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OpenSaaS started with the goal of increasing the usability and adoption of SaaS and open source. Focusing on usability first, we asked: What makes software usable?
Of course, it has to have the necessary features and good UX — but what after that?
Software usability cannot be defined or measured at any one point in time. It has to make its user’s life easier across lifecycle stages.
So we came up with the stages of the software buying and usage process first, and we published that here. You can download the sheet here too.
Now, coming to the premise: a good software should ideally make the life of its user smooth at all stages.
Most often, enterprise software is not won or lost on features.
It is won or lost on friction.
The best SaaS products are not the ones with the longest feature lists — they are the ones that make life easier at every stage of the customer lifecycle:
- Easier to discover
- Easier to evaluate
- Easier to onboard
- Easier to govern
- Easier to audit
- Easier to renew
- Easier to exit
That is what usability means in enterprise SaaS.
And that is why we built the SaaS Usability Index — a lifecycle-based evaluation framework that measures usability not as UI polish, but as:
Operational ease across the full buying and governance journey.
This post introduces the model, the scoring system, and the stage-based structure we can consider, and invites review and feedback from IT leaders, CIOs, procurement leaders, SaaS product managers, GTM team members, and founders to make it a robust framework.
Why we needed a framework?
Because SaaS usability is broken in most evaluations.
Most SaaS scorecards focus on surface-level questions:
- Does it have feature X?
- Does it integrate with tool Y?
- Does it look modern?
But in real enterprise buying, usability failures happen somewhere else entirely:
- Procurement stalls
- Security rejects the tool
- Onboarding drags for months
- Access reviews become manual nightmares
- Audits trigger chaos
- Renewals become renegotiations
- Exiting becomes impossible
The product didn’t fail because it lacked features.
It failed because it created operational burden.
So the right question is:
Does this software reduce effort — or introduce new work?
Redefining Usability: Enterprise Usability Is Lifecycle Usability
In consumer apps, usability means:
- Clean UI
- Fast clicks
- Intuitive flows
In enterprise SaaS, usability means something very different:
- Fast approvals
- Secure defaults
- Low admin overhead
- Audit readiness
- Continuous governance
- Predictable renewals
- Safe exit paths
So we define usability as:
The degree to which a SaaS product makes life easy across every stage of adoption, operation, and governance.
That requires mapping usability to the buyer journey itself.
The SaaS Buying Journey Is the Real Usability Surface Area
Enterprise SaaS is not a single moment.
It is a multi-year lifecycle:
- Discovery
- Vendor evaluation
- Implementation
- Identity configuration
- Governance operations
- Renewal economics
- Exit and replacement
A usable SaaS product must perform across all seven.
This is the foundation of the Usability Index.
Introducing the SaaS Usability Index
The SaaS Usability Index evaluates usability across seven lifecycle stages, each with measurable controls.
Each metric is scored from:
- 0 = absent or unusable
- 3 = acceptable enterprise baseline
- 5 = best-in-class operational excellence
This produces:
- Stage-level usability scores
- An overall usability index
- A diagnostic map of friction points
Stage-Level Usability: Where Software Must Make Life Easy
Let’s walk through the journey.
Stage 1: Pre-Purchase / Discovery
Goal: “Can I trust this product quickly?”
Usability begins before a demo. Your team is not even aware of the potential customer, so the only thing the customer can refer to is the content you have put on the web.
Does that generate enough confidence in the mind of the customer?
Important signals include:
- Customer advocacy
- Content showing thought leadership — white papers, case studies, presence at important events, etc.
- Communities on various sites (GitHub, Reddit, LinkedIn, etc.)
- Self-service capability, which reduces friction
At discovery, buyers need clarity, confidence, and internal alignment.
Key usability metrics include:
- Roadmap visibility
- Product clarity
- Thought leadership maturity
- UX consistency
- Pricing transparency
A usable SaaS product reduces discovery friction.
Attachment: Stage-Level Scoring Sheet (Discovery Stage Metrics)
Stage 2: Vendor Evaluation & Selection
Goal: “Can this pass procurement, security, and IT?”
Most SaaS products lose here — not because they are bad, but because they are unverifiable.
Baseline usability requires:
- SSO support
- RBAC controls
- Compliance readiness
- Audit logs
- API completeness
- SLA credibility
Enterprise usability is the ability to clear approvals without heroic effort.
Stage 3: Onboarding & Implementation
Goal: “How fast can we get value?”
Time-to-value is usability.
The best products require minimal services, minimal friction, and guided deployment.
Key metrics include:
- Data ingestion mechanisms
- Data correction workflows
- Multi-device readiness
- Support maturity
- Time to critical integrations and automations
- Presence blueprints, pre built templates
If onboarding takes 90 days, usability is already broken.
Stage 4: Identity & Access Configuration
Goal: “Can we govern access without complexity?”
Identity is where enterprise software becomes real.
Baseline usability requires:
- MFA and SSO
- SCIM provisioning
- User lifecycle automation
- IGA onboarding
- Privileged access separation
- Finegrained rbac
If admins must manually manage joiners/movers/leavers, usability collapses over time.
Stage 5: Operations & Governance
Goal: “Can we run this safely forever?”
Enterprise software is not installed — it is operated.
This stage measures whether governance is continuous or manual.
Key metrics include:
- Compliance automation
- Audit logs
- Evidence collection
- Remediation workflows
The usability test here is simple:
Does the product reduce operational work — or create it?
Stage 6: Commercial Lifecycle
Goal: “Is renewal predictable and justified?”
Renewals are usability moments.
A usable SaaS product provides:
- Cost predictability
- Clear scaling
- Proven delivery history
- Customer advocacy
- Support escalation paths
Renewal friction is often usability debt accumulated over years.
Stage 7: Risk, Exit & Replacement
Goal: “Can we leave safely if needed?”
The most overlooked usability dimension is exit usability.
Enterprise buyers fear lock-in more than missing features.
Baseline usability here includes:
- Data export tooling
- Deprovision automation
- Offboarding audit continuity
- Modular architecture
A product you cannot exit is not usable — it is a trap.
The Master Usability Index Sheet
To make this framework operational, we consolidated all journey metrics into a single evaluation sheet.
This master sheet includes:
- Stage mapping
- Metric scoring (0–5)
- Why each metric matters
- Unique baseline definitions per metric
- Lifecycle usability scoring
Attachment: Final SaaS Usability Index (Single Master Sheet)
This will be the canonical evaluation artifact used in future vendor deep dives.
Why Score = 3 Matters: The Enterprise Baseline Standard
A key innovation of this framework is the definition of acceptable usability.
Score 3 is not average.
Score 3 means:
- Procurement viable
- Secure by default
- Operationally manageable
- Audit-ready
- Deployable without excessive services
In other words:
Score 3 is the minimum bar for enterprise-grade usability.
How We Can Use This Framework in Future Posts
This is the foundational post.
In future evaluations, we will apply this index to:
- SaaS management platforms
- Identity governance vendors
- AI agent marketplaces
- Master data tools
- Compliance automation systems
Each post will include:
- Full scoring breakdown
- Stage-by-stage friction analysis
- Usability gap diagnosis
- Best-in-class benchmarks
This moves SaaS evaluation from opinion to operational scoring.
Closing Thought: The Best SaaS Is Invisible
The best enterprise software feels invisible — not because it lacks complexity, but because it absorbs complexity.
It makes:
- Buying easier
- Onboarding faster
- Governance continuous
- Compliance automatic
- Renewal natural
- Exit safe
That is usability.
And that is what the SaaS Usability Index measures.
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