Leveraging Information and Intelligence

Ability to Deploy Rapidly

While speed kills on the highway, it has the opposite effect on business. SaaS, means the ability to get your information technology as you need it and purposed properly. The time between need and deployment needs to be days and weeks, not months even year. We should consider technology like a water tap, when needed we turn it on getting just the amount we need.

For instance, say there is a critical business need to combine sales data with credit data, both in different system in different companies. Traditional forms of integration could take a year or more to design and deploy...too slow for modern business. However leveraging integration SaaS, you're able to access the integration technology you need, typically without having to deploy software within your own infrastructure.

Ability Scale

SaaS won't do you much good if the IT you're demanding won't support the capacity you need, thus any SaaS solution needs to scale to meet any requirement that a enterprise may have. Scalability is something not well understood. It's not as much a matter of bandwidth and processing power but the ability to operate at a capacity that meets the business needs of the organization. There is a difference.

Ability to Adjust Cost with Need

The primary business driver of SaaS is the ability to pay for only the service you need and use, thus the economics are compelling. Many large organizations in the 90s spent millions of dollars on enterprise class software licenses which went largely unused. While the large enterprise software companies loved this model, many businesses did not realize the value for their IT dollar. SaaS is therefore more compelling.

Ability Change Quickly

Change is a fact of life in the business world, and an SaaS model provides the ability to adjust to rapid change, no matter if it's an increase in need, or the ability to add and delete features. SaaS means that change can occur without time consuming renegotiations of software contracts, as well as installation and testing of new software.

Ability Propagate New Features

As new features are released, including bug fixes, the SaaS model provides for a mechanism that allows new features to reach all of those that need them, as they become available, without interrupting business nor creating additional cost issues. For instance, a new data format standard is released and that functionality will become available to those leveraging SaaS without having to stop production or upgrade software locally.

Ability to Drive Real Time

You won't realize the true value of the SaaS model unless you it bring real time visibility of both business information and processes under your direct control. This means information is up-to-second current, and thus you have the ability to make decisions based on the most current data about your business. Moreover, you'll have the ability to establish automatic mechanisms to carry out predetermined actions, such as automatically pulling a D&B on a sale greater than a million dollars.

Ability to Define the Value within Current Business

Finally, when leveraging the SaaS model you should have the ability to define the value of SaaS in context of your current business, not long term. While this sounds tactical to many, it's really creating a strategy that creates a way of doing business that is much more cost effective and responsive than more traditional non SaaS type strategies. When using SaaS you should have the ability to scale your business, change when needed, and have full value of your information in real time without having your IT infrastructure lag behind, nor create a cost problem.

SaaS is really a new way of thinking about IT, making IT adjust for you business and not the other way around. As companies become more nimble and competition becomes more aggressive those that leverage the SaaS model will find that they have a key advantage.