Deploying a SaaS application is new for many companies and there are lots of people willing to offer advice on how to evaluate and select the right SaaS solution. Alistair Croll offered a good set of questions to ask when evaluating SaaS. I like his advice because it offers a good holistic view of SaaS and makes the point that a long term vision of the SaaS option is critical to making a good decision.
Alistair recommends asking the following questions,
- Adaptability: How easily can you modify the application? This can be as simple as adding fields or building dashboards, or as advanced as a programming platform.
- Reliability: How much can you depend on the system to function well? This boils down to four things: Performance, availability, scalability and security.
- Task productivity: How effectively can your users accomplish their goals? How many cases-per-minute or entries-per-day can workers do, and how many errors do they make?
- Price: How much will it cost — really? Because SaaS offerings are so varied in pricing, it’s hard to compare them. A better model is to create several benchmark subscribers (a 10-, 100-, and 1,000-person organization) and compare upfront and ongoing costs for them.
- Back-end integration: Can you plug it in to other things? Any enterprise SaaS offering will have to work with other systems, for everything from authentication to data sharing.
- Longevity: How long will the SaaS company be around, and what’s your exit strategy? With ISVs, you could ask for software in escrow. But as the sudden disappearance of Coghead shows, when a SaaS provider closes down, your entire IT systems can vanish with the flick of an “off” switch. Offers from Intuit and others to help stranded customers notwithstanding, this is a big problem.
- Ecosystem: How many third-party developers and integrators surround a particular platform with plug-ins and add-ons, and how active are they? A vibrant ecosystem means a more extensible, flexible solution.
Drop me a note with your favorite questions to ask when evaluating SaaS. greg.smart@incontact.com
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