The fast-paced business environment organizations exist in today requires collaboration and as little friction as possible. Project teams often collaborate across different departments and time zones. Software as a Service (SaaS) tools play a central role in helping organizations work in collaborative environments and break down silos.
Here’s how B2B software can enhance collaboration across teams:
Tools for Communication
We’re all likely the most familiar with SaaS communication tools. Millions of people use applications like Microsoft Teams, Zoom, and Skype daily. These tools make communicating in real time easier for organizations and teams. Video conferencing and scheduling tools enable frictionless scheduling of meetings and in-app calls, providing a seamless user experience when collaborating with colleagues and clients.
Microsoft Teams and Slack, the market leaders in this field, are among the most ubiquitous of these tools. They provide an intuitive way to organize and contact your team. To enable smooth relay of information, managers must establish a transparent communication chain. Poor communication leads to information silos and lost productivity.
Looking at Slack, specifically, the ability to communicate in channels provides a seamless interaction for teams. While email has been an innovation in corporate communication, Slack offers transparent, real-time communication. Slack provides:
Transparency, in the form of searchable Slack channels
Flexibility, with file-sharing, clips, calls, and messages built-in to the tool
Collaboration, by creating a frictionless environment for internal and external teams to work across time zones and locations.
All too often, decisions and conversations about project tasks are had outside shared spaces—leading to team silos. An essential benefit of project management tools is centralizing all project communications. When everyone involved in a process knows what needs to be done next, they work to achieve the same goal.
Tools for Customer Relationship Management
Acquiring new clients is a costly process that relies on team management. Customer relationship management (CRM) is no longer simply relegated to a marketing or client success team; it requires a concerted team effort from every touchpoint in the business. Breaking down silos is pertinent to ensuring a smooth transition of a potential client to a regular customer.
Here’s how CRM SaaS tools can help your teams effectively collaborate to provide a seamless customer experience:
1. Data accessibility
With project teams scattered across the globe, working remotely, and in hybrid environments, being able to connect regardless of timezones is imperative. With CRM tools, data is immediately available to all team members once uploaded. Team members are able to access information from anywhere, on any device.
2. Quickly integrate more cloud services
An essential advantage of the CRM application in the cloud is the ability to quickly integrate additional cloud and SaaS solutions into the business application. This unifies different teams that may have their own workflows, like sales, marketing, and customer support. Providing a single access point to view a customer’s journey allows these different teams to work together to provide a singular, positive customer experience.
3. Quick and easy to scale
If your company decides to increase the number of CRM users, it will be done within a day— without installing software, waiting times, testing, etc. You simply change your subscription, and your provider gives the new user access to your CRM solution. This process is the same for additional storage space and service—all at the speed that companies love so much about this model.
B2B Software tools for project management
SaaS products tend to have short development cycles, where features are built quickly to adapt to changing market demands and user feedback. They also need to be carefully maintained and regularly updated to retain customers and stay competitive.
This makes SaaS project management especially challenging since teams need to be highly agile, organized, and on top of the project timeline as they juggle tasks such as:
Organizing development, design, and marketing teams to meet deadlines
Developing a product plan—both for the initial minimum viable product (MVP) and for future feature updates
Tracking bugs and tickets and coordinating user feedback collection
Liaising with key stakeholders to ensure business and client needs are met
What Should You Look For In a SaaS Project Management Tool?
SaaS project management is complex and fast-paced—and that’s why it helps to have a tool that keeps you on track. But what should a great SaaS project management tool include? Here are some useful features to look out for:
Robust task management tools, including assigning and delegating tools
Online chat and virtual meeting tools
Cost and budget tracking tools
Reporting and financial analysis tools
Custom templates
File sharing and collaboration tools
Expense tracking and invoicing
Online timesheets
Resource management
Project scheduling tools
The list above is fairly optimistic, and you’re unlikely to find one tool that does everything. That’s not to say you can’t mix and match tools and build your workflow from multiple platforms.
Let’s look at some examples of tools to see how different these platforms can be!
How to Effectively Manage a SaaS Project?
Roll Out Your Project Plan With Clear Goals
When creating your implementation roadmap, it’s important to set out clear goals, metrics, and milestones. This helps your entire team track the project’s overall progress and can boost team morale when key milestones are reached.
Key metrics here can include the scope of the adoption or how long it should take to complete. It’s also important to consider when these goals and metrics should be achieved. Is it within the first three months, six months, or one year?
Furthermore, a good SaaS implementation plan should also set out who should meet these goals. Which teams or departments are responsible? Who should project managers check in with if goals still need to be met?
Identify and Manage Project Risks
Not taking into account project risks like lack of time, expertise, or resources can impact the performance and results of your SaaS projects.
As project management involves planning, organizing, and leading a project team, an important responsibility is identifying and mitigating these risks.
Identifying these risks early can prevent them from becoming larger problems later in a project’s lifecycle. We recommend developing a risk mitigation plan as soon as possible to prevent potential losses.
Use SaaS Project Management Tools
As we’ve stated above, it should be clear why using SaaS project management tools is so essential for project success. To effectively manage a growing slate of SaaS projects, you’ll need tools that meet your current needs (and can adapt as they change).
SaaS project management is the process of solving issues and risks that occur while developing your product. Project management tools exist to make solving these issues as frictionless as possible.
Conclusion
Regardless of the industry you work in, SaaS tools provide a collaborative environment for users. Communication, customer experience, and project management are just three areas where B2B software tools break down silos to encourage synergy and teamwork.
Real-time communication with dedicated channels for specific topics, projects, and customers breaks down the barriers that exist with email. Users are able to follow threads from the beginning of a conversation without having to rely on fragmented email channels. There’s also the ability to connect in real time with both internal and external teams.
When it comes to customer experience, CRM SaaS tools facilitate seamless touchpoints for customer experience across different teams. CRM tools unify sales, marketing, and customer support divisions.
