How do you evaluate and compare different SaaS providers and features for your needs?

1 Define Your Requirements: What business objectives, challenges, and specific features you need from a solution 2 Scalability: Can the solution scale as your business grows 3 Integration Capabilities: Check the compatibility of the solution with your existing software ecosystem 4 Security: Do you have compliance & regulations that need to be met and can this solution check those boxes 5 Cost & ROI: How do the features compare to their cost and value

Define your problem (e.g., sluggish marketing) and features you can't live without (e.g., automation tools), your business goals and identify your core business problem. Research top contenders, prioritizing user reviews, analyst insights. Create a comparison matrix weighting features and pricing, then factor in Total Cost of Ownership. Deep dive with shortlisted vendors through demos and ask about support, security, and scalability. Don't just chase features - prioritize user-friendliness, solid support, and scalability in free trials. Evaluate the platform's ease of use, the quality of customer support, and its ability to scale with your growing marketing and managing needs.

Choosing the right SaaS provider involves a blend of technical and business considerations. Start by defining your core requirements: features, scalability, integration capabilities, and compliance with industry standards. Assess the provider's reliability and performance history. Look into uptime guarantees and read customer reviews for real-world insights. Security is non-negotiable; ensure they follow best practices and offer robust data protection measures. Cost-effectiveness is key. Compare pricing models to ensure they align with your usage patterns and budget. Finally, evaluate the quality of customer support, because when things go south, responsive and helpful support can save the day.

The main business goal is the solution that is needed and what specially needs to be solved within the different stakeholder teams. SaaS providers can and will use the same words to explain the value and benefit of the software. Be very clear about the problem to be solved, the pain that is currently being experienced as it is affecting the different teams. The vendor will be able to define and deliver the trial of the software to show the needed metrics to make a decision that are aligned to the business goals and requirements.

Bring up your security and compliance early in the conversation. The vendor will be able to get in motion the needed documentation and potential NDA if needed during the initial call so that it is in motion as quickly as possible. Offer a separate time to talk with another person on the team if needed to clarify the security and compliance team if needed. The vendor should lead this process and if they are lagging in the movement of the finer points it is a good way to vet the technical ability of the overall company.

Understand depending on the services you may still be responsible for some of the security. You also need to understand what security frameworks are in place and what that means. As an example many assume a "SOC2" means that "security is all good." And that's not the case. It simply validates their policies and procedures. There also is not "certification" for SOC2. where in the case of ISO20771 or PCI you are in fact audited and given a certification, and are aligned to that frameworks requirements. With SaaS I think it's important to ensure the provider has a secure SDLC process, good DevSecOps. You want to know their development process accounts for security as much as how they are hosting and protecting it.

Performance and reliability The key is to test efficiently. Deploy the service onto your internal teams machines and use it. Use it like you’re going to use it forever. Then deploy it to as many users as you possibly can. Note any issues, and any friction that comes from the deployment in use of the tool Once it is used and you find that there is success and what is offered you are then able to do a formal review of the performance and the reliability by reaching out to everybody that has used the product. The technical win here will define all of the needed data points in performance and reliability.

Once the software is on the endpoints the next step is to deploy to as many machines as you can. As many users as you can. If you are asked to only deploy to a couple machines or users, ask why. It may be a valid reason, but insist so that you can define the resources it will take to scale and the flexibility of the software to our environment.

Work the service until you find problems and then reach out to support. Submit a support ticket and see what time it takes for the team to get back to you and who is on the line when you do. Ask for the sales enablement person to work with you. Whether you are selling internally or you are selling to customers for use externally, you will need their help. Engage with everyone in the supporting roles and reach out to the CEO and ask them if they would be happy to have you as a customer. The answer is a big yes and how is that yes delivered. You will find out alot from an informal LinkedIn message after a connection request to see the response time from the leadership of the solution you are about to invest into.

When purchasing, make sure to talk price early and instigate the pricing roll out. Speak in number of licenses needed and endpoints to purchase. This is the metric that is of most value to the vendor and helping them in being direct on what you can buy and the parameters you would like to purchase in gives you the opportunity to have the best pricing and value to your users. The ROI definition drive the pain that is currently being felt relatively to each of the teams, and/or the profit from a sales to a customer, or savings. Talking pricing early and defining the ROI for the vendor gives you the ability to achieve the best cost and value.

Never underestimate the cost of resources and training. A lot of times decisions will be made that something is too expensive. "We can just do it ourselves." Ignoring the fact that you need to find the right resources to build, test, manage and maintain the solution. Even more so if it's a solution that brings new processes to your business. There is a lot of value in experience. A good SaaS provider can also tell you the best way to run the program for their tooling. Try to not over-customize it. Many times people want to change the technology to fit their antiquated business process. The proper approach is to update your processes to the modern, proven and efficient ways.

Roadmap and Vision: Service Provider with a clear and well-defined roadmap can provide you with a sense of direction and confidence in their ability to meet your business needs. It can also help you plan for future growth and ensure that your technology investments align with your business goals. In addition, vision can provide insight into their long-term strategy and commitment to the market. This can help you evaluate the vendor's stability and sustainability, which is important when selecting a cloud vendor for your business.

Considerations like Availability of Technical Resources in the respective region/country, Training and Certification Process and Cost for Administrators, Types of User/Admin Licenses available, Acceptability from Leadership to allow Customer Reference Calls would greatly benefit the evaluation process

SLAs/SLOs as well as number of technical resources available for support, are always very important considerations before picking the right vendor.