"As Party A, I don't like the SaaS model. Although it is quick to go online and the implementation cost is low, there will also be many problems."
The above is a message under an article advocating SaaS.
Under this message, many IT bosses of large Party A companies have added their own views——
SaaS is not absolutely bad, depending on your development stage, scale, and depth of demand.
As a practitioner in the SaaS industry, Jian Daoyun uses this article to analyze in depth, what exactly is the SaaS model? Which businesses is it suitable for? Is it omnipotent?
Official website guide: https://www.jiandaoyun.com/
For Party A, what issues worry them most during the process of going to SaaS?
1. Service issues. Such as service quality, maintenance timeliness, etc.
The annual renewal model of SaaS determines that its service must be better than that of locally deployed software. Otherwise, who will renew the fee in the next year?
An important indicator to measure the commercial value of a SaaS platform is the renewal rate.
As Party A, when choosing a SaaS product, don’t just compare which one is cheaper, you have to look at their renewal rate, such as customer renewal rate and amount renewal rate.
Jiandaoyun's customer renewal rate is 80%, and the amount renewal rate is over 100%.
Many Party A complain about the poor service of a certain SaaS product, except for some common problems such as discord with the person you are connecting with and some minor communication problems.
Most of it is because the back tone was not done well when selecting the model, but this does not mean that the service of the entire industry is poor!
2. Cost issues. For example, post-maintenance costs, upgrade iteration costs, and so on.
Although the launch is faster and the implementation cost is lower, but if this front is extended to 10 or 20 years, the investment in SaaS products will not be lower than that of local deployment!
This point of view makes sense, but it doesn't make sense at the same time!
It makes sense because this is actually a fact, and we don’t brag or criticize. What we focus on is seeking truth from facts.
As the enterprise business grows, the number of authorizations for SaaS products must also increase, which will lengthen the timeline and result in higher costs than local deployment.
It is unreasonable because this is a typical logical cycle of both needing and needing. Why do you need a loan to buy a house? Isn't the full payment more economical? Because you don't have that much cash flow, you can't spend that much money at once!
Not all companies have the ability to build an IT team that can meet internal requirements, and not all companies have sufficient cash flow to buy one set of ready-made mature systems.
Moreover, for locally deployed software, there will be major version upgrades in four or five years, involving data migration, etc. The cost is equivalent to buying the software again, and there will be about 10% of the annual maintenance fee.
At this time, the subscription renewal model of SaaS products is of course the best choice for them. Taking the manufacturing industry as an example, ERP, invoicing, SRM, MES, project management and even internal service scenarios are all needed.
Many traditional systems on the market basically only solve one scenario, and the price is high, but a mature SaaS product can satisfy all of the above business scenarios at the same time.
Of course, the degree of customization of these scenario applications is definitely not as high as that of locally deployed self-built systems, but in the face of self-built costs, SaaS is indeed a cost-effective choice. It depends on what the company cares more about. If you are willing to spend money, you can build it yourself.
3. Customized questions. For example, the degree of customization, the depth of customization, etc.
There is no doubt that the customization function of the local deployment version of the software is definitely deeper.
The SaaS model is generally shared by other customers at the bottom layer, which determines the degree and depth of its customization is limited, and it may not be launched in time, because the time of other customers has to be considered.
However, the customization of traditional local deployment software is basically charged. The country has functions related to new policies, and local deployment software needs to be calculated according to the number of developers per day.
And SaaS can guarantee agile and efficient iterations, ensuring that users always use the latest products.
In addition, many SaaS manufacturers have also built paas platforms to support partial customization. Even in the past two years, many SaaS manufacturers have been actively deploying "localization".
All in all, if I want to spend saas fees to enjoy customized services, it is equivalent to buying a special economy class ticket and asking the airline to provide a first-class svip. In the final analysis, I still don’t know what my company wants.
4. The problem of enterprise scale. For example, which enterprises are suitable for SaaS products.
The status of SaaS products is very embarrassing. Small and micro companies do not need digitization and automation; SaaS products of large companies cannot meet their core needs.
This kind of question is raised mainly because the company's positioning of SaaS products is not clear, or it is biased by many unscrupulous marketing accounts. In their articles, SaaS products are the best, they can do anything, they are simply the best things in the world. If you read too many articles like this, everyone will have a lot of unrealistic expectations for SaaS products.
Jiandaoyun has 18 million+ users so far, including many large enterprises like Mengniu, many state-owned enterprises or large units, and of course many small and medium-sized enterprise customers.
For medium and large customers, self-built application systems using SaaS products mostly focus on some supplementary business scenarios rather than core systems.
- Large enterprises have their own core systems, they don’t need SaaS to do it, and SaaS can’t hold it
- And for some supplementary business scenarios (such as the continuous demand of business departments) , the self-developed IT team can't meet the schedule, and it is not cost-effective to buy a system alone (there is still the problem of whether the data between different systems can be connected), so don't do it It doesn't work again.
- At this time, they will choose to use SaaS products to allow business departments to customize the construction to fill the digital gap.
For small and medium-sized customers, SaaS products can basically meet the needs of most of their business scenarios.
- Because the needs of small and medium-sized enterprises for business scenarios are not so deep , there will be functional redundancy in the standardized system on the market, and some small individual needs need to be opened again, and the funds will be very tight.
- In addition, what small and medium-sized enterprises need most is "small steps and quick steps". They need fast verification, fast landing, and fast iteration.
- At this time, you will choose to use SaaS products to do business scenarios and realize "small steps and fast steps".
that's all.