SaaS - Software as a Service

Application and User Experience Design across all phases of the SaaS customer life cycle

SaaS (Software as a Service) is the delivery model of choice for business applications. The on-going customer relationship is a continuous source of revenue and business activity. To be successful a SaaS must use technology and application design to drive automation, increase customer self-service, and scale without increasing fixed costs or overhead. Examples of critical design components include self-provisioning, adaptive flow, discoverability of features, user monitoring, modularity of the application interface, frequent planned releases, high performance and the aesthetics & responsiveness of the interface.

Augment or redesign existing on-premise applications as SaaS

Catalyst has extensive experience redesigning and migrating existing on-premise applications for delivery as SaaS. We evaluate your current product UI, identify business needs, define SaaS strategy across all components of the customer life cycle, and of course, design the application flow, screens, modular UI components library, and specify connections backend data services.

We design the entire application functionality - everything the user experiences

Catalyst can enter a SaaS project at any stage in the development. For new projects we can identify and design all of the functionality and application flow in an application. For projects where functionality is already defined, we can design the way the user experiences the application.

The right user interface let you add new customers at low incremental cost

The user interface demands for SaaS are very distinct from on-premise applications and other software models. With SaaS most of the touch-points in the customer life cycle are exposed directly to the user in software. So in addition to the design of the user experience and information flow of the core application, we also design the application to address the full progression of steps a customer goes through when exploring, purchasing, deploying, provisioning, using, referring, and upgrading a product or solution. A key to profitability is to develop a user experience that adapts to the customer's environment without customized development, and that scales without increasing overhead. The benefits to your bottom line are shortened sales cycles, faster deployment, reduced customer churn, and better margins.

Faster time to implementation

Catalyst Resources has the specialized strategic and application design experience that is required for a successful SaaS. We can design an adaptable and user-validated application UI quickly and effectively. Your customers will be able to take advantage of your application's value sooner, with fewer support demands.

Using RIAs and/or mobile apps, performance and SaaS can go hand in hand

SaaS applications that rely on traditional HTTP/HTML can't offer the dynamic user interfaces of native enterprise applications. However, using Rich Internet Applications technologies such as AJAX/HTML 5, Flex and Silverlight, SaaS browser-based or mobile app-based solutions can provide a dynamic and rich user experience. Catalyst is an expert in the design of Rich Internet Applications. Based on an assessment of your SaaS project requirements, we select the application framework that provides the best UI components, tools and scalability for development.

Experience across a broad range of SaaS application segments

Catalyst Resources has helped to migrate a broad range of applications to a Software as Service model. It takes lots of forward planning and user validation to create a superb piece of software user interface that adapts when deployed into any customer environment. The benefits to your bottom line are shortened sales cycles, faster deployment and reduced support.

The types of SaaS applications we have designed and helped deploy include: