Last updated on
April 5, 2024
Since time immemorial, advancements in technology had their supporters and detractors. I am pretty sure the man who invented the wheel might have gotten some slack from those who supported rollers instead of the now ubiquitous and metamorphic wheel and axle.
Regardless of the numerous roadblocks and impediments faced by innovators and pioneers, the world has moved on and embraced technology that has not only altered lives but also changed how we live now.
AI in SaaS has been facing similar challenges. But it has also emerged as something that will change how people do business, approach problems, and, ultimately, live.
The SaaS market has been on an exponential growth trend for a couple of years. And with the introduction of AI in SaaS is priming this industry for another round of unprecedented growth.
So, for this blog post, we will look at how the SaaS market has evolved over the years and, the future growth prospects, how SaaS companies can benefit from incorporating AI into their systems. And we will also look at seven of the best AI SaaS companies that are pushing the boundaries of what is capable of with AI.
SaaS is an abbreviation for Software as a Service. A SaaS provider hosts an application created to cater to a specific consumer problem and makes it available via the Internet. This means that the software is hosted on the SaaS company’s server and accessed remotely by the user.
In 2020, the SaaS market was worth $113.82 billion. In 2023, the SaaS market is expected to grow to $197 billion. And in 2024, the number is expected to grow to $232 billion.
As companies continue to innovate and provide diversified and comprehensive SaaS solutions to new business challenges, the SaaS market has therefore recorded unprecedented growth. Almost all industries have SaaS solutions to offer, and this emerging trend is a testament to the SaaS industry’s rapid growth.
With such fantastic growth potential, it’s without a doubt that the software industry is moving towards a revolutionary era. So, let’s look at how SaaS companies can benefit from this revolutionary shift.
Susana and John are two different customers. Susana likes to order a hot croissant with hot chocolate from her favorite food delivery app. At the same time, John enjoys having a breakfast burrito with a side of pickled jalapenos and hash browns.
These orders are unique to Susana and John, respectively. Imagine the millions, if not thousands, of customers with unique tastes and preferences in breakfast options. What a huge challenge it poses to SaaS food businesses to cater to their individual needs.
Is allocating a sizeable number of your employees to evaluate the incoming data the right approach? No, but you can put AI to the task of sifting through this data and coming up with personalized recommendations for customers like Susana and John.
AI enables SaaS companies to personalize their offerings based on user behavior, preferences, and historical data. By leveraging machine learning algorithms, SaaS companies can deliver tailored customer experiences, enhancing user satisfaction and increasing customer retention.
Imagine you run a SaaS email marketing company that has done really well over the past few years. On a hectic day, when your customer support teams are busy handling complex tickets, a customer called Michael queries how to schedule his broadcast emails in the app.
As your CS teams are busy, Michael has to wait a long time for his query to be answered. This can frustrate Michael, and in turn, he can leave a negative review of your CS teams or, worse, can stop using your tool altogether.
Both of these scenarios are unacceptable, as they can be avoided by employing a chatbot.
AI-powered chatbots can handle customer queries and provide instant support 24/7. Chatbots can quickly address common issues, allowing customer service agents to focus on more complex problems. This improves response times, reduces customer wait times, and enhances customer service.
Every SaaS company needs its users to engage with its product. Decreasing usage may underline the horrifying fact that users are unsatisfied with your offering.
Let’s say that a user of your ride-hailing platform, Martin, isn’t using it frequently as he used to. This can be due to several factors: maybe the fare prices have gone up, or the number of rides for the area where Martin used to commute has decreased. The bottom line is that Martin is about to churn.
But with AI in SaaS, you can avoid such situations. You can use machine learning to add predictive analytics. Predictive analytics allows you to predict the future behavior of your customers. If customers are disengaging, you can take the necessary actions to address their issues. Thanks to AI, you can save the day and engage your customers before they churn.
The cornerstone of a successful SaaS product is effective marketing. With a robust marketing strategy, you can increase your revenue considerably. But you must continue to improve your marketing strategy. Before you embark on improving your marketing, here are a few factors you should consider:
You can use AI and machine learning to find answers to these problems. They can improve the efficiency of your marketing efforts in the following ways:
Your customer uses your SaaS product to meet a specific demand. Users often follow workflows when using SaaS products. But SaaS workflows depend on the product's features and, therefore, are not similar to other products. And despite your attempts to make the workflows as easy as possible, they sometimes can be complicated. Here’s where AI-powered recommendation engines can come to your help.
All SaaS products have massive amounts of data on how users have engaged with your product. This data can be used to train the AI recommendation engine.
These AI recommendation engines can guide your users regarding the next steps. For example, you can use recommendation engines to guide your users during onboarding.Although, for more advanced AI training, it could be worth involving an ML engineer. For such part-time projects, some companies may opt for a nearshore software outsourcing to Colombia, Mexico or other Latin American IT hubs.
SaaS companies can leverage AI for predictive analytics to get insights into customer behavior, market trends, and business performance. By analyzing large datasets and applying machine learning algorithms, AI can help SaaS companies make data-driven decisions, optimize operations, and identify growth opportunities.
Walmart is one of the users of predictive analytics. It uses data to understand the buying behavior of its customers in certain circumstances. Small eCommerce companies can use predictive analytics to predict customer purchase patterns. By doing so, they can understand the customer on a more personalized level.
Last but not least, a SaaS business can enhance its security using AI. While you innovate and improve your SaaS solution, cyber-attackers are creating new malware to attack your data centers.
With support from AI, you can have a proactive strategy for dealing with cyber-attacks and preventing data breaches. Cybersecurity professionals are training AI systems to detect suspicious online activities. These AI can detect new malware and can isolate them before they infiltrate your SaaS products infrastructure.
While we have talked about the benefits that SaaS companies can reap by incorporating artificial intelligence (AI) into their systems, let’s look at some AI tools that are actually doing it.
Mailmunch is a top email marketing platform that offers users AI email marketing features. With advanced natural language processing, machine learning, and generative AI text models at work, you can create highly segmented email lists, write subject lines and pre-header texts that increase open rates, and create CTAs that boost conversion rates.
CrowdStrik is a cloud-based company that offers users end-to-end security. CrowdStrike allows users to detect malicious activity before a system breach. This helps businesses to keep their data safe by taking timely measures.
CrowdStrike has AI-powered algorithms that monitor and alert network managers about harmful activities and potential breaches in real-time, thus preventing severe business harm.
Domino Data Lab is an AI-model development SaaS solution for data experts and code-first data teams. They test various AI models and collect results for the AI community. They also research SaaS solutions and develop the best business development strategies using artificial intelligence and data science.
One Concern is a SaaS-based company that offers damage estimation using AI on buildings and also reveals risks to natural environments due to climate change, natural disasters, and extreme weather. Their focus areas are machine learning, stochastic modeling, SaaS, and damage modeling.
They deploy AI technologies to help global disaster scientists to bring about productive outcomes in different aspects of the emergency management lifecycle, such as preparedness, response, mitigation, and recovery.
Apptio is a SaaS company that helps other companies make informed investment decisions by helping in Investing, licensing, and planning using AI-driven insights. Analytics produced by Apptio’s AI is used to deploy and utilize other firms’ financial systems.
Using conversational AI technology, Uniphore provides enterprise software solutions. This software helps with conversational analytics, security, conversational assistants, and other tasks. They use voiceAI, computer vision, and tonal emotion to bring each AI dialogue to life. Companies can use this software to improve their customer service capabilities.
Looking for a SaaS solution that helps you to automate your human resource and talent acquisition workflow automation? Then Xor.ai is the one for you. They streamline companies' hiring processes using hiring automation, chatbots, machine learning, and AI.
Grammarly is leading the AI-based language detection and enhancement technology at the moment. By using deep learning and natural language processing in its models, it delivers real-time language and grammar recommendations to the user.
Business communication has got better since the introduction of Slack in 2013. Since then, Slack has incorporated AI to allow development, quality assurance, and CS teams to collaborate and function as coherent units. Even when you are away from Slack, it uses AI to sort through millions of messages quickly and allows you to remain on top of your business day and night.
Shopify uses a SaaS model to construct relationships with its customers. Shopify incorporates AI intrinsically and also provides developer tools to its users to instill AI into their own platforms.
Shopify’s new tool, Shopify Magic, is a great example of internally built AI capabilities. This tool allows users to write product descriptions. Users just need to type a few keywords that they want to appear in search results and select a tone, and let the AI systems do their magic.
Zoom is a video conferencing SaaS product that allows team to effectively collaborate with each other on projects. But the meetings feature is not the only thing Zoom offers. Zoom has launched AI-powered transcripts in meetings. Moreover, features like note-taking and meeting assistant also leverage AI to provide a top-notch user experience.
Zeda.io is a smart AI tool designed specifically for product managers. It transforms customer feedback from various channels into actionable insights, offering a clear picture of customer sentiments, pinpointing reasons for churn and lost deals, and illustrating the revenue impact of each piece of feedback. This enables product managers to make decisions that are both customer-focused and aligned with company goals.By simplifying complex processes and offering deep insights, Zeda.io empowers product managers to enhance their strategies and ensure their products truly resonate with their users.
Are you considering incorporating AI and machine learning technologies into your SaaS company? Then it's the perfect time to build your business using AI. With advancements in AI in SaaS becoming a common occurrence, many SaaS companies have already built and incorporated sophisticated AI models for various industries.
Many companies, such as Microsoft and Oracle, use AI to increase their customer base and target specific customers interested in buying their products.
The time for random product suggestions has long gone. eCommerce giants like Amazon use predictive analytics and AI to forecast demand and provide personalized product recommendations. Now, competition is becoming extremely stiff, and failing to prepare for the future might cost you in the long run. Businesses can no longer thrive and succeed if they don’t personalize their offerings according to the user’s mind. And AI in SaaS is a much-needed solution.
The future of SaaS is all AI. From food delivery apps to investment management software, every piece of software is incorporating and will incorporate AI into their SaaS business.
Machine learning algorithms enable computers to execute several tasks simultaneously that would otherwise take too much time and effort. Moreover, AI allows companies to lower their costs, which in turn, optimizes their development efficiency.
The main reason why your competitors are outperforming you is because AI provides them with a substantial competitive advantage. My advice? Do not dismiss artificial intelligence because it’s the way of the future for SaaS companies.
A voracious reader and a music lover, Ammar has been writing engaging and informative content for over 3 years for B2B and B2C markets. With a knack for writing SEO-optimized content, Ammar ensures the results speak for themselves.
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