving real-world problems, creating solutions that are not just about coding and algorithms, but about people and their needs.

If you are interested in building your own SaaS platform with the help of Phase One Ventures' expert team, schedule your free discovery call with our founder today. 

Click the link to book your call → https://meet.phaseoneventures.com/jon.When building a SaaS platform, there are many moving components and roadblocks to navigate that end up creating a fully functioning and efficient platform. If you have ever been curious about what goes into building a SaaS platform, but are not a developer, this is your inside guide to exploring the process.