SaaS Software is a Cost Effective Solution for Businesses

The declining economy has impacted businesses around the country.  Businesses are trying to save money without impacting service levels or sacrificing technology. Identifying where to cut expenses while also staying ahead of competitors can be difficult.  Software as a service (SaaS) can help.

A new trend evolving is the SaaS (software as a service) business model, also referred to as on-demand. Facebook, eBay, Netsuite and Salesforce are all leading SaaS businesses. SaaS is a revolutionary business model that utilizes technology to reduce the hardware costs associated with doing business.

SaaS is defined by wikepedia as “a model of software deployment whereby a provider licenses an application to customers for use as a service on-demand.”  Often SaaS vendors will host the application on their own server or have the client download the software.

The beauty of SaaS is that the model distributes the hardware cost.  This allows users to get a much more powerful, secure, redundant hardware infrastructure than a single company could affordably create on their own. The same also applies to technical support.  The SaaS vendors employ a large IT staff that most businesses couldn’t afford on their own.

The major benefit of the SaaS model is the small up-front capital expenses.  There is no hardware to purchase up front and the manpower to maintain the hardware is handled by the SaaS vendor.   Most SaaS vendors offer a monthly payment system, allowing business to distribute the cost of doing business.

The final benefit of software as a service is that is easily upgraded and can be scaled to meet business demands. Instead of purchasing costly hardware to upgrade a system, companies can upload new technology instead.  A profitable business must always adapt assets to meet service demands.  The SaaS model allows companies to easily increase or decrease their software to meet business needs.

The contact center industry has started adopting the on demand business model. On-demand contact center software allows contact centers to manage the highly cost effective work-at-home model and deploy costly technologies for a fraction of the cost, while also maintaining high service levels.