• SaaS Models Are Now An Established Technology Across Most Organizational Functions

Currently, we are witnessing a huge deluge of business information, leaving them with no scope to slow down or surge ahead. Testimony to this stalemate is that almost 90% of all data available for business purposes was generated in the last couple of years. As a result, we find the cloud industry undergoing a revolution. SaaS models are now an established technology across most organizational functions including finance, marketing and sales, HR, and IT. License-based software has become passe. Oracle, Adobe, Salesforce, Microsoft, and the likes have embraced the cloud revolution. Their software suite is now mostly subscription-based. Data analytics are cloud-native too!

Here’re some facts that mark the meteoric rise of SaaS and the cloud movement:

• Over 67% of SaaS companies accomplished churn rates of 5% or more (Totango)
• An average of 16 SaaS apps are used by companies today (BetterCloud)
• 73% of organizations will have almost all their apps as SaaS by 2020 (BetterCloud)
• Post-2022, almost 86% of companies will run purely on SaaS (BetterCloud)
• By 2022, the global SaaS market is expected to touch $164.29 billion (World Future Shift)

Companies are growing more customer-centric, focusing on delivering personalization and context to each interaction to better understand their needs along the buying journeys. Whether you’re a marketing or sales leader or an entrepreneur, the customer is in the thick of it all. Cloud movement and SaaS serve your customers or end-users.

Then & Now

Remember the time when you connected to your organization’s intranet systems to access data and apps stored on central servers? Late 90’s right? Early days for businesses adopting SaaS were all about welcoming changes in recruitment, payrolls, and CRM. From then on, SaaS, almost synonymous with ‘cloud computing’ today, has evolved exponentially. There’re thousands of SaaS apps that provide a host of solutions tailor-made to match towering customer expectations.

Vendors are either developing their own SaaS products or acquiring SaaS companies:

• Microsoft introduced – Microsoft Flow and Microsoft Teams
• Amazon introduced Chime
• Adobe announced Adobe Sign
• Oracle acquired NetSuite for $9.3 billion
• Salesforce acquired MuleSoft for $6.5 billion
• GE acquired ServiceMax for $915 million
• Salesforce acquired Quip for $582 million
• Oracle acquired Opower for $532 million
• Atlassian acquired Trello for $425 million

The Salesforce-MuleSoft deal is the latest in the list above. Add to that the recent DocuSign IPO and you’ll know the dominant state of SaaS today.

SaaS Impact on Business

1. Financial Planning

The complexities of ERP are daunting which is why organizations are migrating workloads to the cloud. There’s a lot of buzz around cloud-based Enterprise Performance Management (EPM). EPM is now a mainstay of day-to-day operations for many businesses. The biggest benefit of cloud-based EPM is that it aids in-depth, long-term financial planning. That leads to accomplishment of long-term goals.

• Cloud shift rate for SaaS through 2016 to 2020 is 37% (Gartner)

2. Technology Outlook

Cloud has an innate advantage. It offers a platform for users to communicate, manage, and collaborate as per their business functions. For instance, marketing teams can come together to create a community exclusively for marketing attribution or revenue management. Sales teams can create Sales Intelligence communities.

• 86% of end users admit that SaaS apps enable them to succeed more than desktop options (BetterCloud)

Thus, if not on the cloud, you’re missing out on a great deal. Sharing business processes and information among vendors help enhance technology adoption. All of this happens through a common platform.

3. Competitive Integrations

Cloud integrations encompass a variety of services. These integrations have changed the manufacturing space. Simple, user-friendly integrations on mobile apps to sophisticated drone control apps or voice controls. There’re a lot of integrations added to the cloud every time products or services are redesigned or launched. Cloud integrations are now a must-have in your business arsenal to ignite manufacturing success.

4. Workforce Collaborations

Perhaps the greatest SaaS impact is on how we work. SaaS apps have enabled seamless communications making business functions and processes simplified and transparent. Recruitment, project management, T&D, customer support, and the likes have undergone a complete facelift.

• 38% of companies are running completely on SaaS (BetterCloud)
• SaaS-enabled workplaces use an average of 34 apps (BetterCloud)
• SaaS apps for workplace communications have reduced emails by 48.6% (Slack)
• Scheduled meetings reduced by 30% with Google Apps (Whirlpool)

Some SaaS apps that have altered workplaces:

Communication –

Slack | Glip | Skype for Business | Google Hangouts | Go ToMeeting

Ticketing –

Zendesk | Freshdesk | Salesforce (Desk.com) | JIRA

Project Management –

Trello | Asana | Basecamp | Wrike | Smartsheet

Storage –

Dropbox | Box | Egnyte | Microsoft OneDrive | Google Drive

Productivity –

Lucidchart | Quip | Amium | Stride | Cage

Human Resources –

Workday | BambooHR | Namely | Zenefits | Gusto

5. Data Analytics: Crest of Intelligence

Digital technologies in the business world have ensured that customer satisfaction is now a top-drawer priority. To dig the most out of customer behavior along with business profitability and performance, cloud-based analytics (BI software) is what you need. Cloud analytics not only facilitates brisk meritable decisions.  It also helps in simplification of complex tasks and significant cost reduction.

Few SaaS-powered data analytics (BI) providers:

Tableau | IBM Cognos | Qlik Sense | TIBCO Spotfire | Sisense

6. Next-level Marketing Automation

Marketers face the challenge of creating lively and handy content which covert prospects to customers. During campaigns, aspects such as social and email require automation. Enter cloud-based marketing automation which helps marketers ideate, implement, and track campaign results.

Some cool ones:

Hootsuite | Optimizely | Act-On | Hotjar | Wistia

SaaS Benefits

1. Speed thrills – SaaS assures scalability of data analytics and incredibly fast processing power. This brings down project completion times.
2. Cost optimization – SaaS is a subscription-based model so you pay just for what you use. Also, there’re no additional investments required for infrastructure.
3. Scalability – SaaS infrastructure is inherently scalable in nature. It allows you to adapt according to the dynamics of your customer demands and business needs.
4. Accessibility – A big upside of SaaS. A device and internet is all you need to do what you want to.
5. Security – Contrary to initial beliefs that SaaS isn’t secure, one of the primary reasons for SaaS adoption is security.
6. Timely and automatic updates – With feedback and community reviews readily available, SaaS helps IT teams to focus on more critical tasks with regular and automatic updates.

SaaS of Tomorrow

There’s no stopping the cloud revolution. SaaS is enterprise and mobile – omnipresent. Expect SaaS models to get smarter with deep learning (and other AI elements). The SaaS tech and models of the future will cater to more critical business angles like customer churn. Expect the SaaS models of tomorrow to optimize your cross-selling operations as well. In addition to that, there will be an influx of ‘all-in’ SaaS apps.