Performance Evaluation and Optimization for SaaS-Based Applications

With technological revolution comes a phase where businesses need to migrate from the existing ecosystem to the one that is far more optimized. Consumer demands pace at a speed faster than ever, making it a necessity for organizations to employ services that can take over their business goals. 

A popular shirt has occurred in the way enterprises host software applications. Earlier, the phenomenon was largely confined to the fact that organizations would develop and deploy applications in-house. However, with the proliferation of the internet and the advent of digitization, enterprises today adopt a different form of application, one that we call SaaS – Software as a service. 

As a matter of fact, organizations of all sizes are proactively investing in SaaS applications to deliver significant services. Now acknowledging that such applications hold tremendous potential and can help organizations scale their business growth, adhering to the request and expectations of the consumer is something that uncoils a series of challenges. 

So, if you want to make the most out of SaaS applications, it is important to evaluate the performance of the application and adopt measures to optimize the same. Whether you are a SaaS provider or a SaaS application owner, it is your job to make sure that the application in use is performance rich and free from errors. 

To make things easier for you and help you benefit from the SaaS application, we outline ten tips using which you can meticulously evaluate the SaaS application performance and further, optimize it. 

Performance Evaluation & Optimization of SaaS Application 

According to Gartner, the overall revenue earned through SaaS applications crossed the mark of $85 billion in 2019. Similar growth is expected in the next year. This implies that organizations would continue to deploy solutions that resonate around SaaS applications. To make sure yours is the one that leads the charge, you need to be continuously on the roll. 

How? 

As stated above, performance evaluation and optimization is the key to every application’s success and keeping this as the base, we take this discussion forward. 

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10 Tips for SaaS Performance Evaluation & Optimization

1. Deliver Solutions in a Reliable Way

One of the most common reasons as to why SaaS applications fail is due to unreliable solutions. Imagine that the SaaS application undertaken by an organization is too slow to load and consumes a huge battery. 

Will this succeed in attracting end-users? Apparently no! 

And even if it does manage to attract significant prospects, the slow downtime of the page would doom users to abandon the application and make a shift. Under such a situation, you would need to optimize the page performance in a way that the speed triggers and now the accessibility improves. 

2. Focus on Consumer Satisfaction

Today, we thrive in an era where customers are the king and in order to make sure that your business outshines in the global world, the deployed applications should focus on the needs and expectations of the customer. The performance needs to be evaluated in terms of the feedback given to the consumers or the rankings laid by the users in terms of the service rendered. 

When working on SaaS applications, entrepreneurs tend to focus on targeting revenue rather than customer satisfaction. On the contrary, the applications should be tailored to target consumer satisfaction and not for money draining. 

3. Trigger The Churn Rate 

Another important area to analyze the performance of SaaS applications is through the churn rate. Assess the rate at which users are leaving your SaaS applications and shifting to another one. It is an important KPI that every SaaS product owner should keep track of. Customer churn rate is the number of users your organization has lost in a given time period. Definitely, your SaaS application is the one responsible for it. If your business fails to retain customers, odds are the application isn’t capable of doing its job. This is when you need to optimize the application in a manner that can target customers, address their issues and take necessary steps to retain them. 

4. Fuel Consumer Funnel 

Attracting prospects is one of the most important goals of SaaS. And when assessing the performance of SaaS applications, it is the traffic generated over the application that determines how successful it is. The higher the consumer funnel, the steeper is the performance curve. Now, this is one area that you would need to optimize no matter what. It is imperative that SaaS applications are continuously monitored and modified to adopt technologies capable of driving user attention. 

5. Adopt Database Performance Analysis Methodology

It is a very common fact that SaaS applications run throughout the day and in order to address all of the performance issues, keeping track of all the factors that affect or contribute to data performance is a must. When we talk about database performance analysis, there are three things that you need to take care of. From the SQL queries to the provisioning of server and database management systems, everything needs to be in place. 

Further, the dynamically refining workload makes the job further challenging. The best way to deal with this is through the integration of database performance analyzers. Effective analyzers are capable of identifying the area where the database affects the performance of the application. Once, the loophole is detected, optimizing the application isn’t a tough task.

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6. Reduction in Resource Utilization

It is proven that organizations that cut down their resource utilization by a fair percentage, they witness an upsurge in savings and likely, the growth graph accelerates. Consider for example, if the initial hardware expense of a company is $20k/month with a projected scale: $75k/month in a year. If the total usage of hardware resources is reduced by 50%, there would occur an immediate $10k/month rise in cost savings. This sums up to the total savings of $285,000 in the first year itself. 

7. Adopt APM

Manually assessing the performance of SaaS applications isn’t the right path. In order to make the most out of SaaS applications, it is important that you undertake significant application management tools. These tools come up with inbuilt software that performs regular checks on the SaaS applications, notifying you about any glitch that might hinder the performance along suggested measures to turn your SaaS application error-free. 

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8. Upgrade Enterprise Network To Enhance and Optimize SaaS Performance

SaaS applications are so designed that it helps organizations to sway off the traditional tools for services and adopt a far more sophisticated, scalable and reliable alternative solution. Often, SaaS applications act as the gateway to cloud-based services. Under such a situation, if the network across the enterprise is slow, the performance of the application suffers. To ensure that the hosted application performs well, it is important that the network hosting the same is strong and free from breakdown

9. Look For Cross-Border Performance

The performance of a SaaS application is often(the majority of the time) affected by geographical regions. It might so happen that your onsite users are enjoying a very high-speed application performance. You test and evaluate the same and turn content that everything is running fine. Have you checked with offshore clients? Is the application working fine there? Even the slightest possibility of the performance deteriorating in far off places can disrupt the business value. Make sure that you evaluate the performance across all regions. 

10. The Firewall

Do not forget to perform a check within your own firewall. SaaS configuration being the most common form of optimization and neglected by most of the leaders. However, this is one segment that can dramatically enhance application performance. It is the job of the IT department to make sure that SaaS is effectively configured for employees at all locations. 

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The Final Word 

Today, users are accustomed to using applications or services that function at an ultra-fast speed. In fact, applications or websites that consume greater time to load are often abandoned by the users. They would not think twice before leaving a page and migrating to one of your competitors. Similar is the case with SaaS applications, if they aren’t at par with the user expectations or lag behind in terms of the performance or scalability, it won’t thrive long in the industry. The key to the success of the application relies on knowing the importance of SaaS, evaluating the performance and then, undertaking steps to optimize the same. 

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