SaaS integration is becoming increasingly prevalent in the business world. The 21st century has finally taken true hold on the world, and the digital environment is now in the forefront of daily life. As a result, digital services have become an integral part of the business atmosphere as well. Everything is handled by computers, from accounting, to ordering, maintenance and finances. Increasingly, communication and customer transactions are entirely digital.
For business, this started early, before SaaS integration was even an issue. Businesses used computers first, after the government. Finances became some of the first uses of modems, and are still the main users of this arcane medieval form of connectivity as well.
Knowing how important software is for any business, integrating SaaS is something that must be approached. As with all potential paradigm shifts in software, you must at least evaluate whether to partake of it or not. SaaS has a lot of advantages, so some level of integration is probably going to be a good idea. But, how far do you take it, for a small or medium business? You can’t make rash, polar decisions that cost money, like enterprises can.
Well, let’s see where some good areas of integration can be found, that the small and medium businesses might get the most out of converting.
CRM is definitely the first one to consider SaaS for. CRM logistics are costly when handled manually, the software for it is obscure and expensive, and then you wind up spending money on backups and security, and it’s a whole mess. Using CRM software like Salesforce, which is online and centralized, with an adaptive, web-documented interface, solves most of these problems. It’s not free, but it’s affordable enough for anyone turning a profit from their business to approach.
Are you interested in going online with sales? Most companies are trying to in some fashion. You can even order pizza from the internet, now. Well, then your payment handling system, such as it may be now, can be unified into a solid system with a payment gateway program. Ones like CheddarGetter can allow for all kinds of different prices, sales prices and various payment providers such as credit cards, checks, money orders, PayPal, Google Checkout and Western Union, as well as various bank transfer facilities. This saves you a lot of headache, and when you go online with sales, you support pretty much everyone’s payment preferences right out of the box.
Finally, if you’re going online, then you may as well look into some self-service and save yourself a customer service and administrative hassle. Integrating onboard SaaS can allow for users to have a more autonomous experience using your commerce gateway. Less slip ups will happen, and more routine issues can be handled by the site itself fairly intelligently. They tend to look slick and allow for a wider range of browsers and devices to smoothly interact too, so this further widens your reach.
Of course, SaaS integration can be taken much further, but if we’re after just the bare minimum wise conversions for SMBs, then these areas are the most important to approach. Of course, if you see, in light of this, other areas of your SMB that may be improved by SaaS, by all means, try it.