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The five keys to a successful SaaS transformation project

So your SaaS app is looking a bit tired, or customers are leaving because they think your day has passed. And now you’re considering transforming your ugly duckling into the beautiful swan you know it can be.

You need your transformation project to go well. You need it to be successful. The future of your business probably depends on it.

So how do you go about it? Well, there are five key aspects to a successful SaaS transformation project:

  1. Do it for the right reasons
  2. Be brave
  3. Design the process, not just the user interface
  4. Communicate with users and customers
  5. Be patient

1. Do it for the right reasons

“We just want to”, or “it just looks a bit naff” aren’t good reasons for investing resources into a transformation project.

What you should have are good, solid, commercial reasons for doing it. If you’re clear on what those reasons are – and the return on investment you might expect – it’s a lot easier to get other people on board. And you need other people on board. In fact, ideally, you want the whole organisation on board, because a transformation project can have a profound effect on all stakeholders.

Here are some of the common reasons you might identify:

  • Risk of customers leaving for competitors with better looking/easier apps
  • Increasing difficulty in attracting new business because of customer perceptions
  • Risk of a new market entrant coming in and ‘doing all the things we always wanted to, but never did’
  • Risk of employees leaving for something ‘cooler’ to work on
  • Increasing difficulty in recruiting
  • Difficult to justify increasing price point of current iteration, directly affecting profitability
  • Difficult to attract investment without a clear long term transformation strategy

It doesn’t matter what your role is in your organisation – designer, developer, manager, receptionist. Everyone’s a stakeholder, and can find a way of successfully championing a transformation to the rest of the team if the right reasons are identified.

2. Be brave

There’s no point pussyfooting around with a transformation project.

If you’ve identified good commercial reasons for doing it, you have to do more than tinker around the edges. You need to make enough of a change, within the technical and resources limits available, to really impact all those risks and opportunities.

3. Design the process, not just the user interface

Don’t just turn to a UI designer and ask them to redesign the buttons and hope that’ll be enough. You need a multi-discipline team to come together to figure out what needs doing and how you’ll go about it.

For example, let’s say redesigning the buttons is genuinely part of what’s needed. But it turns out the underlying technology only permits a limited amount of customisation before it gets technically difficult (and expensive) to do. And the product owner has some insight into why the buttons were like that in the first place. Every decision made has a consequence for both the cost of the project and its success. You have to take it all into consideration.

Here are some of the different disciplines/stakeholders you might consider bringing together at various points in the project:

  • Product owners and managers
  • Designers (UI, UX, IxD, branding, marketing)
  • Developers and quality engineers/testers
  • Sales and accounts – Marketing and customer communications
  • Business owners/board members.

Here are some of the questions you might ask when planning the transformation process:

  • What, specifically, are the things we think we need to change?
  • What does success look like?
  • What are the technical parameters/restrictions/considerations?
  • What are the different ways we can do this? What’s the most appropriate way?
  • What’s the history and what can we learn from it?
  • What’s the available budget/resource?
  • What are the desired timescales?

4. Communicate with users and customers

Users are the people who interact with your app. They have influence. Customers are the people who pay for it. They have influence. You want them all on side, so make sure your communication throughout the process is timely, informative and reassuring.

Users generally don’t like change, so consider how you’ll communicate and manage changes to inform and reassure them.

Users generally don’t like change, so consider how you’ll communicate and manage changes to inform and reassure them. Do you tell them before the change happens so they know what to expect? Do you allow them to preview changes to try them out? Do you include in-app notifications and ‘new feature’ popups to help guide them? Do you need to update your support and training documents?

Telling existing customers about the changes you’re making is really important. Especially if one of your reasons for doing the transformation project is a concern customers might leave if you don’t do it. Early communication around the work you’re planning and the differences it’ll make can stop a customer leaving in the short term. Ongoing communication with customers, with positive and exciting messages, helps reassure them they’ve made a good decision sticking with you.

With all your communications, make sure you have a clear strategy and comms plan that is an integral part of the overall process. You need the timing of messages to work perfectly ahead of and alongside the release of new or improved features and other changes.

5. Be patient

Rome wasn’t built in a day. In fact, they’re still building it about four and a half million days since it was founded. So be easy on yourselves.

If you are indeed being brave about what the transformation entails, you’ll almost certainly have a number of key project areas. Chances some are dependent on others being complete first.

But you don’t need to save it all up to release in one big bang (although you might consider that the best approach for your specific circumstances).

Break the project down into smaller chunks and release often. As part of your process planning, consider how each part of the project affects the user experience as its turn comes for release, and make sure the messages in your customer comms reflect the release order.

And remember, this is going to be a decent sized project and plans will change along the way. Be agile not just in the process, but in the time it takes to complete. Have a deadline as a rough goal, but be realistic. It’s better to be late and right, than on time and rushed.

So long as you evolve your plans along the way and communicate with customers as you go, you’ll get there.

Where’s the best place to start?

Start with item 1. Identify some good reasons for doing the transformation project and begin some discussions internally.

Transformation projects aren’t something most businesses do often. So there’s a good chance you’ll all be learning along the way, which brings its own risks.

It’s often a worthwhile investment to bring in some specialist expertise and experience to help specify, plan or manage the project. (Or to get involved in the design, of course.)

I can help with any of that, so feel free to get in touch for an informal chat for starters.