and why it may not the best choice to run your business
You may have heard of something called SaaS (software as a service). Here’s the current top Google answer –
What is software as a service?
“The aim of SaaS is to reduce the cost and time for deployment (you don’t have to install the software on each machine on which it is used), reduce the costs of operation (through economies of scale), remove some of the risks of operation (someone else is keeping it secure and making sure it is kept up to date), and provide known costs for the period of a contract (you won’t have to maintain or replace equipment that goes wrong)” (https://oxfordcomputertraining.com/glossary/what-is-saas)
One core principle of SaaS is that you shouldn’t build a custom solution yourself, but instead use a ‘best of breed’ approach to pick the best applications to solve individual problems you have, while keeping running costs predictable and low. Well known SaaS examples include Mailchimp, Dropbox, Slack, Docusign, Google Apps, Salesforce to name a few.
Contrary to what a significant chunk of the IT industry would have you believe, it doesn’t truly solve all the problems that most companies have. Or, to be more specific, it solves some but creates some big headaches along the way.
While the principle seems great, glueing all these applications together creates a really complex, fragile system in your business with multiple points of failure. Any one of these going down is a risk to you, and with them all being Internet based (and many not far off startups themselves burning seed money to keep afloat), can you really afford to take that risk?
This doesn’t mean that SaaS is completely the wrong approach, just that you need to go in with your eyes open and chose the right solutions – and as few as possible, particularly where it comes to running your core business. For example it’s not going to be a huge risk to do your email marketing with Mailchimp, or your internal messaging with Slack – because both of these are relatively easily replaceable quickly with other methods. But if your business is currently being run by several applications bolted together, and if the failure of any one of these applications or links between them causes your business to halt, then that is the point where you need to question what you’re doing.
Avoiding ‘data silos’ and being mindful of where all your data is
Measuring how you’re doing is really critical to successful growth.
The problem with having multiple applications glued together is that all of the data is all over the place, buried in what are commonly called data silos, all separate from each other and held in different locations.
And data like that is really hard to measure – and without accurate, timely measurement, how will you know what’s going right and what’s going wrong quickly enough to be able to make a difference?
Taking a hybrid approach – custom software as a service
SaaS is a compelling solution and there are definitely benefits that are worth having, if you manage the risks.
Our view is that the core system that runs your business should be within your own control – and for that you do need a solution that has been developed specifically for your company and can be managed by you, or at least by a trusted, reliable supplier that you can build a strong working relationship with. Larger suppliers don’t really fulfil this requirement as you’ll likely be dealing with a different person every time you speak to them, and they won’t have enough knowledge of your business to be effective in helping you.
This doesn’t mean you need to run the software yourself, on your own servers and desktops though. One approach is to host your own custom web application in the cloud, and have it run for you as a service – but it’s still your software, and written specifically for you. And, being cloud based like that, it’s much easier to link to other cloud based solutions (like Mailchimp, Slack, Dropbox, Office 365).
And building a custom, custom solution doesn’t need to be expensive or time consuming either
There are core parts of every custom application that are the same for everyone – for example user creation and login, the menu system, authorisation, email capability, document generation, reporting and analysis. If you then add to that a starting ‘template’ that’s close to the kind of solution you need – for example, customer management, order entry and invoicing, suppliers and purchase orders – you then have an almost ready to use application that can be further adapted to your needs.
This is the approach we take when developing solutions for customers – and it is a lot quicker than building from scratch, and a lot more cost effective – and without a lot of the headaches you’d get if you went fully software as a service instead.
Need any help?
I hope this article on what is SaaS is of use. If you’d like to discuss any of the points raised, we’d love to hear from you – leave us a comment below.
Or if you need anything specific, we’d be happy to help with some free advice. Give us a call on 01992 466877 or send us a message
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