There’s no shortage of literature recommending various SaaS concepts, mostly by specific software category, or by specific needs. But, the thing with that is, while a lot of this kind of literature does recommend things for business sizes, nobody really takes the time to talk about general things a specific business size ought to look into. This has led me to think about what to recommend for SMB SaaS, as a lot of startup people and somewhat established medium business people often ask this question.
Well, the nice thing about SaaS is that targeting business scales as well as very specific niches is made possible by this unique type of platform. So, there’s no shortage of SMB SaaS designs out there of all manner of purpose.
#1 – Vana Workforce HR
If you’re a micro business, with only two or three people, then you’re probably not going to need HR stuff. But after that stage, you better believe you need it. Don’t take the foolish route of just expecting an excel sheet or something to be sufficient, because it just plain isn’t.
Vana Workforce is a very solid and competent HR system for any business size, but intended for small or medium scale. So, once you have five or more people on staff, look into this immediately.
For your effort, you get complete HR systems, HCM integration, global benefits tracking, Salesforce integration and cross platform competence that’s award-winning.
#2 – Converge Enterprise
A lot of time, even here, we spend time lauding things like Salesforce or Siebel or Netsuite, and that’s fine. But none of those are SMB friendly due to their over powered nature and large price tags.
Today, I want to recommend an alternative CRM solution called Converge Enterprise for the smaller business scales. It’s wholly competent and stable, offering role based security, DRIP marketing, an app system similar to Salesforce’s, automation and work flows, sales process automation, dynamic dashboards, inline editing, POS integration and a ton more.
Its similarity to Salesforce also makes migration over to Salesforce much easier on a technical and training level, as well!
#3 – Easy Time Tracking
Ok, hear me out. You probably expected like, a BI suite or something for the third on the list, but in all honesty, you’re not going to find BI or the like really scaled specifically for SMBs. Most SMBs handle that stuff manually until they become bigger, so nobody’s thought to fill the niche.
However, this is something that I really think you need to make sure you don’t overlook. As an SMB, or a micro company, chances are even if your staff is small, you also have to hire out a lot of freelance work, or you yourself are basically working as an organized freelance group.
For this kind of work, which SMBs tend to have to work as, and work with, you need very special time tracking and invoicing very much different from what regular HR is designed to track.
This is just such a system.
Conclusion:
These are simply SMB SaaS examples, and things that you need the moment you become a certain size. Yes, there are far bigger fish in the sea for these and other niches. But they’re really big fish and you can’t yet afford the net to catch them with. These are a great place to start.
