Generally, a subscription-based contract is marked by renewals and recurring payments. This reduces the switching costs and harbors opportunities for the customers to jump in. In response, many SaaS user adoption companies have started exploring strategies that focus on driving product usage by end-users.

A recent research study by Gartner, states that in 2020, the companies will spend $155.7 billion on SaaS and PaaS capabilities. Further, this number is forecasted to grow by up to $209.1 billion by 2022.

This radical shift from regular software to cloud-based platforms has fostered new dynamics in the B2B market. IT departments are seeing more employees to be frequently employees by the cloud-based tools they want. This is why we have found these six battle-tested approaches to help your SaaS user adoption in garnering product longevity.

• Gain executive buy-in for use
• Easy Communications
• Create in-built cloud-first products
• Accessible Training
• Revisit the Sales unit 
• Zero in on Support 

But first, why should SaaS companies care about customer adoption?

Numerous SaaS companies with long-term goals of growth and success tend to focus time and effort on product adoption. Further, by concentrating on adoption, SaaS companies move their users along the pathway from basic conversion to becoming regular users.

This path is essential as it creates a base of regular, loyal customers that believe in the value of what the company produces. Moreover, they have complete buy-in with the company’s software and use it as part of their daily processes.

When the end-users derive substantial value from a product instantly, it easily tends to become a part of the organizations’ day-to-day activities. Fortunately, it also cuts down the negative probability of them from switching to a near competition. Let’s delve into six such recommendations that promise to bring a key difference.

Gain executive buy-in for use

Getting executives on board during the purchase process is definitely step one. Step two, which is often overlooked, is getting these leaders to support the IT department. Further, this can be done by promoting users across the organization.

You need to help the IT department to gain the executive buy-ins, not only for purchase but for use too. Needless to say, an executive’s scope of promotion has always been a great indicator of the success of a product.

Therefore, many SaaS companies are focusing on wreathing their content strategies around supporting the IT department. They are doing so by rendering them with requisite resources and tools to stay engaged with their teams.

Easy Communications

Clear communication takes you a long way with your employees. Talk to them about the importance of adopting a SaaS user model. Aside from this, make the process super simpler by breaking it down into sub-points.

Also, put up timely meetings and discuss with the members about their issues, and challenges, if any.

Further, give the team ownership in adoption by asking for feedback on the layout and process. As a leader, take ownership and responsibility for your team adopting these practices.

Create in-built cloud-first products

The reason that cloud-first products almost always succeed is that they have created the products intending to alleviate end-user pain points. This makes their products super easy to use and further facilitates organic adoption.

Additionally, you can do this with or without the help of IT teams as well. If you are not in a position to rebuild your product from scratch, you can always take to investing in customer research to deeply understand end-user challenges. Once you do that, you can leverage your marketing efforts to be specific about how you want to address them.

Accessible Training

Schedule training monthly, quarterly, or annually. It should not be like a ‘one-time thing’. Also, do not exclude your new employees. Regular training will not only help the experienced users but also ensure that the new ones are looked after well.

You’ll need key people at each location who ‘run point’ on the onboarding process while you use online collaboration tools to do training sessions and share information.

Revisit the Sales unit 

As low product adoption is usually a key indicator of churn, it is vital to revisit your sales process to ensure that the right expectations are set upfront. Check that the businesses’ need and expected value that the customer has specified during the buying process is documented.

Consider sharing that with anyone focused on driving success at that account after the sale is complete. A step up from just documenting their need and expected value is to begin defining the deployment and customer success plan during the later stages of the sale so that customers and anyone supporting them can hit the ground running post-sale.

Zero in on Support 

Strive to support the users to get their much-needed requirements from the software. This could include creating dashboards that are meaningful and actionable for each important user. Further, you can assist them with technical implementations too. This process might involve shop personnel, maintenance, IT staff, or simply troubleshooting when things conk out.

How self-sufficient is your audience? How technically proficient are they? Work on these questions and streamline your answers. What you don’t want to have is have frustrated users that lack timely support and eventually churn away from you.

Final Thoughts 

Implementing these six product adoption strategies will boost your level of SaaS user adoption. These tips can improve the user experience and can act as ways to promote the product and its features. Decide on what you’re trying to achieve and use tools that support that goal.

Companies that have high user adoption numbers experience higher marketing ROI and lower marketing costs. Overall, the gain for your company will be increased revenue in the long run. Your goal should be to have your whole company aligned and motivated towards driving product usage. This is a crucial aspect in retention because it’s in the best interest of everyone in the company.

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