A staggering number of businesses have adopted SaaS, or Software as a Service, in recent years in order to provide better services and stay ahead of the competition. However, this eagerness to stay up with technology is not without its drawbacks. After all, SaaS is still in its early stages, and if these third-party applications aren’t properly integrated and maintained via appropriate SaaS vendor management practices, SaaS adoption won’t produce the high business value you’re expecting for.
The benefits of the SaaS model, both for the provider and the end user, clearly outweigh the traditional paradigm of software licensing and implementation. It’s not unexpected that the popularity of SaaS apps has skyrocketed.
Because SaaS is hosted in the cloud, it does not need to be physically installed in your systems. It eliminates the need to purchase expensive hardware by simply charging for the resources required to execute the apps. As a result, there is an advantage in terms of cost-efficiency. Furthermore, because SaaS is hosted in the cloud on a network of servers, reliability problems are non-existent.
The adoption and integration of a software application into an existing company workflow is referred to as SaaS implementation. This procedure can be complicated and necessitates a review of business needs, budgets, benefits, constraints, and other factors. The implementation process can begin once the organization has a SaaS implementation plan for the product that will be used.
The stage of SaaS deployment is also known as the stage of SaaS onboarding. In this section, the customer communicates with the third-party vendor regarding internal procedures, expectations, goals, and timescales. Similarly, the company must grasp all pertinent data about vendor practices in order to ensure that the new tools interact with the existing IT ecosystem.
Next, find out about the SaaS implementation best practices that let you maximize the value you can get out of adopting Software-as-a-Service for your company.
Establish ownership
With an enormous increase in digital literacy, almost any employee can procure a SaaS application without notifying or getting approval from IT departments. This also means that anyone can become an application owner, which leads to shadow IT, overlapping applications, and higher cloud spend than necessary. That’s why it’s important to assemble a software implementation team that will drive the project to success.
Smaller companies should have at least a team of two consisting of an acting administrator and a training lead for the new system. Ideally, the acting administrator is an IT expert who has experience working closely with vendors. The training lead typically uses the system on a daily basis and is the go-to person when it comes to questions and concerns about the software.
Read Also: How to Promote SaaS Business
Larger companies on the other hand will need a much bigger team. So, next to an acting administrator and training lead, there is also a project manager, functional lead, technical lead, and an individual or team that is responsible for change management. This group of experts is often referred to as the steering committee.
Roll-out plan with goals
The project teams or owners of a SaaS project create an implementation roadmap. In this map, they set goals and metrics that will allow them to track the success of the SaaS implementation. Key metrics include the scope of the adoption or how much time it should take until completed. It’s also important to think about what kind of utilization level should be achieved within the first 3 months, 6 months, or within a year.
Furthermore, a good SaaS implementation plan should also capture which departments will be the first ones to adopt the new software if a company-wide adoption is planned.
The easiest and most effective way to track the roll-out plan and individual goals when it comes to SaaS implementation is to have a tracking visualization tool that is usually part of a SaaS management platform. This will also allow you to check whether the utilization rate is moving in the right direction.
Embrace the change
There is a reason that companies hire experts for change management. More often than not, it is their job to control the chaos that comes with uprooting an outdated system and implementing new ways of operation. It’s important that teams and employees who will be working with the new tools embrace the change as much as the implementation team.
One way to achieve a successful SaaS adoption and to get everyone on board is to follow a proven methodology for change management and clearly outline the benefits of the new tool to get everyone on board.
Fully embracing change also means getting business stakeholders on your side. There’s nothing more frustrating than unexpected roadblocks in the middle of the implementation process. That’s why establishing good communication channels and proper documentation are key.
During the adoption process, you can also promote the use of training tools that the SaaS vendor offers and open up communication between the different departments for troubleshooting initial problems with the software and eradicating misinformation or rumors as soon as they arise.
Encourage and track adoption
After rolling out the SaaS adoption plan, it’s vital to track the adoption process and keep encouraging departments and teams to utilize the new tool. This is especially important when an entire process was changed.
SaaS usage might stagnate in the beginning as there could be psychological barriers that need to be overcome. Through a SaaS utilization tracking tool, you can keep an eye on every department and its software users and assess how their usage pattern is evolving. This also helps in identifying who needs additional training and encouragement to adopt the new technology. Sometimes, working with a vendor who has more experience in rolling out the respective software is a good idea.
Tracking SaaS usage will also inform you when SaaS implementation can be considered a success. This usually happens once you’ve reached the objectives and goals in your roll-out plan. At times, it’s necessary to adjust the metrics within the plan if the goals were too unrealistic in the first place. Since SaaS implementation is a learning process, not meeting the desired metrics on the first try is much less dramatic than it seems. If anything, it can inform you about the potential pitfalls in SaaS adoption and lead to much smoother future adoptions.
Identify the impact on business
Be sure to identify the impact the new SaaS application has on your business during and after its implementation. Chances are that the benefits you were hoping for in your initial roll-out plan will not completely crystalize until later. That is if you keep driving adoption and encourage SaaS usage across the board. It’s vital to connect the status quo to the goals in your plan and clearly document your progress, setbacks, and how the tool is affecting the business in terms of company culture, budget, and performance.
If the SaaS application has replaced an entire business process, it is almost easier to identify its impact on business operations, teams, and services. However, if old processes are still in place and available to users, it’s important to examine the “who” and “why” in order to take the final step in SaaS adoption.
Continuous improvement and optimization
Once the SaaS implementation has been successful and certain criteria are met, there is no time to lean back and relax. SaaS tools require continuous maintenance in the form of monitoring and SaaS optimization.
For instance, you may realize that another solution that didn’t exist when you first implemented the software is a better fit for your organization. This scenario is very likely, considering that the SaaS product landscape is highly competitive and new vendors appear all the time. However, changing vendors won’t be a concern during the first year or subscription term.
Right after the implementation begins the observation phase that builds a case for necessary refinements. Only once the SaaS solution is live, you can develop a clear sense of what is working and what isn’t.
Once adjustments have been made, periodical reviews especially at the time of renewal will give you the opportunity to right-size licenses or get rid of unused SaaS applications. And this is where an enterprise architect comes in handy – they will match one SaaS application with the application portfolio management plan to determine its value for the business and apply solutions for SaaS spend optimization.
What to Consider When Implementing Software as a Service
When determining how to implement your Software as a Service (SaaS) cloud solution, you must decide if you will be a provider of SaaS services, which method to utilize, and/or whether you will be an end user of another vendor’s current solution.
Customers do not select any of the server, storage, or networking characteristics, nor do they select an operating system or even a language in which to develop new tools while using SaaS. Rather, they are given an application, like as email, customer relationship management (CRM), or a word processor. They cannot select anything other than the application’s settings, which may include the amount of storage desired, the default typeface, or other application-specific options.
However, as the provider, you will need to consider all of these difficulties, as well as many more, when creating your application. To deliver a straightforward experience for your clients, consider providing all of the tools end users will need to use your programme. This is a significant amount of labor, possibly more than deploying an existing application on IaaS or PaaS.
There are more aspects to consider when determining whether to host your SaaS products on an IaaS or PaaS cloud.
Application Access
Choose how your customers will access your application. This is perhaps the most important factor you’ll need to consider.
- If the application is browser-based, will you have various versions of your website that are optimized for mobile and desktop/laptop scenarios?
- How will you keep the content synchronized between the various versions?
- Even in this “simple” scenario, you’ll need to decide what browsers to support. Internet Explorer? Safari? Firefox? Chrome? Opera? Others?
- Will the application be HTML5-based or leverage Flash, Java, or other client-side and/or server-side technologies?
You may choose to deploy it as an application instead. In that case, you’ll need to consider how your target audience will use the application.
- Will it be on a desktop or a laptop?
- If so, what platform(s) will you support? Mac OS X? Windows? Linux?
Maybe your application will be phone or tablet based instead. Again, you’ll have choices to make from a platform perspective. Will your app run on iOS? Windows? Android? Maybe your application will be available on all of the above mobile, desktop, and web-based platforms. The more you support, the broader the base of customers you’ll reach, but the greater the complexity in creating and maintain them all and the more staff will be required to make it appear seamless.
Backing up Data
Determine how to back up your customers’ data. It is virtually guaranteed that your customers will assume that you are protecting their data. You would be very upset if your Gmail or Hotmail emails were lost or your OneDrive account had files lost. You will need to devise a backup strategy.
Service Outages
Devise a high-availability strategy to handle any outages your provider may experience as well as any outages your own platform may run into. You expect 24/7 access to your data and so will your customers. They won’t care that an Internet cable was cut or an earthquake occurred. Some of this may be handled by deploying applications that run locally and then synchronizing the data with your infrastructure, allowing offline access.
Platform Performance
Consider the performance of your platform. Most people will be used to experiencing whatever your app does locally and will expect a similar level of performance from you. Remember, it’s not just your app and what it needs to do from a computing-and-storage perspective, but network latency end-to-end. In other words, from the customer to your app and back. You will need to tune and optimize your app locally (i.e., in the data centers you choose to deploy your application) as well as consider where to deploy it.
In general, the closer the proximity to your users, the lower the latency and the better the experience. This may mean that you need to deploy your app in multiple locations around the globe and leverage global load balancers to direct your customers to the closest site. But in doing so, remember any data sovereignty laws, privacy rules, etc., and consider how that impacts your design in this regard, as well as the previous two issues we described (backup and service outages).
Determining how to synchronize your data across data centers if you deploy your application infrastructure to more than one is key. One other thing to consider again is the use of local applications (mobile and/or desktop based) to reduce the dependency of your infrastructure always being available at a very low latency.
Security
Lastly, remember that security is critical. If people don’t feel that you are protecting their data, Intellectual Property, privacy, etc., you are unlikely to get and keep many customers. You will need to consider the security of data at rest (on your storage platform) as well as in transit (crossing the network, both internally within your app as well as externally between your customer and your app). This extends to any data that is stored on the end user’s device (if any). You may have little to no control over that, or it may be managed by others, but you’ll need to consider those implications from the start.
