Software as a Service

SaaS ERP Saves You Big Time

Hosted software or Software as a Service (SaaS) as it is more appropriately called, is becoming the new age resolution to traditional Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software.  SaaS can save you money in many ways.  For one, you can ditch the cost of all that hardware you would typically have to buy for an onsite ERP solution.  Hardware costs include computers, network equipment, servers, etc.  It’s typical for hardware to run approximately five hundred thousand dollars to support a mid-sized company ERP.  Now, most companies already have the computers and simply need extra hardware.  But, if you were to buy all the hardware at once it would cost approximately five hundred thousand dollars.

The next way a SaaS ERP can save you money is in licensing fees.  There are no licensing fees.  You don’t own the software.  The SaaS ERP vendor owns the software.  You simply rent it.  Consider a house that you rent.  You can’t change the carpet or paint the walls, but you can live in it, enjoy it and take all that it has to offer.  SaaS ERP is just like a rented house.  You get all the benefits without having to own it.  So, there are no big upfront fees.  And, you can move right in with SaaS.  Implementation time is lickity split.  Like a rented house, when you are done with SaaS you can simply walk away.  So far SaaS ERP is saving you a million dollars or so.

Long implementations cost you in terms of resources.  You need to dedicate employees or hire consulting services to complete an implementation. Either way, employees and consulting services are expensive.  With SaaS, you don’t have long implementations.  You simply navigate to the internet url, enter a login, enter a password and voila!  You don’t have to spend money testing an implementation.  And, if you have a problem with SaaS software, just call the vendor and let them resolve the issue.

There’s no getting into customization trouble with SaaS.  Why, because you can’t customize SaaS.  Oh sure there are fields and pages that are available to certain businesses based on the functionality they use, but overall SaaS is owned by the vendor.  The vendor may change the code.  You may not.  Now if you are a control freak, you might have a problem with this.  Or, if your business is so special that it simply can’t adjust to SaaS, you might have to go with another solution. 

Written by :

kristine H