Reil Talk: Three Essential Techs for your SaaS

Essential technology in the RegTech industry from our CTO, Manuel Reil.

In the third episode of The RegTech Report Alyne’s CTO, Manuel Reil introduces some of the key tech drivers that have fuelled RegTech and SaaS as we know it today. In this article, we look into some of his key insights and discuss some factors to consider when building a software infrastructure for your product and your team.

The absolute basics for a B2B SaaS.

One of the greatest and most essential parts about RegTech, or any SaaS, comes from eliminating the effort and cost that comes with setting up physical infrastructure—the cloud computing aspect of it.

To ensure that you leverage your cloud capabilities in the best possible way, it is important to:

1. Pick the right database. It’s more important than the actual cloud provider.

Nowadays, CTOs and developers are faced with countless options when it comes to choosing database technologies. Long gone are the days when developers had to integrate Oracle’s Databases for every single feature implemented. With multiple options, it also becomes absolutely essential that you pick the right database upfront. And when we say ‘right’, we don’t mean the ‘best’. Instead, we mean the database solution that suits your business purpose and development needs best.

With similar-sounding solutions across all database providers, it is extremely important for you to do your research and to be clear about the exact features of the many different database solutions on the market. At the same time, you might also consider using specialised databases based on the particular needs of your various use-cases (e.g. data type, workload). At the end of the day, picking a database is really about understanding your SaaS—what its functions, needs and demands are and then matching them to the current offerings available on the market. Once you’ve got the database out of the way, it matters a lot less which cloud provider it is that you’re using. But no matter whether it’s Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud or Microsoft Azure that you’re using, it’s really only one part of the basic SaaS equation.

Your team is as important as your tech.

The other side of this equation deals with how you can utilise offerings in the SaaS ecosystem to build a seamless software infrastructure for your team that will be both efficient and productive. In this part of the article, we will discuss how Alyne has designed our team-centric software infrastructure and introduce some essential features for your RegTech techstack.

2. Ultilise the SaaS Ecosystem

At Alyne, we’re not just a RegTech—we’re a team. As cliche as that may sound, creating software and running a SaaS business begins with ensuring that internal processes are set up and running smoothly. Our CTO, Manuel Reil ensures this by optimising internal processes through the offerings in the SaaS Ecosystem. For example, Alyne’s internal communications are made through Slack while workflows are organised through Trello.

“One thing that really blew me away is essentially on my phone, through integrations to Slack, I get a notification as soon as any of the multiple servers we use just sneezes. I know immediately.” — Karl Viertel, CEO and Co-founder about Alyne’s software infrastructure.

The amazing thing about the SaaS ecosystem today is that it’s wide and vast with many companies offering exceptional professional software solutions at an incredibly competitive prices (Alyne started with a tech budget of about $100). By tapping on these SaaS solutions, huge amounts of time and resources can be freed up for your team to focus on solving actual business problems.

3. Single Sign-On (SSO) and Centralised Login System

As Manuel will tell you, having any number of SaaS solutions will not make sense if you don’t already have basic set-up like SSO and a centralised login system in place. Essentially, SSO is an identification system that allows websites to use other sites to verify users. One of the big upsides for having SSO is the speed and convenience—with one set of login details, your team doesn’t have to scramble from one mailbox to another trying to recover passwords or go through various sign-up and verification processes. Most importantly, it offers the security that your information is only stored in one place. Whilst these may have been considered ‘fancy IT stuff’ in the past, these are now complete essentials for any SaaS company.

To hear more about the technology behind Alyne, listen and subscribe to our Podcast, The RegTech Report Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Stitcher. Have something you want to share? Let us know your thoughts by joining in the conversation on Twitter.

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