Development solutions
SaaS platform development
A SaaS product has to do three things at once: deliver a workflow customers will pay for, isolate each customer’s data and configuration, and support a commercial model that can be billed and changed without engineering work. Most early builds handle the first and defer the other two, which is where the rebuild comes from.
Sardo Group develops SaaS platforms end to end, including the parts that decide whether the product survives contact with real customers: tenancy model, entitlements, billing, onboarding and the operational tooling your own team needs to run it.
At a glance
- Engagement
- Phased delivery
- First release
- Typically 3 to 5 months
- Relevant sectors
- Enterprise & SaaSStartups & InvestorsRetail & Marketplaces
Where this work begins
The situations that bring organisations here.
These are the problems a development engagement usually starts from, and what they cost if they are left alone.
Single-tenant build sold as SaaS
A product delivered as one deployment per customer, which makes every new account a small project and caps margin.
Billing bolted on late
Plans, seats, usage and invoices handled manually because pricing was not part of the architecture.
No tenant administration
Your team cannot provision a customer, change a plan, reset access or investigate an issue without developer involvement.
Unclear what customers actually buy
A feature roadmap built without a view of which capabilities customers will pay for, or how they will be packaged.
What we develop
The systems we build.
Product definition and MVP
The smallest version that delivers the core paid outcome, scoped so it can be launched and tested rather than demonstrated.
Multi-tenant architecture
Tenancy, data isolation, configuration and entitlements designed once so new customers are provisioned, not built.
Subscription and billing
Plans, seats, usage metering, trials, upgrades, dunning and the invoice data your finance function needs.
Platform operations
Customer administration, support tooling, audit logging and the operational controls a SaaS business runs on.
Capabilities
- SaaS product strategy and scoping
- Multi-tenant architecture
- Subscription and usage billing
- Role and entitlement management
- Customer onboarding and provisioning
- Admin and support tooling
- Public and partner APIs
- Authentication and single sign-on
- Usage analytics and reporting
- Email and notification infrastructure
- Automated testing and CI/CD
- Platform scaling and maintenance
Functionality and integrations
What the delivered system typically includes.
Scope is agreed against your operating requirement. This is the range from which a first release is defined.
Tenancy and configuration
Per-customer data isolation, configurable workflows and branding where customers expect it, without forking the product.
Plans and entitlements
Feature access driven by plan and role, so packaging changes are configuration rather than development.
Self-service account management
Sign-up, invitations, seat management, plan changes, invoices and payment methods handled by the customer.
Operational visibility
Product usage, activity and health reporting for both your customers and your own commercial team.
Typical integrations
- Payment and subscription billing providers
- Accounting and revenue reporting
- Single sign-on and identity providers
- CRM and sales tooling
- Email and transactional messaging
- Analytics and product telemetry
- Support and ticketing systems
- Partner and marketplace APIs
Delivery
How the engagement runs.
Every engagement is phased so something usable exists early, and cost and scope stay visible.
- 01
Product and commercial definition
Who buys, what they pay for, what the first release must prove, and how pricing and packaging will work.
- 02
Architecture and tenancy model
Data isolation, entitlements, billing model and the boundaries between platform, product and integrations.
- 03
Build and pilot
A working product with real tenants, including migration of the first design partners onto the platform.
- 04
Commercial launch
Billing live, onboarding documented, support tooling in place and a roadmap based on observed usage.
Business benefits
What changes commercially.
Marginal cost per customer falls
Provisioning becomes administrative, so growth does not require proportional engineering effort.
Pricing can change without a release
Plans, entitlements and metering are part of the platform, not hard-coded into the product.
Built for due diligence
Documented architecture, tenancy model and usage data support investor and enterprise security review.
One product, many customers
A single codebase and deployment serve every account, with configuration handling the differences.
Industry examples
What this looks like in practice.
Representative scenarios rather than published client engagements.
Operational SaaS for a vertical
A workflow product for a specific industry, sold by subscription to businesses that currently run the process on spreadsheets.
Platform productised from a service
A consultancy or agency turning an internal delivery method into a subscription product, with tenant isolation and usage reporting.
Partner-distributed SaaS
A product sold through channel partners, requiring white-label branding, partner administration and revenue reporting.
Questions
Frequently asked.
A focused MVP is typically three to five months. The variable is not the interface but the depth of tenancy, billing and administration required to sell it responsibly. We scope the first release around the paid outcome rather than the full roadmap.
If you intend to sell to many customers, yes. Retrofitting tenancy after customers are live is one of the most expensive changes a product can go through, and it affects the data model rather than just the interface.
Yes. We review the current architecture, then either extend it or define a staged transition where tenancy, billing or permissions were not designed in.
Through a payment and subscription provider integrated into the platform, with the platform holding plan, entitlement and usage records so you are not dependent on one provider’s reporting.
Yes. That usually adds single sign-on, role granularity, audit logging, data residency considerations and security documentation to the standard build.
Next step
Build your SaaS platform
Tell us what the product does, who pays for it and where you are in the process. We will set out how we would take it from concept to a commercially launchable platform.