SaaS is allowing HR of SME(s) to better compete with the elite corporate

A research by Blissfully has shown that HR as a department, is the biggest adopter of SaaS (Software as a Service).   In the actual fact, 30% more than the nearest department which is Dev Ops.  The same research also shows that the number of SaaS vendors has sharply increased in the last 3 years.

What’s SaaS? What does this mean? how is it allowing not-as-rich HR departments to have access to highly-specialised software solutions, which historically have only been available to the top 10% of the largest corporate!

Quick links to sub-headings

• Graph # 1 – SaaS Spend Growth by Department (Y/Y)
• Graph # 2 – Number of SaaS Vendors
• What’s SaaS?
• What’s the difference between SaaS and CLOUD
• Who chose to have the “double a” in lower case?
• Is SaaS good for HR?
• Is SaaS a fad? or is it here for the long term?

Graph # 1 – SaaS Spend Growth by Department (Y/Y)

Graph # 2 – Number of SaaS Vendors

What’s SaaS?

SaaS stands for Software as a Service (please don’t blame me for the choice of having the 2 a(s) in lower case – I find it silly too… but each to their own!) – as most of you know or has just figured it out… it’s having access to one or more software features, without having to worry about installing, hosting and maintaining the actual software that delivers those features.

What’s the difference between SaaS and CLOUD

 

Similar but not exactly the same!  A SaaS solution has to be hosted from the CLOUD, but not every CLOUD-based solution is a SaaS solution.

SaaS is associated with B2B (business-to-business) type of software solutions, while a CLOUD solution can be either B2B or B2C.

Well, every SaaS solution should be delivered from the CLOUD (hosting paradigm) but there are some deep facts that some vendors try to hide from you!

You can have a SaaS solution but the way you host it, might not be true CLOUD hosting approach!   A true-cloud solution is one that hosted as a public cloud and using one universal installation (except for clustering purposes and other performance-based regional installations and replications) – you can think about it as one installation that sits in a single data centre and where all users from all around the world would access that same installation and use the same software code and the same big database that’s multi-tenanted where you occupy a small portion of.

Some vendors, however, they create a separate code installation/database for each client – from the client’s point of view they won’t know the difference but in my opinion, such vendor is not going to scale well and therefore won’t be competitive enough!

OK, a CLOUD solution on the other hand, doesn’t have to be a SaaS solution – your website, for example, can be hosted in the CLOUD, but your website might not be delivering any software solution to any user – you can argue it’s serving information content to a certain audience but that’s not exactly what we’re talking about in here – we’re talking about delivering real beef – a software solution that solves a real business problem to companies across the globe.

Who chose to have the “two a(s)” (in the middle of SaaS) in lower case?

No, I’m not going to get started on that – sorry!

Is SaaS good for HR?

SaaS has single-handedly brought the power back to the middle-class corporate (SMEs)

 

I think that SaaS is a great thing for HR as it’s restoring the balance of power to SME(s) by allowing smaller companies to have access to highly-specialised HR solutions, that in the past, they could only dream of having access to!  those solutions were only available to the top large organisations who had enough money to justify spending millions of dollars on software from the like of SAP and Oracle.  The millions of dollars were needed because they had to:

1. Purchase the software
2. Install it
3. Host it
4. Secure it
5. Keep it up and running, and;
6. Keep it up to date.

With SaaS, however, the vendor does all that… and so none of that is needed, the client pretty much rents the software for the duration that they need it, and start using it straight away!  Well that’s how easy it’s supposed to be but there still some phony SaaS vendors who still charge 100s of thousands of dollars or millions in some cases, because:

• True-CLOUD – Their software is not true-cloud and so they still have to install it for you in the cloud i.e. private cloud
• Setup cost – Their software is difficult to set up a new account
• Customisation – Their software is difficult to customise
• Support – Their software is difficult to support

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