15 November 2011
A recent survey of senior managers revealed that more than 76% of respondents were frequently or very unsatisfied with their ERP systems or enterprise applications (read the full article here).
It’s no surprise to us – because we’ve heard it so often before.
In fact, the growing level of dissatisfaction with the enterprise software setup was an important factor in our decision to make eSpatial OnDemand GIS™ available via Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) delivery.
With such high overall levels of dissatisfaction, as well as legitimate concerns around issues like the rigidity of the system, high cost of making changes, lack of reliability and dependency on the supplier, it leaves you wondering what the survey’s respondents intend to do.
While SaaS-based software isn’t a magical silver bullet that solves all a company’s problems, we’d suggest that it’s a legitimate alternative to enterprise software.
Depending on the solution that an organisation selects, SaaS can deliver the same functionality as traditional enterprise software. And sometimes it delivers more – like advanced collaboration options, and flexible user administration functionality.
Reliability is seldom an issue with SaaS solutions. Vendors live and die by their SLAs and guaranteed up-time, which means they’re highly motivated to keep availability at as close to 100% as possible. Furthermore, they schedule upgrades out of office hours, which minimises the amount of down-time experienced by the customers’ employees.
Perhaps best of all, SaaS delivery doesn’t tie the customer organisation into a long, expensive supplier relationship. Quick setup, flexible user counts, data portability and the concept of simply renting the software mean that if the solution isn’t working, it’s comparatively easy to cut your losses, move on and seek an alternative.
Every day we speak to organisations who want the capabilities of enterprise software, but also want the advantages of flexibility, low pricing and data portability that SaaS offers.
So while we’re not surprised that so many organisations are unhappy with traditional enterprise software, we are surprised that more organisations haven’t simply moved on to the alternatives!
