Understanding the ecosystem of SaaS

Ecosystem SaaS

When the SaaS vendor attracts a set of partners and service providers that work directly with the key company, then this foundation becomes the anchor for a rich partner ecosystem that benefit all parties.

Ecosystem SaaS

 

How?

Whether the ecosystem of SaaS is born native, before or after SaaS, this key company attracts third party vendors, evangelists, plugin providers, and software developers. They in turn develop and maintain innovative solutions through collaboration and coordination. This is usually the case when the well-established key vendor opens up its programming interfaces to other independent software companies. They see this as an opportunity to create solutions that sit on top of the infrastructure of the SaaS vendor.

Why?

It is all about customers. In today’s professional business service market, customers expect your software to perform seamlessly. To do that, SaaS vendors need the most comprehensive environment, which can easily be integrated with the rest of the business softwares to fill the gaps in the service and product. Having this value-added network of partners and collaborative organizations that fulfill of your customer’s needs can be an important competitive advantage.

Benefits?

All parties value the linkage. For SaaS vendor, these service providers provide a much broader access to more customers, buyers, and influencers of today. In turn, the ecosystem provides smaller partners business with reach and scale and helps smaller fund their expansion and innovation. It helps them to get to market quickly, because they only have to write their industry-specific code. Therefore, the SaaS vendor and their other independent partners need each other for success and growth. This relationship between them are quite symbiotic.

Example?

Let’s say, you as a customer need a time, expense or invoicing solution from SaaS vendor, such as PlanMill. Then you usually need an accounting system too. So, PlanMill starts to cooperate with another financial software company, like Finago, who creates software integration (e.g. API) between them. After that benefits are numerous. Whereas the SaaS vendor gets a system for your needs, the other vendor is increasing their reach and potential customer group, and you get enhanced service and better usability of both tools.

The ecosystem of SaaS benefits all parties and gathers lots of partners around SaaS vendor. For example, other PlanMill’s partners are e.g. Administer, Basware, CGI, Loyalistic and Talenom.

Bottom line

SaaS as an ecosystem isn’t just a partnership, but moreover it is a particular way apps fit together and work together. It covers the full set of resources and offerings to meet the demands of today’s customer and fill the gap in the service that can not be addressed by service or product features. For many smaller partners this is essential part of their business model.
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PlanMill Ltd. is a leading provider of user-friendly web-based CRM, PROJECT and ERP Cloud solutions designed for the service business. We enable organizations to streamline business processes, improve control of their customers, personnel, projects and finance – while enhancing productivity and profitability.

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