SaaS marketplaces: the cure to tech vendor proliferation

SaaS marketplaces are the future of software and services buying.

As digital transformation processes ramp up in every industry, a veritable explosion of software-as-a-service vendors is creating a new challenge: too much choice. According to a recent Forrester report, software-as-a-service (SaaS) is the top investment area for companies undergoing digital transformation—but those partnerships rarely live up to their potential.

There are two problems plaguing SaaS investments, as Liz Herbert, VP, Principal analyst at Forrester, writes:

”In this era of SaaS-first and SaaS-only strategies, business executives can get overwhelmed with choices — which creates redundancy, cost overruns, and new risks. At the same time, technology organization executives in sourcing and application development and delivery (AD&D) roles have struggled to build policies and governance to balance the business agility that SaaS promises with risk mitigation and control.”

Business executives can get overwhelmed with choices — which creates redundancy, cost overruns, and new risks.

Identifying and buying the right software should not be as challenging as it is today. Brilliant SaaS solutions to business needs are plentiful—which raises the question, how can vendors make their services easy to peruse, understand, purchase and extend for potential buyers?

Attention procurement and IT business partners: enter SaaS marketplaces

Just like the name implies, SaaS marketplaces are digital platforms where buyers can browse SaaS applications, components, and services.

In a crowded environment of small, niche vendors, SaaS marketplaces serve to “simplify the buying experience for business executives while creating more consistency and control for the technology organization,” according to Herbert.

SaaS marketplaces serve to simplify the buying experience for business executives while creating more consistency and control for the technology organization.

SaaS marketplaces allow a buyer to view a collection of software and services in one place, regardless of volume or complexity. This makes evaluating vendors far easier—and actually helps with downstream steps in the process as well. With far more information about SaaS options readily available at their fingertips, buyers can simplify their requests for proposal (RFP) tied to a particular project, skipping questions that the marketplace has already answered for them.

The SpotMe Marketplace

At SpotMe, we believe that any mature SaaS platform should have a marketplace, just like Salesforce, Zendesk or Zuora.

We have responded to the complexity and shortcomings of the current mobile event and engagement vendor landscape by launching our SpotMe Marketplace. Here is what it does:

• Customers can search and discover all relevant application modules within the SpotMe Marketplace
• Drive more business and visibility for our partners, increasing the incentive to build on the SpotMe platform and invest more in the ecosystem; partners can develop their own modules and publish them on the Marketplace
• Inspire citizen developers, consulting experts and creative talents with a comprehensive documentation, use cases, links to release notes from the SpotMe Knowledge Base
• Deliver greater agility, consistency and control for organizations, by showcasing pre-integrated and pre-vetted add-ons that customers and administrators can instantly source directly from the SpotMe Marketplace

Explore the new SpotMe Marketplace now.

Endnotes:

Five Essential Components Of Great SaaS Governance To Balance Agility And Risk, January 2019, Forrester.

Vendor Landscape: SaaS Marketplaces Take Off, September 2017, Forrester.