Building a SaaS MVP : How to design a workable solution?

The goal of MVP SaaS development is to produce a minimal viable product (MVP) with the necessary functionality to validate the idea and get feedback from users.  These days, we do not face these difficulties. Our use of software has altered as a result of SaaS solutions. Forecasts indicate that by 2023, the SaaS market would have grown to $623 billion. 

In other words, the rate of growth per year will increase to 18%. Due to its benefits for businesses from many industries, the research firm Grand View estimates that the Saas industry revenue would reach $819.23 billion in 2030.

In this post, we'll go over the essential processes and expenses involved in creating a SaaS MVP.

What does SaaS MVP mean?

In software as a service (SaaS), a minimum viable product (MVP) is an early version of a programme that just comprises the essential functions and still provides clients with adequate value.

At a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 13.92%, the global software as a service (SaaS) industry is anticipated to reach $1,016.44 billion by 2032 to $276.11 billion in 2022.

In software as a service (SaaS), a minimum viable product (MVP) is an early version of a programme that just comprises the essential functions and still provides clients with adequate value.

For SaaS, an MVP development can be beneficial for concept representation, quick product launch, idea validation, and primary cost savings. The startup is then prepared for more design and development, updates, and any required pivoting.

The main MVP benefits for SaaS startups are enumerated below:

When a Saas product is developed with MVP in mind, it means that its initial iteration merely includes the capabilities necessary for meeting its fundamental requirements and addressing the issues and needs of its intended user base. 

Let's examine the advantages of creating a SaaS MVP:

1. Effectiveness

Your team will be able to concentrate solely on the elements that are absolutely necessary to provide users with worth when you develop an MVP. Establish priorities to keep the building process simple and free of needless complication. In addition, you'll be able to distribute resources better.

2. Minimal-Risk Capital

Investing in an MVP is less risky than developing a complete brand or prototype. Test hypotheses fast, evaluate consumer demand, and pinpoint possible areas for development. 

3. Easy Financing

Present the salient characteristics and value propositions of the good to prospective investors in order to convince them of its commercial feasibility and scalability. Consequently, this enhances your likelihood of obtaining funds to facilitate additional expansion and advancement.

4. More Time for Improvement

You can obtain insightful comments along with significant insights from prospective customers once you launch an initial version of your SaaS application. It enables you to decide what needs to be improved upon and where to focus your future development efforts. 

5. A quicker time to market

You may shorten the time it takes to produce a new product and seize market possibilities by concentrating on essential characteristics and optimising the construction process. Getting into the marketplace early gives you the opportunity to establish yourself, grow your brand, and make money.

6. Quick Release of New Product

An MVP stands out for its rapid development because it just contains the essential elements and requires significantly less time to design and launch than a full-featured product.

Typical challenges in Developing a SaaS MVP

While developing a SaaS MVP, a lot of things may go incorrect however many of them are preventable. Even so, some businesses have no way to obtain precise audience input. Include both quantitative (about task difficulty) and qualitative (about user-friendliness) feedback. 

• Ineffectual Development Process

Software development that doesn't adhere to a predetermined process reduces performance and raises expenses. Just 42% of staff received agile methodologies training or coaching, according to the 3rd State of Agile Culture Report. 

• Not Putting Security First

It is probable that your SaaS application will gather personally identifiable data about your clients. To assess both internal and external risk, safety measures must be applied within the MVP stage. Adhere to the security rules and procedures described in ISO/IEC 27001 and use powerful tools like encryption, role-based access control, variable password adjustments, and authentication using multiple factors. 

• Issues with Scalability

If your software as a service architecture isn't scalable enough, having too many concurrent users in a cloud environment could lead to performance problems.

Cost-effective facilities are offered by Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and other cloud providers, enabling you to expand resources as your MVP gains additional features and users.

• Impractical Budget Approximations

Based on our expertise, a startup may need to invest anywhere between $25,000 and $60,000 to develop a basic SaaS. And that's presuming you have an established workflow, a group of trained engineers, and seasoned management.

The place of residence of your team also affects the development costs. Consider costs, skill levels, and experience when selecting a remote dedicated staff. 

7 Steps to Building a SaaS MVP

An MVP is crucial for smaller businesses with little funding since it enables you to find out early on what the audience believes of your SaaS. However, careful preparation and market study are required for a successful MVP. Therefore, we separated the process into the following parts in order to simplify it and prevent bottlenecks.

1. Determine Who the Target Audience Is

Make sure to construct a thorough client persona before moving further with development. Try responding to these inquiries to help you achieve this:

• Who is the clientele you serve?

• What hurts and desires do they have?

• Are their issues sufficiently acknowledged and validated?

• Which gadgets do they make use of?

• What are the available solutions right now?

Perhaps your project idea isn't the greatest one if it doesn't have a target audience. On the opposite side, if a large portion of your audience is suffering, avoid overextending yourself. 

• Examine the Market and Rivals

A detailed market analysis is necessary prior to developing a SaaS MVP.

• How big is your market, and is there a need for a fresh approach?

• Is a large portion of your audience concentrated in one area?

• Which rules and regulations—such as the GDPR, PCI DSS, APPI, PSD2, HIPAA, and others—apply to the intended locations and industry?

• How do the same problems are solved by your rivals?

• What impressions do your competitors have on your target audience?

• How will your app be unique compared to others?

Step 1: Keep an eye on all messages and actions from competitors, such as press releases, reports, and earnings calls.
Step 2: Evaluate the capabilities, resources, and assets of rivals to determine their strategic advantages.
Step 3: Recognise the history and decision-making tendencies of important players in the rival company.
Step 4: Forecast rival behaviour and monitor their results to ensure accuracy.

Use resources like Crunchbase and Product Hunt to research both successfully. 

• Identify the Essential Elements

Many businesses overcomplicate or overfill their SaaS MVPs with unnecessary features. Remember that it's just a prototype or an end product; instead, concentrate on the bare minimal features required to determine whether your concept is viable.

Make a list of all the features, then select and filter them according to the following standards:

• Is this a feature that your SaaS product needs to function?

• Does your target audience (as determined by the research step) want it?

• Does it resolve a significant issue?

• Will your revenue be significantly impacted by it?

• Is this feature a component of the intended product?

• Add the features that fit these requirements to your list of essential projects. Everything else ought to wait till the product releases in the future.

• Choose a Business Model

By reducing clients' up-front expenses, this subscription-based strategy increases accessibility, may boost market share, and boost profitability. It enables you to compile useful information on consumer behaviour, which can result in customised services, consistent income, and increased customer loyalty.

What about tactics, then? The most often reported strategy is comparing prices (37.5%), followed by cost-plus pricing (29.5%) and pricing based on value (32.5%). 

Another well-liked categorization is:

• Flat rate: a feature-rich bundle for regular monthly payments

• Different price points depending on several factors is known as tiered pricing.

• User-based pricing: the amount charged is determined on how many users the business adds to their account.

• Usage-based pricing: data and metrics related to usage consumption determine the rate.

• Personalised payment plans and feature sets for each customer are examples of variable pricing.

• Construct a Product Roadmap

Your engineers, architects, and designers should assess and record all project requirements prior to the commencement of development, including:

• Functional and non-functional components of the MVP (technical stack, frameworks, APIs, and subsystems) are included in the software specifications.

• Design guidelines that include essential features, user interface, application logic, and strategies for putting requirements into practice when coding

• Assessing the cloud to find your app's ideal design and infrastructure

• Using security analysis to recognise, assess, and mitigate threats

• Post-deployment documentation for use by the support and maintenance teams following the launch

You can also lay out the MVP procedure for creation for customers, marketing, and executives. 

•  Before launching, promote your product

If not enough individuals have a chance to test your MVP, you won't be able to determine whether it is good enough. For this reason, before launching, you must present your product to customers, influencers, and possible investors.

A landing page or film that demonstrates audience concerns and demonstrates how your company can solve them more effectively than competitors can be a good place to start. Make sure you convey your point as clearly and correctly as you can.

• Release the MVP to Include Suggestions

For your MVP, post-launch is equally crucial because it lets you validate your hypotheses about the market and your target audience. For growth, you have to establish an exact review loop.

• If the interest in your MVP is high enough to justify full-scale development

• What customers enjoy and don't like about your offering

• If your solution and company's structure match

• If the pricing plan makes sense in relation to other products

Your team should remove mistakes and problems during integration testing. Additionally, make sure your system can manage realistic user scenarios, system updates, and significant loads.

What is the cost of developing a SaaS MVP?

An MVP for a SaaS startup requires funding ranging from $25,000 to $60,000. The overall cost could change based on things like where your team is located and the cooperation type you select. For a remote team, it's critical to take skill rates, personnel availability, and cost into account.

The following factors affect how much developing a SaaS MVP costs:

• Size and Experience of the Team

How many members ought to be on a team? Answering that question without knowing the specifics of the upcoming SaaS MVP is difficult. However, the cost to produce a minimum viable product for SaaS increases with the experience level of your workforce.

• Technology Stack

We would advise selecting user-friendly, scalable, and well-liked technologies and tools for a SaaS MVP project.

Rapid MVP development, for instance, frequently makes use of programming languages like Python, PHP, Ruby on Rails, and Ruby.

• Complexity of Features

It is essential to consider how intricate a feature is. There is no hope of a quick and easy development process if the feature set is too complex.

The recommendation is to concentrate on the essential features and add those that a SaaS MVP cannot function without.

• Location 

The cost of product development varies depending on where the team is located. Hiring engineers, for instance, can be a little expensive if you're located in one of the "costly" locations" (Western Europe or North America).

As a result, a basic custom MVP with only the essential features will run you about $30,000. Costlier iterations of the product MVP will be needed for more sophisticated versions.

Conclusion

A product seldom bypasses the MVP stage in this way. Giants in the SaaS industry including Google, IBM, Oracle, Microsoft, Fujitsu, and Oracle all began with a minimal viable product. It is also an excellent moment to launch a software as a service (SaaS) company, as evidenced by the approximately 15,000 SaaS companies that will have over 14 billion users globally by the end of 2021. If you're looking for a fast solution on a scalable architecture, be sure to get in touch with our SaaS MVP development business.