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In an environment of accelerated digitalization, many Swiss companies no longer settle for seeking solutions solely for their own use: they aim to design and market their own custom SaaS platform to address unmet needs in the market. The goal is no longer just to optimize internal operations but also to create a monetizable software solution capable of generating recurring revenue and becoming a standard in its sector.
Creating a SaaS product for sale means building a scalable, robust, and differentiating software solution grounded in real-world challenges. Very often, the publishing company is also the first user of its own solution—allowing it to validate the product under real conditions before making it available to other stakeholders.
Whether the objective is to meet specific internal requirements or to seize a commercial opportunity by launching a niche SaaS product, success depends on a clear vision of the target market, a scalable cloud architecture, and an agile, end-user–centered methodology. Here’s how to structure your SaaS project from conception to market launch.
Definition and Stakes of a Custom SaaS Platform
A custom SaaS platform is a cloud application built to address a precise set of business needs. Unlike generic market solutions, it is designed from the outset to offer a user experience perfectly tailored—whether for internal use… or to be offered to other companies on a subscription basis.
In a commercially oriented project, the SaaS platform becomes a standalone strategic product. It must combine functional value, technical performance, a viable business model, and scalability to attract future users while generating recurring revenue (subscription model, freemium, etc.).
Its design typically relies on a technical foundation combining proven open-source components and custom-developed modules to address specific business use cases. This hybrid approach delivers a solution that is robust, differentiating, and evolutive—adaptable to a given market or vertical sector.
For the company initiating such a project, developing a custom SaaS represents a dual lever:
Internally, it optimizes key processes and strengthens operational efficiency;
Externally, it turns that expertise into a monetizable and exportable product capable of creating a sustainable competitive advantage.
Fundamental Principles of SaaS
The Software as a Service (SaaS) model relies on a cloud architecture where users access an application via a browser or API without local installation. Hosting, maintenance, and updates are centralized, significantly reducing technical constraints for both the publisher and end customers.
For the publisher, this enables a seamless user experience while maintaining full control over performance, security, and feature evolution. The model also eases international deployment without requiring local infrastructure on the customer’s side.
A well-designed SaaS leverages multi-tenant architecture, allowing infrastructure sharing while isolating each client’s data. This reduces hosting costs, ensures resilience during peak loads, and supports a scalable economic model.
Moreover, the SaaS modular approach facilitates customization: each client can activate only the features they need without complicating the overall product. This is a key advantage for those wishing to create a vertical or niche SaaS offering, meeting a specific market segment’s expectations.
Finally, this model naturally relies on cloud elasticity: it adapts to user growth without massive hardware investments. This scalability lever is essential to evolve your SaaS gradually while controlling development and operational costs.
Why Develop a Custom SaaS Solution?
Although off-the-shelf market solutions are abundant, they often fall short when it comes to addressing specific business needs or delivering a differentiating value proposition. It is in these situations that developing a custom SaaS makes perfect sense—especially when aiming to launch a market-ready solution and turn an underserved sector need into a monetizable product.
Many companies identify gaps or constraints in their own operations that existing solutions don’t fully cover. By leveraging this firsthand knowledge, they can design a targeted SaaS product that precisely meets their sector’s expectations—and then offer it to other players in the same market.
Often, the publishing company becomes its solution’s first customer. This scenario enables the immediate launch of an MVP used internally, validating its robustness and optimizing it before external release. It’s a win-win approach: it improves internal processes while generating a new commercial asset.
Custom development also offers:
Total control over functional scope, without unnecessary bloat;
Fine-tuned UX customization to drive adoption;
License cost optimization by removing generic modules you don’t need.
This is the ideal approach for creating a vertical or niche SaaS capable of standing out from generalist platforms by targeting a specific audience with the features they truly need.
Finally, by relying on open-source technologies and a modular architecture, the company retains strategic control over its product without depending on a third-party vendor. This enables it to evolve its solution in any direction—be it new vertical expansions, international rollout, or integration of complementary services—and to build a profitable, sustainable growth lever.
Case Study: From Internal Need to Successfully Marketed SaaS Product
A Swiss company specializing in medical-goods logistics noticed that most temperature-controlled delivery management solutions didn’t account for Swiss specifics (standards, traceability, hospital timing constraints). For its own operations, it decided to develop a custom SaaS solution capable of:
Tracking transport conditions in real time (IoT, temperature alerts)
Automating route planning according to health regulations
Generating regulatory reports required in Switzerland and Europe
Once the MVP was in production and successfully used in its own workflows, the company realized other players—particularly SMEs and hospitals—faced the same constraints.
It gradually transformed its solution into a commercial SaaS platform, adopting a modular subscription model, a limited freemium offer, and premium support for institutional clients.
Tangible results:
25% reduction in internal logistics costs within the first year
Recurring SaaS revenue representing 12% of turnover after 18 months
Adoption by 7 external facilities in Romandy and 2 in Belgium
This case illustrates the power of SaaS as a strategic diversification lever: from a well-identified specific need, the company built a secure, profitable, exportable solution.
Business Advantages of a Custom SaaS in Switzerland
Developing a custom SaaS platform opens significant strategic and financial opportunities, especially when the solution is intended for commercialisation. Such a project creates new revenue streams, builds a differentiating technological asset, and enhances the company’s market appeal.
Scalability and On-Demand Performance
A well-designed SaaS architecture leverages cloud elasticity to automatically adapt to user growth and activity spikes. This is a key success factor when serving multiple clients simultaneously, ensuring performance, availability, and a smooth experience.
Technical modularity (via microservices or decoupled domains) allows continuous evolution of the platform without downtime or bloat. Each module can be developed, maintained, and scaled independently, simplifying roadmap management according to user feedback or market shifts.
Cost Optimization and Time-to-Market
Building a custom SaaS lets you prioritize features that truly matter to your target market and launch an MVP quickly. This agile approach tests user adoption, validates commercial viability, and then iterates swiftly.
By leveraging open-source components and a well-thought-out architecture, you reduce licensing costs and gain technological independence. This keeps expenditures under control while accelerating market entry. The overall budget remains aligned with short- and mid-term profitability goals.
SaaS Design Illustration: A Fintech Player
A Swiss startup wanted to launch a SaaS platform for subscription and recurring payment management in financial services. Available market solutions didn’t cover local specifics (VAT, Swiss payment gateways, regulatory risks).
By developing a custom SaaS, it was able to:
Integrate Swiss gateways directly (TWINT, PostFinance, etc.)
Customize business rules to local tax regulations
Automate compliance processes
Six months after launch, the platform had won several clients in banking and insurance, reduced transaction costs by 15%, and secured its recurring revenue streams.
Edana: strategic digital partner in Switzerland
We support mid-sized and large enterprises in their digital transformation
Roadmap for the Development of Your Custom SaaS Platform
The success of a custom SaaS project relies on a clear roadmap, from initial scoping to production deployment. Each phase must combine product vision, technical rigor, and user feedback.
Scoping and Product Strategy
The first step is to formalize business objectives, priority use cases, and success indicators (KPIs). This phase includes co-design workshops with all stakeholders to define user stories and critical scenarios.
It is crucial to identify non-functional requirements from the outset: performance, security, regulatory compliance, and Swiss data localization. These constraints guide technological and architectural choices.
A well-structured product backlog and an iterative roadmap enable the rapid launch of an MVP, gathering concrete feedback and adjusting priorities based on real usage and market developments.
Designing an Evolving, Secure SaaS Architecture
The architecture should be built on modularity and scalability principles, favoring microservices or decoupled business domains. Selected open-source components are integrated via standard APIs to avoid vendor lock-in.
Security is a cross-cutting pillar: data encryption at rest and in transit, fine-grained identity and access management (IAM), vulnerability monitoring, and regular penetration testing. A local or European cloud infrastructure ensures data sovereignty.
Finally, implementing a robust CI/CD pipeline with preproduction environments and automated testing ensures continuous delivery without service disruption or functional regression.
Agile Development and Continuous Testing
Development proceeds in short iterations with frequent deliveries and regular demos to key users. This continuous communication enables rapid feature adjustments and ensures user adoption.
Each business requirement is covered by automated tests (unit, integration, end-to-end). Code reviews and evolving documentation guarantee medium- and long-term maintainability.
Integrating monitoring and alerting tools from the development phase facilitates early anomaly detection in production and enhances operational resilience.
Use Case: Custom SaaS for a Regional Healthcare Group
A hospital group wanted to deploy a SaaS platform to centralize room reservations, equipment management, and cleaning protocol tracking. Existing solutions didn’t cover strict regulatory traceability requirements.
After an organizational audit, an MVP was launched in three months with a mobile interface for staff and a modular back office. User feedback led to rapid functional adjustments.
The CI/CD-driven platform evolved without service interruption, and the group extended deployment to other clinics within a year while ensuring strict compliance with Swiss health standards.
Key Considerations and Best Practices to Avoid SaaS Design Pitfalls
The success of a custom SaaS also depends on mastering risks related to security, maintainability, and technological dependencies. Anticipating these pitfalls is essential to preserving your solution’s quality and longevity.
Security and Regulatory Compliance
Beyond encryption and penetration testing, establishing access governance and an incident response plan is essential. Document data flows and schedule regular audits to comply with GDPR, nLPD, and sector standards.
Hosting in Switzerland on ISO 27001-certified data centers guarantees data sovereignty and reassures sensitive stakeholders, notably in finance and healthcare.
Team training and awareness of best practices complete the technical measures to limit human error and targeted phishing risks.
Avoiding Vendor Lock-In
Favor open-source solutions and standard interfaces to avoid tying yourself to a single provider. Using containers and orchestrators (Docker, Kubernetes) eases migration between clouds.
When selecting managed services (database, messaging, storage), evaluate data export mechanisms and plan a migration strategy if needed.
Infrastructure as code (Terraform, Ansible) documents the environment and reduces reliance on proprietary consoles while ensuring deployment reproducibility.
Maintainability and Evolvability
Continuous code documentation and systematic reviews preserve architectural clarity and ease onboarding new team members. SOLID design patterns contribute to clean, modular code.
A robust API and component versioning strategy ensures backward compatibility during major updates. Automated tests verify every change before production deployment.
Regular performance and load metric analysis allows resource adjustments and unanticipated scale-up planning.
Case Study: Custom SaaS Development for a Retail Group
A Swiss retail player launched an MVP on a proprietary framework but got blocked when adding a loyalty module. Development and licensing costs soared.
A reengineering effort based on an open-source microservices architecture decoupled functionalities and migrated in phases without service interruption. Automated tests reduced update time by 40%.
The group now benefits from an evolutive platform where each new feature is deployed in hours, with no reliance on a single provider.
Have Your Own Custom SaaS Platform Developed
Your custom SaaS project must combine a clearly defined product strategy, a modular and secure architecture, and an agile, quality-driven development approach. Sectoral examples demonstrate the importance of a contextual, hybrid approach leveraging open source and open standards.
Whether you want to launch an MVP, improve an existing platform, or prevent future roadblocks, our experts support you from initial audit to operational deployment—prioritizing performance, longevity, and respect for your digital sovereignty.
