{"id":508,"date":"2006-08-23T01:00:32","date_gmt":"2006-08-23T09:00:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/?p=508"},"modified":"2006-08-20T07:54:20","modified_gmt":"2006-08-20T15:54:20","slug":"saas-focus-on-results","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/?p=508","title":{"rendered":"SaaS: Focus on Results"},"content":{"rendered":"

Interesting post on ZDNet\u2019s SaaS blog about the evolution of the application and the focus on the technology vs. the business results \u2013 misleading but interesting:<\/span><\/p>\n

Whenever customers have to physically implement an application on their own premises, the conversation with vendors always ends up being about the technical features of the product<\/strong> such as performance metrics, compatibility and interoperability. It ceases to be about the original reasons why the business people wanted to automate processes in the first place. <\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

This is what went wrong with packaged application software all those years ago when it first came out, as Rand Schulman, chief marketing officer of on-demand website analytics and digital marketing vendor WebSideStory, reminded me when we discussed this over lunch the other week. When packaged applications first arrived on the scene as an alternative to custom-built in-house sofware, it seemed like they were going to be the ultimate solution to business automation problems. But before long, all the conversations ended up being about compatibility with various platforms, and the business need ended up taking a back seat. <\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

Now, for the first time since that wrong turn the software vendors made all those years ago, on-demand applications are putting business results back into focus<\/strong>. ((Wainewright, Phil, <\/span>June 20, 2006<\/span>. \u201cForget about implementation, focus on results.\u201d Retrieved from http:\/\/blogs.zdnet.com\/SAAS\/?p=173<\/a> on <\/span>July 31, 2006<\/span>.))<\/span><\/p>\n

As usual, I can\u2019t say I agree. Premise based implementation do often end up being about technical features of a product. IT professionals need to understand how the installed application will function with the rest of their environment. However, every vendor selection I\u2019ve ever been through has accounted for the functional requirements in a much higher weight than the technical requirements.<\/span><\/p>\n

Vendor selection done the right way assumes the all of the functional requirements drive towards a desired business result. While I\u2019ll admit that there are probably many vendor selection processes that request cookie cutter functionality because it\u2019s the \u201cin thing\u201d to do, most organizations understand that if they are going to spend that much money on an application, they should plan strategically from the ground up.<\/span><\/p>\n

I simply disagree that SaaS is putting the business results back into focus. While I agree that SaaS vendors may be in a better position to help organizations drive results based processing, I see no evidence that premise based computing failed. <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Interesting post on ZDNet\u2019s SaaS blog about the evolution of the application and the focus on the technology vs. the business results \u2013 misleading but interesting: Whenever customers have to physically implement an application on their own premises, the conversation…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[8,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-508","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-strategies","category-hr-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/508","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=508"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/508\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=508"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=508"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=508"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}