SaaS Eliminates the Significant Hurdle of Software Installation and Maintenance

Nearly every established company can cite a software implementation that went wrong. There might be several reasons for this. They may have bought a solution that doesn’t suit its needs well, either because they misunderstood the solution, or they didn’t anticipate employees’ needs correctly. Many companies didn’t seek input from the employees who will be using the solution on the ground, and only after a costly implementation, they discovered that the software is more of a hindrance than a help.

Even if they chose a solution carefully, they might discover after implementation that they didn’t correctly predict the costs and administrative time needed to properly onboard the solution. Increasingly, companies are trying to increase their customer engagement, keep their costs down and minimize the time employees spend wrestling to learn and use a new solution.

The cloud is a means of shedding several of these anchors and freeing up your organization to respond to ever-changing needs and gain flexibility, which is what customers today want. Cloud alone still requires some upkeep of infrastructure, albeit virtual infrastructure. Going one step further with software-as-a-service (SaaS (News - Alert)), you can leverage the cloud to remove even more of these weights often holding back organizations. According to a recent blog post by Verint’s (News - Alert) Clint Rice, this is where the cloud can make massive improvements to the pursuit of customer engagement and cost and time savings.

“The cloud is a means of shedding several of these [traditional software implementation] anchors and freeing up your organization to respond to ever-changing needs,” he wrote. “Cloud alone still requires some upkeep of infrastructure, albeit virtual infrastructure. Going one step further with software-as-a-service (SaaS), you can leverage the cloud to remove even more of these weights often holding back organizations.”

In addition to skipping the expense of implementation and installing and configuring server software, companies can gain efficiency in sustaining the solution. A SaaS solution eliminates the need to maintain the solution (monitoring, patching, testing, troubleshooting, etc.) and puts the burden of security and compliance onto the SaaS provider. Upgrades are easy and fast (and cost-free), and there’s no need to replace hardware at the end of its life. With these burdens lifted, you can focus on using the solution in a way that most benefits your employees and customers.

“With many of these items now off your plate, you can focus on experimenting with new innovations, and their quick adoption,” wrote Rice. “If you want new capabilities, turn them on.  If you want to do a proof of concept, provision a test area and give it a go.”

Edited by Maurice Nagle