For a SaaS product, it is very important to build the product architecture from 0 to 1.

If the SaaS product architecture is not built well, the most direct consequences may be:

• When customers are completing a specific task, a bunch of irrelevant functions appear on the customer's operation page during the entire operation process, making it impossible for customers to complete their work efficiently;
• Without a framework for product architecture guidance, new requirements and new features may be arbitrarily classified by subsequent product managers, or a new classification may be created to solve new problems, resulting in a more chaotic product.
• As the demands increase, the functions increase, the coupling degree of functions increases, and the development difficulty increases further, and we often face the situation of rebuilding the architecture.

On the contrary, if the architecture is well built, the benefits it brings are at least the following:

• For customers, the pages they see are concise and can complete tasks efficiently, which brings value to customers and commercial value to the business.
• No need to worry about reconstruction due to unreasonable architecture construction, new requirements and new functions can basically find a suitable place in the architecture;
• It can be achieved, and the company can spend lower costs to meet the different needs of different customers.

It can be seen that the quality of architecture construction has a relatively large impact on the business.

Before we talk about "How to build the architecture of SaaS products from 0 to 1?", let's first define the architecture.

I searched Baidu Encyclopedia for the definition of "architecture" and found that it contains a lot of technical language explanations, which are difficult to understand.

So, I made a new definition based on my own understanding.

The definition of architecture is: "Based on the architect's understanding of the business, the architect starts from one module and derives another module; continues to start from one module and derive another module; then sorts out the order of the modules included in the entire product as clearly as possible, and connects them together to solve a certain type of problem - this is the product architecture."

There are three key points in this definition:

• One business module after another, that is, there are N multiple business modules;
• There is a relationship between modules, that is, a connection relationship;
• The modules are connected together for a purpose and exist to solve a certain type of problem.

PS: Isn’t this just the application of system thinking again? Friends who are interested can check the relevant information on their own. I will not introduce system thinking in detail here.

• How to find out N business modules requires structural thinking;
• How to sort out the connection relationship between modules requires logical thinking;
• How to find out what kind of problems need to be solved in a certain category requires strategic planning.

In other words, if you want to build a SaaS product from 0 to 1, you need to think comprehensively from the following three aspects:

• Strategy formulation;
• Structural thinking;
• Logical thinking.

I believe that through understanding these three aspects, you should have a holistic understanding of building product architecture from 0 to 1.

Next, I will talk about them one by one.

1. Strategy Formulation

As mentioned earlier in the article, the purpose of building a product architecture and combining and connecting one product module after another is to solve certain types of problems.

For SaaS products, this "certain type of problem" is a strategic issue.

Let us deduce why this “certain type of problem” is a strategic problem?

From 0 to 1 SaaS product, the combination and connection between modules form a system, which is a SaaS product that can achieve a closed business loop.

How do SaaS products come about?

SaaS products are roadmaps for implementing strategies based on strategic guidance.

That is why we say here that this “certain type of problem” is a strategic problem.

The most important role of strategy for products, or for product managers, is to know what to do and what not to do, and to know clearly or roughly where the boundaries of the problems to be solved are; then to define and design products within these boundaries, to bring value to customers, and thus bring business value to the company.

Regarding how to sort out strategic issues, you can refer to an article I wrote before: "How to sort out the strategy of To B business?" ”, I will not go into detail here on how to sort out strategic issues.

The strategies for each business of each company may be basically different depending on the industry, opportunities, and its own capabilities.

However, if we abstractly think about all these differences and classify them, we can basically find that all SaaS products made by companies basically fall into two categories:

• Business vertical type;
• Industry vertical.

PS: Of course, as the startup’s business grows, these two categories will merge into one, that is, the SaaS product will include multiple solutions for multiple business scenarios in multiple vertical industries.

1. Business vertical

Business verticality can be understood in this way: the problem that SaaS products need to solve is a certain system in a company's business system (it can also be said that the problem to be solved is a problem in a certain link in a company's value chain).

This may be a bit abstract to understand, so let me give two examples to explain it.

for example:

• In the manufacturing industry, a company's business system would be like this: research and development - procurement - manufacturing - marketing - sales - service;
• In the advertising industry, a company's business system would be like this: purchasing media - developing customers - product planning - sales planning - advertising production - implementation and review.

These two cases are an introduction to the business systems of the manufacturing and advertising industries (or an introduction to the relevant links in the value chain of the manufacturing and advertising industries).

A SaaS startup company will extract one or more small systems from the entire large business system and provide corresponding SaaS product solutions. This is the vertical business type.

The small systems in the business systems of various industries can be extracted through abstract thinking to find the common small systems and provide the SaaS product solutions needed by these small systems.

The mainstream and general business vertical SaaS products currently solve the following business scenarios:

• CRM;
• human Resources;
• ERP;
• Promotional marketing;
• Finance and taxation;
• OA, etc.

If you are solving a business related to a business vertical, then for each business vertical scenario, you can find relevant books, competitive products, workflows of relevant benchmark companies, etc. for reference and understanding, and finally form a certain business cognition.

This will be of great help in building the product architecture later.

2. Industry vertical

Industry verticality means that the problem that your company's SaaS product is going to solve is related to a certain vertical industry.

for example:

• retail;
• FOOD;
• travel;
• educate;
• Medical treatment;
• Logistics and so on.

When solving industry vertical problems, there are two frameworks to think about:

Industry chain + enterprise value chain.

First, think about the industry chain. The result is that you can clearly know which business entity in the industry chain needs to solve business problems for the company.

After knowing which business entity's problem needs to be solved, the next thing to think about is: which value chain link or links of the business entity's problem needs to be solved.

for example:

You want to enter the vertical industry of tourism. First, you need to analyze the industry chain. The entire tourism industry chain can be roughly divided into four links:

Upstream suppliers (including scenic spots, hotels, etc.) - channel dealers - media and marketing platforms - users.

After various analyses, you decide to help the scenic spot operator solve business-related problems.

Next, you think further about what business problems you need to help the scenic spot solve?

At this time, you need to sort out the modules included in the scenic spot's value chain. After sorting, you can conclude that it roughly includes: production, marketing, sales, logistics, service, human resources management, financial management, etc.

After various analyses, you decide to help the scenic spot solve the problems in marketing and service links, and finally design a SaaS product to solve the problems in marketing and service links of the scenic spot.

After landing in these two scenarios, you can refer to and understand the workflows of relevant books, competing products, and related scenic spots to eventually form a certain business cognition - this is the thinking process when vertical industry SaaS products think about business problems.

2. Structural Thinking

Once the strategy is developed, it’s time to start building the product framework.

In the content discussed in the strategy formulation module, we will find a situation: no matter whether it is a business-vertical SaaS product or an industry-vertical SaaS product, it will eventually have to go back to a certain link in the value chain to think about it.

When we go back to a certain link in the value chain, we should form a structural thinking in different links.

What is structural thinking?

Structural thinking means: when you encounter a big problem, break it down into small problems that you can understand, and then solve these small problems one by one. This way of thinking and solving problems is structural thinking.

Now let’s go back to the SaaS product and see how to use structured thinking to identify the N or more business modules in the product architecture.

The structured thinking framework usually used in SaaS products is as follows:

In other words, through various methods, we can eventually come to the conclusion: for a certain type of problem, the SaaS product’s first-level business module includes which modules, and the second-level module includes which modules (even more complex products can be broken down into third-level, fourth-level and other business modules).

Examples:

Here I take the scenic spot mentioned in the article as an example, and through structured thinking, look at the SaaS products that solve the marketing problems of scenic spots, and see what business modules are included in the first and second level modules.

You may think of solving scenic spot marketing problems:

• That is, if you want to buy tickets online, you need a ticket management module;
• How to display it to users? Through online stores, there should be a store management module.
• Then, you suddenly think that there should be a module to display the money from sales and allow the scenic spot to withdraw cash, so there should be a financial center;
• Then, you analyze competitors and find that there should be an order module to form a closed business loop, so there is an order module and so on.

In short, through various methods such as understanding the business, industry knowledge, reference to relevant competitors, research on benchmark companies, etc., you have sorted out the first- and second-level modules that the product architecture should have.

After sorting out, you have concluded that the first and second level modules of scenic spot SaaS products are as follows:

PS: For easier understanding, the details of the above first and second level modules have been omitted.

3. Logical Thinking

Through structural thinking, you come up with multiple first- and second-level modules for the product.

At this point, the overall thinking of the product system has not been completed, because each product module is independent and not connected together. The result is: no effect can occur.

Only by effectively connecting various modules together can we achieve our goals and solve problems.

At this time, logical thinking is required (logical thinking is basically a necessary thinking method for every product manager).

You might be thinking:

• If the scenic spot wants to sell tickets, it should first have an add ticket module in the secondary module of the ticket management module;
• After adding tickets, they need to be presented to tourists for viewing and purchase. Therefore, there should be a secondary template for store decoration in the store management. The problem solved by this template is to decorate the store that you want to present to users.
• After tourists purchase tickets through the store, there should be an order management module in the background to view the order and complete order operation related issues;
• At the same time, after purchasing the tickets, users will leave user information, relevant data, and the results of funds arrival, so there are user management, financial management, and data center modules.

Finally, through sorting, you concluded that the connection relationship between the various modules of the scenic spot SaaS product is as follows:

PS: For easier understanding, the above logical thinking diagram has been edited.

I believe that through understanding the above three modules of strategy formulation, structural thinking, and logical thinking, you should have a holistic understanding of building product architecture from 0 to 1.

I found that having architectural capabilities is not only important for product managers, but also very important for all people in the workplace.

For example, the entire writing process of this article uses structural power:

• The purpose of writing this article is to sort out my understanding of "SaaS product architecture from 0 to 1" and to write a high-quality article on the topic of "How to build a SaaS product architecture from 0 to 1?" for readers;
• Three modules were used: strategy formulation, structural thinking, and logical thinking;
• The logical relationship between these modules derives structural thinking and logical thinking through strategy formulation.

For example, recently, a friend talked to me that a colleague in their company's team was writing some materials recently, one material after another; due to the unreasonable architecture construction, changing a certain part of one of the materials would involve the reconstruction of many places, and it took a lot of time to complete the relevant materials.

Structural power is a really good thing.

It is useless and yet it can be used for everything.

Author: Feng Xianfei

Source: Xiao Fei Ge's Notes