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12 issues that must be considered before choosing

2022-10-04

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12 issues that must be considered before selecting SaaS applications

1 Carry key tasks

don't use SaaS for any applications that your company cannot do business without, unless you are sure that SaaS service providers can support it better than you. Consultant Amy Wohl said, "SaaS should not be used in an application when your entire company depends on it to operate successfully at all times and you feel that you cannot get the required reliability or performance unless you personally control it."

she said, for example, stock trading companies should keep trading software inside the company. A large company may have more than 100 applications necessary to operate key businesses. But in fact, many customers obviously trust SaaS vendors' ability to support mission critical applications. Statistics show that 49% of enterprises plan to deploy mission critical SaaS applications

2. Do you pay by use

you need to be aware of the price trap of SaaS. We all know that software manufacturers are obsessed with paying for licenses in advance. The main selling point of SaaS is monthly payment, which forces manufacturers to continuously improve services and make customers satisfied. However, Jeffrey Kaplan, head of thinkstrategies, a consulting firm, said that most SaaS manufacturers actually reversed this model and forced customers to pay up to a year in advance

Ken boasso, the author of the technology blog, wrote: "traditional software customers hate to hand over their money before enjoying the benefits of applications. When SaaS manufacturers, like traditional ISVs, require to pay annual fees in advance, or even offer a valuable 'time value' discount, customers need to know the difference between SaaS and traditional software, and whether there are any disadvantages."

3. Is the data really safe

when deploying SaaS services, please ensure that the service provider has a reliable way to back up data in the event of a disaster or when the manufacturer exits the market. If sensitive business data is involved, you need the manufacturer to have a contingency plan for backup and recovery, as well as a service agreement containing severe penalties for data loss or disclosure

wohl pointed out that customers had better find a way to keep the application by a third party to ensure the backup of the application. William McNee, President and CEO of Saugatuck technology, said, "customers actually have to understand the SaaS infrastructure that supports the delivery of SaaS solutions."

as actually improves security

SaaS enables enterprises to cooperate with partners without exposing their internal networks. Wohl said, "many companies don't want partners' personnel to wander around within their firewalls." Kaplan said that another additional benefit is that SaaS can provide various government notes for enterprises The computer should be placed in a dry and ventilated room with the offsite data backup capability required by regulations

Kaplan said, "we must back up our data off-site to comply with the requirements of relevant regulations. SaaS products that provide off-site hosting services solve this problem well."

as applications work better on SOA

soa and its emphasis on web interface and interoperability will provide you with an IT infrastructure that takes advantage of the unique advantages of SaaS. Some experts pointed out that SaaS can make use of many next-generation technologies. Including SOA. When it comes to the integration with enterprise applications, SOA architecture will bring great benefits to users. And those enterprises that develop in the direction of SOA will find that SaaS based application integration will be much easier than traditional application integration

6. Single sign on capability

David linthicum, a manufacturer consultant who is looking for the ability to provide single sign on for authorized users to use a variety of computing resources, pointed out: "single sign on ability is particularly important for higher temperature furnaces, low-temperature boxes, and SaaS systems with complex tools that also include third-party additions (such as background check SaaS applications and reporting SaaS applications)."

as application integration is limited

Linthicum said that SaaS manufacturers have been trying to find a good way to integrate their applications with those developed by other manufacturers. He said, "as more enterprises migrate their applications to the SaaS platform, the need for SaaS to SaaS integration is growing. Unfortunately, when customers demand this integration, many SaaS suppliers cannot give an answer. Users have no other way except to hire a group of developers and hope for the best results visually." He also pointed out that this practice often leads to a "lack of flexibility, expensive and stupid application architecture."

8. How much can users get

a SaaS application with good implementation effect for a small number of users may not be suitable for promotion to the whole enterprise. Wohl said, "you must understand 'what can I reasonably expect from using this application? Is it something that can only be applied in a fixed area?'

if more than one department uses a SaaS application, enterprises need to set boundaries for it. McKinsey Quarterly pointed out in a report on SaaS: "An explicit mechanism will be needed to decide who will decide the level of customized software and who will pay for this service when two departments want to use SaaS software, but only one department needs to modify the software.

users should beware of excessive hype?

SaaS is a very popular application at present, so almost every manufacturer hopes to get a piece of this market. Unfortunately, many manufacturers just simply put their existing The application is put on the web without any easy-to-use improvements

kaplan said, "some software manufacturers have tarnished the word SaaS. What they are actually doing is to provide the same old applications, and the limitations of applications have not changed at all. SaaS applications are developed to run on the web, so they should have easy access features. They should have an intuitive operation interface. Most importantly, they should have the ability to allow many users to use this application for real-time collaboration."

10. Who is responsible for SaaS services

before signing the SaaS service agreement, please be sure to know whether the application is "self-supporting" through the web or whether the manufacturer provides customers with a living customer service representative. Kaplan said, "some simpler and intuitive applications may provide relatively few technical support services. Correspondingly, the response time of services received by customers will lag behind."

11. Can we get rid of internal support

the rationality of SaaS fees often lies in the commitment of manufacturers to provide better services than customers can enjoy when using traditional software. However, if you want to enjoy the full benefits of improved services, it departments must adapt to service level agreements and make internal commitments to business users and their own customers

McKinsey said, "for example, if SaaS manufacturers guarantee the service level of invoice processing speed, it departments must ensure the availability of infrastructure systems supporting this function in the procurement department."

12. How important is scale

SaaS is often advertised as an excellent solution for small and medium-sized enterprises that need to control costs and lack a large number of IT personnel. But many supporters say that companies of any size can benefit from SaaS applications. Wohl said, "when you deploy software on the Internet, who uses it depends on what the software is doing, how well it works, and its cost. The size of the enterprise actually does not enter this formula."

however, small and medium-sized enterprises that purchase SaaS services are actually facing a completely different decision-making process from large enterprises. They tend to prefer application Suites rather than the purchase decision of a single tool. McNee said, "many SaaS service providers represented by netsuite, an on demand erp/crm service provider, firmly believe that the suite oriented approach of small and medium-sized enterprise customers is very reasonable. Small and medium-sized enterprise customers do not have many IT personnel, and they do not have much time and money to assemble all these applications." (end)