Driven by the continued success of companies like Salesforce.com, the software-as-a-service (SaaS) delivery model has become an increasingly important element of the mix of technology sourcing options available to enterprises over the past two years. Recently, a number of vendors have introduced SaaS-based BPM technology tools and platforms, eager to “surf the wave” and ensure that they don’t miss out on any opportunities, should enterprises start to shift wholesale to using the SaaS model for their IT capabilities. So – what are the opportunities and challenges associated with using SaaS-based BPM tools and platforms?
The SaaS model is often explained by suppliers in primarily technical terms (using terms like multi-tenancy, delegated administration and so on), but the whole picture of SaaS comprises three aspects:
Although there’s a lot of hype around, it would be wrong to discount SaaS as a cynical attempt by the IT industry to lure us all into a new round of investments in dead-end ideas. There are clear opportunities associated with using SaaS models for enterprises pursuing BPM initiatives.
In the context of BPM, effective collaboration between business and IT teams is now becoming better understood as a critical success factor – in early-stage process discovery and requirements analysis, and also in process design and in process monitoring and optimisation activities.
SaaS-based applications provide improved environments for collaboration between different groups and individuals for two reasons: firstly, accessibility – SaaS-based technologies are typically delivered through standard web browsers, and don’t require software to be installed on users’ desktops. This means that people can easily participate in collaborative work from a variety of locations, potentially from multiple organisations, using a variety of computer systems. Secondly, licensing – SaaS models enable companies to scale their investment up and down in line with usage, and fees are typically modest – so if there’s a requirement for 50 business executives (for example) to get involved in a process discovery exercise for 3 months, then the cost of supporting that requirement can be closely tied to the need.
Rolling out an IT system in a large, distributed business can involve a lot of cost, complexity and risk. Firstly, each business location can require its own infrastructure (whether that’s installed “on premise” in each location, or installed in some kind of shared data centre) – in many cases because of site-based licensing restrictions. Secondly, each business location can require its own local administration and support staff for the IT system. In the context of BPM, dealing with large, distributed business environments poses challenges – not only for these reasons, but also because local change management challenges (enabling buy-in from local management executives and process participants) can be tough to deal with remotely.
SaaS-based applications provide improved capabilities in dealing with large, distributed business environments for two reasons. Firstly, manageability - SaaS-based tools and platforms are hosted and managed by a third-party provider, and the responsibility for all technical administration support issues falls on them. If SaaS-based BPM tools are properly built then user management and process administration privileges can be assigned to a central team initially, and this central team can then delegate these rights to distributed teams of local administrators and managers where required. Secondly, licensing - because SaaS-based tools are typically licensed based on the number of users rather than the number of server hosts or “sites” in use, involving widely-distributed populations of management staff and process participants in BPM efforts can be significantly more cost-effective using the SaaS model than using on-premise software.
One of the most obvious advantages of the SaaS model is its immediacy – with true SaaS offerings, customers can sign up for a service “on the spot” and start using it almost immediately with no software installation requirement of any kind.
Immediacy is one particular area where much BPM technology struggles to really deliver for customers, although in many ways this is hardly surprising – many of the challenges that impact the timeliness of BPM implementations are to do with collaboration, culture and change management, integration, and so on – and none of these things can be done immediately. Nevertheless BPM technology itself can require significant effort to install and configure – and it also doesn’t need explaining that much BPM technology comes with significant price tags.
So it’s clear that the SaaS model has the potential to address a number of the challenges associated with on-premise BPM technology. But the story of SaaS’ potential isn’t completely positive: it also introduces some new challenges, too. We see four in particular:
These challenges are largely surmountable, but they do all point to a need for IT to get proactively involved in SaaS-based BPM efforts. Staying on the sidelines is likely to lead to a risk of having a suboptimal solution foisted on you, whether you like it or not. Because of the lack of software technology and infrastructure requirements associated with SaaS propositions, it’s easy for business teams to drive SaaS subscriptions without the involvement (and sometimes even the knowledge) of IT teams. Indeed some SaaS providers take advantage of this and make targeting businesspeople an explicit part of their sales and marketing strategies.
There are no products in your shopping cart.
0 Items |
|