The same technology that enables over four billion people to access the internet is also the perfect platform for cloud-based software developing SaaS businesses to transform into a thriving industry. As a SaaS company, you’re a subscription-driven business with profitability goals spanning extended periods. What you need is a productive team to sustain the health of the business and grow profitably. We’ve put together a clutch of strategies that SaaS teams can leverage to ramp up their workflow.
Kanban, the Japanese Work Management Tool, and Why It’s Taken Software Developers by Storm
multitasking is universally acknowledged as a skill that works wonders in the workspace. Yet the human body appears to be wired exclusively for mono-tasking. So we trudge the extra mile to stay focused and manage our time and resources more effectively to improve workplace productivity.
The Japanese had a simple credo – stop starting what you aim to do endlessly and start finishing what you have to do meticulously. Simply stated, you stay focused on finishing jobs to the exclusion of everything else.
Developed by Toyota for its automobile manufacturing plant, Kanban is a workflow management protocol that makes personnel more productive, improves the workflow within the team, and makes the company more efficient and result-oriented.
Let’s check out how some of these Kanban productivity-boosters improve team dynamics.
1#. Leverage the Brain-Boosting Art of Work Visualization
Clinical studies reveal that around 80 percent of the information that the human brain processes come through visual cues. That means we respond faster to the visual prompt than to printed text.
The majority of people (not less than 64 percent) learn through visuals, and you’ll find that an image in social media has a 94 percent likelihood of being shared or retweeted than a block of plain text.
The Japanese realized that workplace productivity can be improved if we visualize the workflow. The solution is breathtakingly simple.
Break down goals into small achievable team tasks. Create a board to map these tasks, personnel-wise if necessary, taking care to include only priority tasks. What you get is a snapshot in time that captures the workplace dynamics.
The Kanban tool tracks the workflow, improves work dynamics, and helps you measure progress and take stock of what remains to be achieved.
2#. Improve Productivity by Staying Focused on the Task at Hand
In multitasking, you drain energy and lose valuable time switching context and remembering where you ended the previous job.
MIT studies prove that workplace employees tend to slow down when they simultaneously work on different jobs. What this means is that multitasking involves more man-hour wastage than sequential tasking.
Let’s assume that you are capable of tackling 10 jobs in a specific niche taking 1 unit of time to finish the tasks sequentially. If you decide to tackle all 10 jobs simultaneously, your time cycle expands to 2 units.
The Kanban work ethic keeps you focused on the work that is engaging your attention, encouraging you to finish it before you switch tasks. The aim is to prevent you from jumping between jobs which compromise efficiency.
So rule number two is to limit the work that is in progress so you can focus your undivided attention on completing each job sequentially to improve overall efficiency.
3#. Manage Your Workload by Prioritizing Jobs That Matter Most
You probably get lots of messages that scream URGENT, but very few will be of critical importance. Sooner than later, you begin blurring the lines between matters that are the most urgent, important, critical or top priority. Efficiency plummets when you see a list of to-dos where seemingly important jobs take precedence over jobs that you ought to be doing but were labeled not-urgent.
As human beings, we are conditioned to think and act according to the instilled belief that what we do is important. It gets reflected in the way we communicate (“this is very important to me”) or how we signal our intention (“I need this quickly”). We are rarely mindful about workers’ capacity to process the request nor are we aware of the matters already engaging their attention.
The Kanban visualization approach tackles the prioritization problem neatly. The board clearly categorizes, prioritizes, and allocates tasks among team members. The team organizer or work moderator can view the extent to which employees are engaged in current tasks and estimate the time required for task competition. This makes it easier to decide whether new job requests can be pushed through without creating bottlenecks.
The system can be programmed to flag priority tasks and mark the time associated with deadlines using a color coding scheme.
Fine-Tuning B2B Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for Acquiring, Retaining, and Monetizing Your Customers
You’re probably aware that the best B2B SEO services work to deliver not just visitors but customers to your website. Inspire your team to create a sound SEO strategy that links syncretically with content marketing and brings heightened visibility which makes your service discoverable on search engines like Google.
When you consider SEO optimization, train your team to focus attention on two complementary categories – on-page SEO and off-page SEO.
‘Through on-page SEO, focus on content which fulfills a need, topics that people love to read about, and links, infographics, videos, and podcasts that customers feel inspired to share. In the background, perfect your keyword strategy, streamline linking, and use appropriate titles and descriptions which improve the user experience. Remember that there is a world beyond high-quality content, and off-page optimization comes in handy for building powerful links to authoritative domains and influential speakers that amplify your concerns.’ says Dmitriy, head of B2B SEO at MiroMind.
Harness SaaS Software Tools Support That Quadruples Your Productivity
The key to boosting personal and team productivity is to optimize all the hard work, creativity, and the inspiration that propels daily project management. This is possible if you leverage SasS tools that empower your team as they grapple with emerging challenges in their daily grind.
1. Trello – The Buzzword in Agile Project Management
Getting bogged down with spreadsheet analysis, emails that you lose track of, and never-ending notifications that mess up your project deadlines? Are you losing yourself in daily to-do lists and suffering productivity issues?
Trello helps you effortlessly manage the information overflow, and build projects where you can track and measure progress, and achieve significant business goals. Trello’s Kanban boards give you a color-coded overview of the entire workflow enabling everybody to share the same page.
2. Slack – The Communications Empire That Nurtures Work While It Happens
Slack creates a unique platform where strategic communication takes pride of place – you get the benefit of real-time messaging, good archiving capacity, and an excellent search tool for digging up data when it matters. Slack’s seamless integration with external apps ensures that your marketing pros can archive, access, and share information with team members on any device from anywhere on the planet.
3. HootSuite – The SaaS Social Relationship Barometer
Growing a SaaS business minus social media presence would be unthinkable. But managing and updating messages on multiple channels through the manual route can be challenging. Enter HootSuite. Closely monitor the power and performance of your keywords, update multiple Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn accounts, and any number of profiles with a single click, schedule the timing and frequency of every outgoing message, and set your own yardsticks for success.
4. Ahrefs – the SEO Specialist and Back-Link Analyzer Par Excellence
The best SaaS growth hacks in business will tell you that if you want to grow, know your enemy. With Ahrefs, you get unique insights regarding the competition, the kind of information that helps you outgun the competition every time. Ahrefs will improve your backlinks, spur engagement with your social media connects, and help you generate and position content that resonates with your targeted audience.
5. SendPulse – Automated Email Marketing for SMEs
When small and medium enterprises empower sales teams to launch major marketing campaigns handling bulk emails, SendPulse offers the perfect automation solution. Using its affordable plans, SaaS marketers leverage analytical tools for nurturing prospects and converting leads into actual sales. With SendPulse, you can tailor the message to the medium, and the medium to the customer; it’s the nearest thing to owning a PR platform.
What we have outlined are tried and trusted SaaS marketing strategies to help software companies grow productively. But as always, the proof of the pudding lies in the manner you personally test, probe, and optimize your work environment so you can see for yourself which tool or strategy drives the best results for your business.
As a SaaS marketer, you’re a new breed in town facing fresh challenges, and you are synonymous with what it means to be a startup. Closely study leading SaaS companies like Salesforce and Slack, and use them as your guiding North Star for laying the foundation of your strategy, and you’ll never go wrong.
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Alexandra Dimitropoulou
Deputy executive editor at the CEOWORLD magazine. Writer, internet person, professional restaurant recommender, and native New Yorker. Passions: health & wellness, coffee, running & dogs.