With unexpected lockdowns, new remote working costs, and of course, just being a small business with limited resources, budgets are tight in 2021.
So any way you can cut down on unnecessary costs and save a few dollars wouldn’t go amiss, right?
Well, SaaS tools offer just that: an easy way for SMBs to increase their output while reducing their costs.
Adopting SaaS products over traditional on-premise software alone offers significant savings. The most obvious being lower start-up costs—no upfront fees for licensing, and implementations are typically a sign-up process or quick integration at most. You don’t even have to handle upgrades and maintenance, bringing the total cost even lower.
But this is the out-of-the-box default for any SaaS product, so let’s get specific.
Some SaaS tools are not only more cost-effective than legacy software but they can also actively save you money by using them. Sound good? Here they are:
eSignature tools
Yes, eSignatures make signing documents faster and easier. But perhaps the most overlooked aspect of eSignatures is the money they save.
See, with a resource as ubiquitous as paper, we often ignore the dollar amount associated with its use—and they’re high!
While individual usage costs might sound minuscule, they add up fast—each office worker in the US uses an average of 10,000 sheets of paper every year.
When you combine that with the average printing price of one page—around $0.065—it puts the cost of printing at $650 per employee per year.
I know, I know, you’re thinking “that’s not too bad”.
But it’s not just the paper that saps your cash. It’s estimated for every $1 spent on printing, another $6 is spent on distribution. This includes copying and scanning-related expenses—toner, maintenance, upkeep—shipping costs for physical documents, and storage costs.
Extrapolate that out, and the total cost of printing per employee amounts to around $3900 per year.
A?t this price, a 20-employees business can expect to see savings of around $78000 per year just by implementing paperless eSignature technology.
And that doesn’t include all the time employees on paper that could be spent on more productive tasks.
Even better, today’s eSignatures do more than just facilitate signing. They also integrate with other business software tools like Salesforce, so your employees can send documents out for signature without switching between applications.
TL;DR savings: ~$3900+ per year per employee by eliminating paper processes*
Security tools
There is a misconception that SMBs are too small to be attacked because there is less value in their information.
It is simply not true.
Worse, SMBs drastically underestimate the cost of a security breach. According to AppRiver Software, the average cost of an SMB data breach sits around $149,000. However, only 19%of SMBs acknowledged that costs could surpass $100,000.
So while security tools might be expensive for small businesses, but the cost of a security breach can be catastrophic.
But data breaches aren’t the only threat SMBs face. Ransomware—malicious software designed to block access to a computer system until a sum of money is paid— targeted 46% of all small businesses in 2020. And of the companies that were hit with a ransomware attack, 73% paid a ransom, which averaged $170,404 in 2021.
Combined, just these two security breaches can cost SMB in excess of $300000.
And these costs don’t even include losses from systems being down and employees being unable to work.
When you compare that to the price of security tools, it’s an easy decision to make. And there are plenty of SaaS tools out there that can protect SMBs from cyber threats. For instance, a cost-effective vulnerability scanner can help weaknesses in your online systems before the hackers do and make vulnerability management easy.
T?L;DR savings: $300000+*
Customer support tools
Delivering great customer support has always been hard, often unrewarding, and expensive.
To compound things, as the world has leaned further into digital, customers now expect 24/7, 365 service—which means you need someone available at all times. And that’s not cheap.
What’s more, it forces you to make hiring trade-offs. Who do you need more, a new salesperson, developer, or support agent?
Instead of hiring new staff to plug gaps, new SaaS tools can help you deliver higher levels of customer service at a fraction of the cost.
Take chatbots, for instance. Using a chatbot for support allows customers who have quick questions or simple problems to get an answer almost immediately. And the service comes much cheaper than a new employee. Once trained and implemented, businesses can reduce customer service costs by up to 30%.
What’s more, they aren’t limited to one customer or conversation at a time; they can answer multiple customer queries at once.
And AI is only making these tools smarter, which allows your agents to spend time on more complex issues, which reduces the number of agents on the floor. Each of these can lead to pretty significant cost savings.
T?L;DR savings: reduce the cost of service by up to 30%
As you can see, while there’s an ongoing cost to using SaaS tools, it’s nothing compared to the savings you can make in your small business.
Even implementing just one of these tools can free up more money for your business to grow, meaning you can invest in other parts of your business.
HelloSign is powering SMBs’ shift to remote work with secure, fast, and reliable eSignatures. Find out how SMBs are thriving with HelloSign.
*Savings don’t include the costs of the SaaS tools.
Image: Depositphotos
This article, "3 SaaS Tools Saving Small Businesses a Fortune" was first published on Small Business Trends
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