How to Create a Solid SaaS Plan for Your Organization

In the digital and cloud era, there are countless software-as-a-service applications and many ways you can integrate, customize, and configure them for your business processes. However, any company, whether it is a government agency, an oil refinery, or a third-party logistics company, should have a SaaS strategy in place before they start evaluating online business applications. They also need to be familiar with the technical nuances.

Why are Businesses Adopting SaaS Technologies?

1. Accessibility

Before the pandemic, remote and hybrid work options existed. However, there has been a significant increase in the number of employees who prefer to work outside the office over the last few years. Employer support for this trend has also increased.

A 2021 Upwork survey found that 28% of the workforce will work entirely remotely by 2026. SaaS applications make information available to anyone with internet access. Cloud-hosted software has broken down traditional office boundaries. Many of us want to continue working from home, at customer locations, or anywhere else that our day takes us.

2. Security

In the early days of SaaS, many organizations were resistant to cloud-based applications. However, cloud-based applications are now being adopted by many regulated industries, such as insurance and oil and gasoline.

3. Speed

Wi-Fi, Wi-Fi, and mobile network speeds have never been faster. SaaS apps now have more speed and data inclusion, allowing you to make quicker and more accurate decisions.

4. Reliability

Security is not something that can be easily compared to SaaS vendors. They used to have poor reputations for application availability and stability. Cloud platforms now offer better load balancing, disaster relief planning, and cloud-oriented architectures. The cloud-based enterprise resource planning (or ERP), applications, and data availability are more efficient than ever, without the additional technology overhead that traditional on-premises applications need.

5. Technological Advancements

SaaS was initially developed using similar methods and programming languages to those used for on-premises software. Today, continuous development and deployment, open APIs, and cloud-native (not cloud-based) are all making SaaS business applications reliable, secure, and fast.

A Holistic Approach to SaaS Adoption

Many companies working in certain industry segments, such as pipeline construction or oil drilling, have office workers located hundreds of miles from their core operations. This allows field workers to have privileged access to their headquarters. It is possible to access information such as the day-to-day activities of employees to meet safety standards, equipment health, and production quotas.

Many companies hire consulting firms to manage the entire lifecycle of vendor evaluation, procurement, and implementation.

Companies that try to focus on SaaS by themselves are more likely to lose out to their competitors and compromise their other business ventures.

It’s not easy to manage core responsibilities and implement new SaaS applications.

Problems with SaaS Implementation

It is difficult to manage these tasks because most cloud-forward companies use SaaS applications for:

• Accounting and financials
• Collaboration, productivity, and communication
• Data collection, capture, and conversion
• Document and contract management
• Project management
• Asset management
• Human capital management
• Analytics and Reporting
• Customer, supplier, and partner relationship management
• Marketing, graphic design, and online sales

There are many industries and business-niche-specific cloud applications available on the market. An industry expert can help you determine which apps are most suitable for your digital transformation project.

SaaS Plans

It’s not too late to create a SaaS strategy plan if you haven’t done so since the beginning of your cloud journey. Talking to SaaS consultants or vendors might help you learn more about what information should be included in your plan. When creating your SaaS plan, consider the following:

• What are your goals in adopting cloud-based business apps?
• Which business processes do you want to digitize and streamline?
• What are your ideal success indicators for cloud ecosystems or specific applications?
• What is your annual SaaS budget and what are your ROI expectations
• Will you use an interdepartmental ERP platform?
• How will your change management process look?

SaaS platforms are a great way to help businesses overcome problems and improve processes if they’re properly structured, implemented, and configured.

Combining the ERP platform and emerging technologies like blockchain, the Internet of Things and AI-powered automation tools with can help accelerate business processes and increase efficiency.

Three Essential Ingredients to a Successful SaaS Program

You must ensure that your SaaS plan is well-mapped before you can create an effective one.

• How your business processes will change from on-premises software to cloud-based SaaS platforms. Moving to the cloud won’t make your workflows more efficient or less complex.
• Data cleansing, cleansing, conversion, and migration processes. Some legacy applications may be storing duplicated or old data in multiple locations. What data should you keep and what data should you delete in order to have reliable cloud sources of truth?
• How will you decide to make decisions? Who will participate in phases like vendor selection, business process digitization, and so on? To work with the consulting company throughout the project, who should be part of the SaaS steering group?

Conclusion

Many organizations working in the financial, oil and gas, and utility industries have huge amounts of data, but they struggle to extract useful insights.

SaaS plans can ensure that you get the best value out of your data. They also create significant efficiencies. This includes allowing users to access the correct data in the context they need. You don’t have to look far for useful information on SaaS execution and planning.