If you are a business owner, CEO, CFO, or COO of a manufacturing company, you are being inudated by information about Software as a Service (SaaS). You are wondering what it can do for your company and what will be the return on your investment. Bottom line is: will it make your company more efficient and more profitable? The time, energy, and cash you put into updating your enterprise software should produce a more efficient, comprehensive production line. Software as a Service (SaaS) is beginning to redefine how manufacturing companies evaluate and deploy Enterprise Software Solutions within their business. The old traditional software licensing fee structure has become an obsolete software deployment strategy. Looking to the future, our company Software 21 has embraced SaaS as an ERP Software Solution alternative.
Five compelling reasons as outlined below demonstrate the shift in software acquisition and define why software licensing as we have known it in the past is obsolete.
The first reason is cost.
Paying a monthly subscription fee with SaaS is significantly less than traditional software license fees. Consider the added expenses of hardware, software, monthly service and updates, plus remote implementation service, and SaaS will create IT cost reductions of up to 60% a year. Your budget is predictable (no cost overruns), and the ease of system administration results in a reduced cost per month.
The second reason is flexibility.
Saas offers the ultimate flexibility in configuring your company’s software deployment and scale. Why would you want to go to a company that offers only one size ERP software solution? Don’t try to put a round peg in a square hole; find an ERP software solution that can be custom-tailored to your needs and to your timetable. Software 21 in partnership with IBM is an example of how “On Demand” implementation can make all the ERP software applications available when you want it, where you want it, in addition to unlimited backend support.
The third reason is capital retention.
In times of tight cash and diminished business credit availability, SaaS allows your company to preserve its valuable capital resources for other high priority projects and activities. Instead of 100% financing or payment of large license fees on the front-end of your software acquisition, cash is spread out over years, effectively allowing a company like SW21 to fund your new implementation.
The fourth reason is IT resources.
SaaS, properly managed, allows most manufacturing companies to operate with no internal IT resources committed to supporting the new ERP environment. With all technical support coming from a partnership like SW21 and IBM, your company saves significant dollars in IT administration expenses.
The fifth reason is a comprehensive solution.
With a SaaS infrastructure, ERP, CRM, SCM, and BI systems are fully integrated and designed to help your company manage all of its critical business processes profitably. No hidden costs for software add-ons occur, and as your company rolls out your new ERP environment, no software functionality is missing.