SaaS falling short of MRR expectations?

10K MRR seems to be the first “magical” KPI target for most SaaS startups (depending upon the industry of course and whether your business model is B2B or B2C).?So how can you improve your situation if this target remains illusive?

Here are some suggestions / comments:??

Omit the “Churn” metric at your peril!

You’ve tracked the common metrics: Customer Acquisition Cost and Lifetime Value, Customer Satisfaction Score, Conversion Rate, Retention Rate, Average Revenue per User - There are a number of metrics that a SaaS provider uses to track their business; and a at lot of them are related to growth and scaling. Churn Rate, however, seems to be the elephant in the room – its the metric that is often the least likely to be discussed or addressed even though it’s probably the single most critical metric you can track if you are looking at your SaaS longevity.?

Features for features sake – is it impacting your SaaS stability?

Tried loads of features and UI tweaks but still no change? – SaaS providers are always looking to add features and UI eye candy to promote growth of the product, but every feature deployed comes with some risk to stability?

Minimizing the impact that slowdowns or small outages have on your clients?

Could it be the small outages / slowdowns??– these are often “accepted” in the early stages by the founders but what affect does this have on the customers and prospects (subscriptions on a trial basis) and how does it compare to competitors that may have a more stable offering.

Security Compliance is now critical to success!

Could it be that you don’t have a convincing security story or recognized compliance?– the security posture for SaaS is becoming more and more important as some high-profile SaaS services are hit with cyber attacks.?After security reviews by a cloud application security specialist, it may be worth looking at a widely adopted international or country specific compliance even if you don’t happen to hold credit card (PCI-DSS) or health (HIPAA or PIPEPDA) data.?Compliances such as SOC or ISO may be an advantage when customers or prospects compare your offering with your competitors.??

Be ruthless with your Cost Controls

In a cost cutting world is your SaaS price per subscription too high because you cannot get costs under control with cloud. Cloud providers such as AWS and Azure are often the way to go when building or running a SaaS, supporting the early stages very well due to their inherent ability to efficiently scale out, in, up and down.?However, after the initial phase, and especially when attempting to reach the first major milestone (e.g., 10K MRR) cloud costs can sometimes outpace subscription revenue if no care is given to designing / architecting cloud cost saving techniques and strategies from the beginning.?Since having to increase the subscription price can sometimes be a “gift” to your competitors, you may be better off lowering your cloud cost per tenant / customer by applying cloud cost reduction strategies or using a cloud cost optimization specialist.??

Don’t be afraid to expand your SaaS!

Need to expand to more regions but worried about the complexity of the delivery and deployment model? Cloud providers give you a pretty seamless system for deploying your SaaS services in many regions of the globe but doing this throws up certain challenges.?Addressing these challenges requires a thoughtful approach to design and architecture. Developing this expertise is a journey that often involves learning from past experiences, sometimes even through difficult lessons. However, there are specialists who can provide valuable guidance in this field.?

And now of course there is AI to worry about….

Perhaps none of the previous points apply to Your SaaS and you are certain that the real issue is that everyone now want an AI based experience. If this is the case, then maybe your first question should be: Can this be achieved without totally rewriting the application?

Due to massive interest in all things AI and ML right now SaaS providers that introduce this technology even in a small way can often get a market advantage over their competitors.?But be warned - Many challenges exist when enhancing a current offering using AI / ML.?Often the best approach is to begin with an assessment or POC that starts from grass roots looking at your services and the data available.?Once you have assessed or experimented with what looks to be a clear advantage with AI / ML then its time to work on the challenges with scaling, securing and seamlessly integrating your new AI / ML service with your existing SaaS.??