SaaS Providers And Customers Should Focus On Continuous Value Creation

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Akhilesh Tripathi, CEO of Digitate , manages the product, market, channel and partner strategy for Digitate's flagship product, ignio.

As technology rapidly advances, focusing on continuous value creation is perhaps the only way to distinguish between hype and actual real value. In the current business environment, where investment dollars are sparse, continuous value creation is a necessity for survival and growth.

This principle is also reshaping the software-as-a-service (SaaS) industry, focusing on making offerings an integral part of customers' operations, support and infrastructure.

Business is always dynamic. SaaS companies have generally done a good job of eliminating shelfware. However, their journey should not end with merely onboarding the customer onto its platform. A central theme of SaaS at Digitate is to always stay relevant to our customers—positively impacting business value delivery, agility, customer experience and productivity on a continuous basis.

What should organizations look for in a SaaS vendor when seeking continuous value creation? What are some of the green flags?

Star ratings are an important aspect of doing business in a B2C world. Customers look for other customers' reviews and feedback from verified buyers before finalizing their purchase. The voice of happy customers reigns supreme, and Google, Yelp and such have become important sources of this.

Similarly, for SaaS providers, the continuous release of new features and capabilities is central to being a SaaS company. Customer stickiness comes from consuming more services and, thereby, realizing greater value. SaaS providers must focus on continuously delivering new capabilities and services or face the risk of more nimble players eliminating them.

The technology landscape is rapidly evolving beyond traditional SaaS models. As enterprises navigate digital transformation, they seek more comprehensive, intelligent and value-driven solutions. This evolution marks three critical shifts in enterprise software—the move from point solutions to end-to-end capabilities, the integration of intelligence at the core rather than as an afterthought and the emergence of a new paradigm we call "service as a software."