According to Gartner, in 2024, end-user spending on SaaS is expected to grow to $232 million. As the industry grows and matures, so do the expectations of its customer base.

The reality is that customer expectations are changing. Customers seek a more personalised and tailored experience from their SaaS providers. KPMG’s future of Xass (Everything-as-a-Service) reports highlights seamless customer experience as the primary challenge for SaaS businesses.

According to Gartner, “75% of organisations will adopt a digital transformation model predicated on cloud as the fundamental underlying platform”. CRMs like Salesforce often sit at the heart of this, and the most successful companies in any industry are typically those who nail their usage of these platforms.

Before working at Ignyto, I worked at a couple of large, successful SaaS companies. Since moving into the consulting world, you quickly see the commonalities in how successful businesses leverage Salesforce and other technology to drive performance. The CRM landscape is getting increasingly competitive, so I wanted to share my thoughts on why, in my experience both as an end user and a consultant, Salesforce remains the gold standard for SaaS businesses to adopt:

Golden customer record

The term ‘customer 360’ can feel overused, but linking all activity, engagements, and actions to a single customer record remains undeniably powerful. Having that single Account record where you can see your company’s total engagement with a customer – from their first marketing touchpoint to their last service agent call – is invaluable. It enables every user, from support agents to senior management, to make informed decisions and ensure that customer has a great experience. Many CRMs, such as Hubspot and Zoho, are suitable for tracking individual deals and pipelines but have yet to match Salesforce in ‘C’ in CRM.

Designed for SaaS

There is a widely established formula for successful SaaS businesses that most companies widely adopt, from Microsoft and Oracle to 10-person start-ups. Sure, some companies will deviate from it as and where needed, but by and large, there is an proven structure in terms of teams, roles, and how to sell and manage their customers that involves:

• Marketing at the top of the funnel
• BDRs / SDRs prospecting and qualifying
• AEs and sales teams closing deals
• Customer Success onboarding customers and ensuring they see value from (and therefore renew) their products

Salesforce, off-the-shelf, is designed with this structure in mind. You may, of course, configure it to be relevant to your business. But ‘out of the box’ you get a data model, structure, and workflow that is designed for companies to adopt a proven, scalable formula.

But massively configurable!

It is often said that the best thing about Salesforce is that you can configure it as much as you want, and the worst thing about it is that you can configure it as much as you want. That is why we always recommend either working with a Consultancy such as Ignyto or developing your own in-house expertise to build a system in line with best practices. But in terms of how flexible the platform is, the possibilities are (almost) endless! With Open API architecture, configuration, and code-based development tools, the question is usually ‘how do we do this’ rather than ‘can we do this’.

Process Automation

Salesforce has a wide automation toolbox at its disposal, meaning businesses can build their own automated processes. Identifying the repeatable, low-value busywork tasks and automating them means your teams have more time to spend on high-value activities, such as building customer relationships.

Reduce complexity with CPQ

Salesforce CPQ is a powerful solution for reducing complexity in your product or service offering. This works by standardising your offering and leveraging repeatable, scalable processes while still being flexible enough to accommodate a range of scenarios. SaaS businesses typically offer subscriptions, services, one-off costs (units, set-ups), or usage based products. Salesforce CPQ simplifies selling and managing these revenue streams, often together, empowering sales teams to close better deals more efficiently.

Automate renewals and drive retention

One of the biggest challenges growing SaaS businesses often encounter is visibility over their customer base and renewal points. Salesforce provides not just brilliant insight into this but also makes the process of managing renewals, making co-term contract changes, and closing uplifts incredibly simple. Introduce E-Signature tools like DocuSign and some automation, and you can close renewals in a matter of clicks.

Report on basically anything

A common question asked by new customers migrating off other systems is, “Can we report on ___?” and the answer is always the same – as long as the data is there, yes! Salesforce’s reporting capability is very robust, allowing you to report on any data in the platform and manipulate it in several ways. And for complex BI where you need to join multiple data sets, there’s always CRM Analytics (The Artist Formerly Known As Tableau).

Conclusion

Salesforce is the gold standard for SaaS businesses because it offers a proven model and comprehensive features designed to help companies succeed. It gives teams across the full customer lifecycle the tools to delight customers and create a seamless, connected experience.

If you are a SaaS business looking for a CRM platform to help you grow and succeed, then Salesforce is the right choice. To learn more about Salesforce and how it can benefit your business, contact Ignyto today.