The SaaS model

Software as a Service (SaaS) is a “dream come true” for customers and software vendors – and now is the time to act. All the ingredients for successful SaaS are in place:

• Internet awareness
• Bandwidth
• Server architecture
• Operating systems, and
• Customers ready to accept remotely-located data.

SaaS enables companies to dramatically improve the overall user experience. It delivers tangible value to customers at a fraction of the cost of full-blown enterprise software, while offering full user flexibility. The main challenges facing software vendors are "increased access" and "reduced friction". Increased access is the ability to interact with customers more efficiently through the web. Reduced friction is the ability to reduce service costs, simplify use and deployment, ensure enterprise-grade security and minimize customer risk.

The subscription model is key for customer success. It lowers the risk customers need to take to use the service. Rather than heavily investing upfront to implement a software solution which may or may not be adopted by users, companies can truly assess the value of the service effectively. It enables customers to be flexible and efficient in using the software because they can easily change the number of users. Customers can discontinue the subscription fairly painlessly, as compared to licensed software. It requires SaaS companies to operate their businesses with much more attention on customer success.

Industry sources predict that SaaS will gain substantial ground in the future. However, it requires vendors to fully understand the SaaS business model and align their offerings with their go-to-market strategies.

Effective project management successfully responds to uncertainty

In business, uncertainty is the only “sure thing”. Companies can significantly increase their chances of responding to uncertainty in a proper and timely fashion if they can:

• Sense and respond to constant market changes
• Build up expertise in people and processes
• Dynamically form teams for networked and parallel activities
• Operate efficiently across the entire organization
• Share common standards of communication

Those points really describe project management, which dynamically connects strategy to action. Effective project management enables teams to work together towards achieving common objectives, while reducing uncertainty and strengthening the competitive edge of any business.

The new era of project management

A key enabler of effective project management is the SaaS business model because dynamic collaboration is inherent in SaaS. All project participants, regardless of their location, securely share the same environment. Web2.0 tools such as blogs, tags and forums – used securely in the context of the enterprise and the project community – can help standardize the communication between project team members.

Enterprise project management requires a distinctive environment that aligns the data model with the customer-specific business model. It requires assigning different types of users different roles, tracking changes, maintaining historical records and implementing an advanced Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) enabling the running of additional applications with no degradation in performance and scalability. The service provider has to consider all the ramifications of developing a SaaS application for the enterprise – in advance. Additionally, SaaS companies need to deliver an enterprise-grade solution and commit to data security and integrity according to the highest industry standards, i.e. 99.99…% availability and 24x7 support.

In closing SaaS is the future of enterprise software and effective project management is the way to address uncertainty for the enterprise and allow businesses to better compete and operate. SaaS enterprise software on top of Web2.0 strategy creates “the wisdom of the enterprise” and a service that gets smarter the more that it’s used.

What an exciting time!