交付方式 saas_扩展和交付SaaS启动的最佳方法

交付方式 saas

Launching a new SaaS startup in a cutthroat market is challenging. But the end result can be rewarding when properly executed. There is little forgiveness for mistakes and miscalculations. This article will explain when and how you should scale your SaaS startup while avoiding common pitfalls.

在残酷的市场中创建新的SaaS初创公司具有挑战性。 但是，如果执行得当，最终结果可能会有所收获。 对于错误和错误计算几乎不会原谅。 本文将解释何时以及如何扩展SaaS启动，同时避免常见的陷阱。

不要过早扩展 (Don’t scale prematurely)

Don’t scale too early, when you aren’t ready for it. If you are still operating in any of the following phases, stop now. Go back to work, and acquire your first ten customers before you even think about scaling. Let’s walk through these pre-scaling phases:

当您还没有准备好扩展时，请不要过早扩展。 如果您仍在以下任一阶段中运行，请立即停止。 重新开始工作，并在考虑扩展之前获得您的前十个客户。 让我们逐步完成这些预缩放阶段：

• Market validation: You found a solution to a niche problem. You’ve shared your idea and people are willing to pay for your solution. Great! You’ve validated your market. It is time to build your MVP.

  市场验证：您找到了解决小生境问题的方法。 您已经分享了您的想法，人们愿意为您的解决方案付费。 大！ 您已经验证了您的市场。 现在是时候建立您的MVP。

• MVP completion: You have built the minimum viable product for your solution. It is now time to get testers, feedback, and paying customers. Find your marketing channels, and run your initial marketing campaign to get testers.

  MVP完成：您已为解决方案构建了最低可行的产品。 现在是时候获得测试人员，反馈和付费客户了。 找到您的营销渠道，并运行您的初始营销活动以获取测试人员。

• Paying customers: You have at least ten paying customers who are using your software. Now you can start thinking about improving and scaling your SaaS.

  付费客户：您至少有十个使用您的软件的付费客户。 现在，您可以开始考虑改善和扩展SaaS了。

If you have already gone through these phases, congratulations! You are now ready to begin the initial SaaS scaling process. Otherwise, do everything manually. This includes customer support, application deployments, and billing. Continue until you validate your market and acquire paying customers. I recommend reading this article to understand the SaaS startup phases.

如果您已经经历了这些阶段，那么恭喜您！ 现在您可以开始初始的SaaS扩展过程了。 否则，请手动执行所有操作。 这包括客户支持，应用程序部署和计费。 继续直到您验证市场并获得付费客户。 我建议阅读本文以了解SaaS启动阶段。

逐步扩展 (Scale gradually)

It’s vital for SaaS startups to think of scaling as a gradual process. I’ve witnessed many startups living in the dream that their software will become viral overnight. They pour time and resources into getting ready for their “big moment.” That moment never happens, and even if by magic or extraordinary circumstances it does, it will not meet your expectations. I’ve learned this the hard way.

对于SaaS初创公司而言，将扩展视为一个逐步的过程至关重要。 我目睹了许多初创公司生活在他们的软件将在一夜之间变得病毒式传播的梦想中。 他们倾注时间和资源，为“重要时刻”做好准备。 那一刻永远不会发生，即使是在魔术或特殊情况下，它也不会满足您的期望。 我已经很难学到了。

The scaling process is gradual. Don’t scale your entire business at once, and don’t scale until you need to. Each scaling stage will cost you time and resources, so it’s best to prioritize your needs and scale accordingly.

缩放过程是渐进的 。 不要立即扩展整个业务，也不要在需要之前扩展。 每个扩展阶段都会花费您的时间和资源，因此最好优先考虑您的需求并相应地进行扩展。

At ServiceBot, we usually target three areas when we look to scale a SaaS startup. Billing, customer relations, and cloud infrastructure. Each area targets a different function of your SaaS business. The order in which you decide to scale is based on your current customer feedback and operation pipeline. One might speak to you more than others based on your current needs. Let’s go through these areas.

在ServiceBot上 ，当我们希望扩展SaaS初创公司时，通常会针对三个领域。 计费，客户关系和云基础架构。 每个领域针对您的SaaS业务的不同功能。 您决定扩展的顺序基于当前的客户反馈和运营渠道。 根据您当前的需求，一个人可能会比其他人说话更多。 让我们浏览这些区域。

规模计费：自动计费并更快地付款 (Scale billing: Automate billing and get paid faster)

Most SaaS businesses adopt the subscription billing model. If you are spending time sending manual invoices and reminders to your customers. If you are manually tracking free trials, and aren’t providing tiered SaaS offerings, you may want to start scaling your billing system first.

大多数SaaS业务都采用订阅计费模式。 如果您要花时间发送手动发票和提醒给您的客户。 如果您正在手动跟踪免费试用版，并且未提供分层的SaaS产品，则可能要首先开始扩展计费系统。

Scaling your billing processes is dependent on your billing structure. But there are some common improvements any SaaS business can implement to scale their accounting:

扩展计费流程取决于您的计费结构。 但是，任何SaaS业务都可以实现一些常见的改进来扩展其会计：

• Tiered pricing: You may have started with a single-tiered product (great way to start). But you will find yourself offering more varieties of your software as your customer base grows. Tiered pricing feature also includes the ability to have add-on pricing during checkout.

  分层定价 ：您可能已经开始使用单层产品(很好的开始方式)。 但是随着客户群的增长，您会发现自己提供了更多种类的软件。 分层定价功能还包括在结帐时具有附加定价的功能。

• Auto-billing: Automatically charge customers each billing cycle. This will save your accounting team days of work every month. The goal is to make the payment process fast, efficient, and transparent for both you and the customer.

  自动计费 ：在每个结算周期自动向客户收费。 这样可以节省您的会计团队每个月的工作时间。 我们的目标是使付款流程对您和客户来说都是快速，高效和透明的。

• Free trials: One of the most common ways for SaaS companies to get the customer’s foot in the door is through free trials. This feature is more complicated than it seems. Your free trial system should notify users when the trial is about to expire. Automatically charge the customer once the trial period has ended. Then, automatically deactivate the software if the customer decides not to extend the trial.

  免费试用 ： 免费试用是SaaS公司吸引客户成功的最常见方法之一。 此功能比看起来要复杂。 您的免费试用系统应在试用即将到期时通知用户。 试用期结束后，自动向客户收费。 然后，如果客户决定不延长试用期，则自动停用软件。

Other features consist of giving refunds and credits to the customers. It is also able to apply additional charges to a running software, and giving customers payment approval rights.

其他功能包括为客户提供退款和信贷 。 它还能够对正在运行的软件收取额外费用 ，并给予客户付款批准权。

If you are ready to start scaling your billing system, write down the functionalities that are necessary for your SaaS business. There are many applications that could help you scale your SaaS billing system, such as Stripe, Chargify, or ServiceBot.

如果您准备开始扩展计费系统，请写下SaaS业务所需的功能。 有许多应用程序可以帮助您扩展SaaS计费系统，例如Stripe ， Chargify或ServiceBot 。

扩展CRM：更贴近客户 (Scale CRM: Get closer to your customers)

You may have already started off with a customer relation management system to manage all your customers. But CRM goes a lot further than just managing customers. Your relationship with your customer starts the second they land on your website. If you aren’t gathering enough user data, then you are losing customers.

您可能已经开始使用客户关系管理系统来管理所有客户。 但是，CRM不仅可以管理客户，还可以进一步发展。 您与客户的关系从他们登陆您的网站开始。 如果您没有收集足够的用户数据，那么您将失去客户。

There are some common features to think about once you are ready to scale your customer relationship system:

一旦准备好扩展客户关系系统，就需要考虑一些共同的功能：

• User management: Your customer data might be scattered across multiple applications. For instance, in customer personal data, billing info, and interaction history. To scale your customer management system, think about all the user data that you want to access from a central platform.

  用户管理 ：您的客户数据可能分散在多个应用程序中。 例如，在客户个人数据，账单信息和交互历史中。 要扩展您的客户管理系统，请考虑要从中央平台访问的所有用户数据。

• Instant support: You don’t want to make your customers wait for answers. Customers have grown accustomed to accessing information instantly. They will be expecting the same from your business. This feature integrates a live chat system to your SaaS platform. Thus, your customers can contact you from anywhere within your product.

  即时支持 ：您不想让客户等待答案。 客户已经习惯于立即访问信息。 他们会从您的业务中获得同样的期望。 此功能将实时聊天系统集成到您的SaaS平台。 因此，您的客户可以在产品的任何位置与您联系。

• Knowledge base: As your customer base grows, you will receive more questions regarding your product usage guide. Scaling your knowledge base system allows you to create a central documentation repository. You can use it to redirect your customers when they have questions. It is always a good practice to write documentation as your company scales.

  知识库 ：随着客户群的增长，您将收到有关产品使用指南的更多问题。 扩展知识库系统使您可以创建中央文档存储库。 您可以使用它来重定向客户的问题。 随着公司规模的扩大，编写文档始终是一个好习惯。

Scaling your customer relationship system can help you increase your conversion rate. There are many tools on the market that can help you scale your CRM system. Intercom and Inspectlet integration with ServiceBot is a great start to scale your SaaS CRM.

扩展客户关系系统可以帮助您提高转化率。 市场上有许多工具可以帮助您扩展CRM系统。 对讲和Inspectlet与ServiceBot的集成是扩展SaaS CRM的一个良好的开端。

扩展部署：自动化部署 (Scale Deployments: Automate your deployments)

Scaling deployments requires proper architecture and planning. During this phase, you will be adding an auto deployment system. There customers can instantly get access to your software without you doing any manual work.

扩展部署需要适当的体系结构和计划。 在此阶段，您将添加一个自动部署系统。 那里的客户无需您进行任何手动工作即可立即访问您的软件。

To automate and scale your deployment system, you should think about the following steps:

要自动化和扩展您的部署系统，您应该考虑以下步骤：

• Containerizing application: You may be starting to think about application deployments. But you must make sure that your software is containerized. Docker is the industry standard for containerizing applications.

  容器化应用程序 ：您可能开始考虑应用程序部署。 但是您必须确保您的软件已容器化。 Docker是用于容器化应用程序的行业标准。

• Cloud Management: Once your application is containerized, you can use a cloud management software. For example, Kubernetes. This will automate your deployments, auto scale up/down, and manage your cloud resources.

  云管理 ：将应用程序容器化后，即可使用云管理软件。 例如， Kubernetes 。 这将自动执行您的部署，自动扩展/缩小和管理您的云资源。

• CI/CD: CI/CD is short for Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment. CI/CD is a modern strategy to continuously develop, patch, test, and release new versions of your software to your customers. CI/CD is going to be the heart of your SaaS processes as you scale. Large businesses do this to minimize maintenance, maximize innovation, and increase revenue.

  CI / CD ：CI / CD是持续集成/持续部署的缩写。 CI / CD是一种现代策略，可以不断开发，修补，测试和发布新版本的软件给客户。 随着扩展，CI / CD将成为您的SaaS流程的核心。 大型企业这样做是为了最大程度地减少维护，最大化创新并增加收入。

To learn more about stabilizing your cloud infrastructure, I recommend this article.

要了解有关稳定云基础架构的更多信息，我建议本文 。

结论 (Conclusion)

Don’t start scaling until you have gathered all your requirements and understand the full scope of your SaaS scale processes. Give yourself enough time to scale; no software ever works well when development is rushed. Make sure there is proper architecture in place prior to development.

在收集了所有需求并了解SaaS扩展流程的全部范围之前，不要开始扩展。 给自己足够的时间进行扩展； 匆忙进行开发时，没有软件能正常工作。 在开发之前，请确保有适当的体系结构。

Take advantage of the tools that are out there for you. ServiceBot SaaS management software is a great place to start scaling up your SaaS startup.

利用为您提供的工具。 ServiceBot SaaS管理软件是开始扩大SaaS启动规模的好地方。

想扩展您的SaaS？ 与我免费预约咨询 。 (Want to scale your SaaS? Book a free consultation with me.)

翻译自: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/the-best-way-to-scale-and-deliver-your-saas-startup-53c0d62fb6f7/

交付方式 saas