Did you know that according to a report by Gartner, about $111 billion of IT spending has already been shifted from on-premises to the cloud and is expected to increase to about $216 by the year 2020? Well, yes. In order to stay up to date, many IT organizations are adopting Cloud-first strategies. And among them, the most popular one is Software-as-a-Service (SaaS). This market is huge. Want to take advantage of it? Then join the SaaS bandwagon with a SaaS application for your business operations!
If you’re not convinced yet, let’s give you some amazing reasons to go for SaaS applications. But wait, before we move forward, let’s give you a brief about what SaaS is.
What is SaaS?
This is actually software that is centrally hosted. You can avail its services in the form of a subscription. These applications run on the servers of the SaaS providers. You can access them through browsers. In this model, you don’t really buy the application. Instead, you pay rent to use it for a certain period of time. So you don’t need to worry about the technical issues, as the provider takes care of everything.
There are three primary categories of cloud computing and SaaS is one of them. Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) and Platform-as-a-service (PaaS) are the other two. Not sure about what can SaaS be used for? Well, you can use it for multiple business processes including customer relationship management (CRM), e-mail, finance, sales, billing, human resource and more. Some of the most common names of SaaS providers are Salesforce, Microsoft and Oracle.
Now, let’s tell you how SaaS can add value to your business:
- Very less initial investment
As SaaS operates on a pay-as-you-go model, you don’t need to pay any huge amount of upfront fees. All you need to pay is a monthly or annual subscription fee. This can be regarded as one of the many reasons why most companies prefer SaaS compared to on-premise software applications.
- Latest features
If you have the best features for your business apps, it can make work more interesting, isn’t it? Also, the level of productivity increases to a great extent. In order to make informed business decisions, your team can make use of new and exciting features, right? The business that have traditional applications, require spending a lot for heavy upgrades. This can be a thing of the past with SaaS applications. With these applications, you can focus completely on your business or on learning new technologies, as the upgrades will be managed by the providers.
- High levels of security
With regard to adopting an enterprise cloud computing strategy, a study says that about 66% of IT professionals are worried about security. However, with SaaS, you can have a good night’s sleep! The provider takes care of all the data maintenance work with high security, as their livelihood depends on that.
- Data recovery and backups
Are you familiar with traditional software? Then you may know how hard and time-consuming it is to back up your data on a weekly basis, unless an expensive automated solution is implemented. With SaaS solutions, you can get rid of this painstaking task, as there will be automated backups without your intervention. This is to ensure the integrity of your data. Sounds good?
- Seamless availability
With SaaS, you can access your CRM database from anywhere, at any time and on any device. Happy? With 99% uptime, you just need an active internet connection and a web browser. The SaaS CRM is especially great for people in sales – people who spend most of their time in the field.
- Adoption rate is high
As you already know that SaaS solutions can be used over the internet, virtually, there is no learning curve involved in adopting it. This is because people are already using the internet and know how it works.
- Flexible subscriptions
Basically, for a SaaS subscription, you need to pay a flat monthly fee, which provides the necessary scalability and flexibility for your growing business. With the recurring payment model, you can not only have more control over your IT expenses, but also develop a more accurate budget. The best thing? Well, at any point in time, if you decide not to avail this subscription any more, you can terminate the subscription without any penalty or fine.
Not sure if SaaS applications are right for your business? We are just a call away!
