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Software as a service to replace employees
Although you may hate calling your credit card company and getting a machine-prompted system, it is saving that company a ton of money. Software as a service (SaaS) helps businesses reduce costs by replacing employees that would answer the phone and handle generic questions from customers. Software as a service has 2 functions, software delivery and customer service. Finding the right staff members to handle IT questions and maintain the software at a company is extremely time-consuming and pricy. If you have your IT members dealing with basic consumer questions, they do not have enough time to focus on the real purpose of their job which is to maintain and create new projects for the company.
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How does SaaS work?
SaaS is licensed by a software provider and installed as an application for the customers to use. The service is an on-demand service so it can be accessed any-time the customers need it. Depending upon the size of your small business, the software may be hosted on the web server of the software provider or they may offer you the ability to download it. Of course, the software will terminate if you miss payments or your contract expires.
The benefits of SaaS
Besides being a great way to cut-costs, SaaS comes with a lot of other benefits. Most notably are the following:
- Ability to allow customers to access their information and private pages from any computer they want.
- Ability to offer customers help after business hours
- Centralized feature updating ( a fancy term for downloading patches and updates)
- Integration to larger networks, like plug-ins
Depending upon the type of SaaS system you are using, you may have the option of charging your customers for the use of it. For example, if you sell software, you can charge your customers when they come to your site to download additional add-ons to the software. The patches must be free since they are normally created to fix a problem with the software.
The downside to SaaS
Even though SaaS does work, there are some disadvantages to it. Some people have problems accessing their information because they have slow Ethernet connections. They may also have problems with their computers firewall and it will not permit them to access the site.
Another problem some companies face with SaaS is that they simply do not need it. You need to make sure you have a strong supply for your demand before you invest in SaaS over employees. A lot of customers also have challenges figuring out the system and this may cause negative publicity for your company. If the software has a lot of glitches, you will need some IT support members to spend more time fixing it and this could negate the reason why you purchased the software to begin with.
If you switch your SaaS provider or software, it may take a long time to convert all the data and you still have the challenge of re-training all your customers on the new software. Some companies have had issues with security breeches and operational problems. While there are some glitches to work-out, most customers that use SaaS have positive things to say about it. Software firms do have multiple security screens to pass through before you are allowed to access personal or financial data, which normally keeps the system safe from hackers. The other thing companies are able to receive from a software provider is free access to all of their data that has been collected as long as they remain with the SaaS provider. This data can help you watch market trends and determine how often your customers are using the system.
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