{"id":10606,"date":"2011-07-05T11:04:00","date_gmt":"2011-07-05T16:04:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/devweb.rjrinnovations.com\/three-sources-of-value-promised-by-saas-and-how-to-unlock-them-2\/"},"modified":"2016-10-13T10:21:27","modified_gmt":"2016-10-13T14:21:27","slug":"three-sources-of-value-promised-by-saas-and-how-to-unlock-them-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rjrinnovations.com\/fr\/three-sources-of-value-promised-by-saas-and-how-to-unlock-them-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Three sources of value promised by SaaS – and how to unlock them"},"content":{"rendered":"
Following on from my previous post about some of the things that have changed for IT departments as SaaS adoption has gained momentum \u2013 this time we\u2019re going to focus on the top 3 stated benefits of SaaS and how IT organizations can play a critical role in ensuring their realization. <\/p>\n
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1. Time to value<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

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Taking advantage of a pre-built and pre-configured\u00a0\u00a0 best practice application environment should<\/em> mean that you are able to enjoy the business benefits of the application more quickly and with less effort and expenditure in the process.\u00a0 There\u2019s a much reduced testing, staging and go-live cycle –\u00a0 someone else has already made sure that everything is installed and working correctly \u2013 just as they have done for tens of thousands of other organizations in some cases. <\/p>\n

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The process of configuring and aligning the solution to your needs is a well rehearsed drill – where many of the kinks and known traps have been ironed out or at least well signposted. To give you a feel for what the vendors scale and experience brings to the situation, imagine you were going through your ERP roll-out for the seven thousandth time – no matter what variations you added on this occasion\u00a0 \u2013 chances are it would still be a pretty slick and rapid affair.<\/p>\n

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However, the watchword in realizing the undoubted benefits of such a well-oiled machine is \u2018readiness\u2019 \u2013 you, as an IT organization, have to play an active part in ensuring that the resources and information needed to expedite this transition are in place and that your part of the execution will happen in a controlled and documented way.<\/p>\n

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Tips for IT:<\/strong> Get very<\/em> familiar with your SaaS vendors\u2019 on-boarding process early, preferably as part of the selection phase. Look carefully at its completeness in terms of information, roles, processes and timings \u2013 be vigilant for any gaps or requirements that you know will be a challenge in your environment.<\/p>\n

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Make sure any data you need to supply can be readily extracted, transformed and loaded into the application. Make sure all the internal stakeholders in the project know about what needs to happen, their role in the on-boarding process and the information they\u2019ll need to supply.<\/p>\n

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This is an IT Change Management exercise similar to most others – but with the added complication of a greater number of external parties involved. With these additional dimensions, you need to get really<\/em> sharp at using change management best practices and highly disciplined about using change management software. Make sure you encode the roles and steps documented in your vendor\u2019s on-boarding process into the structure of the change requests and work-orders you manage for this project.<\/p>\n

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2. Lower TCO<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

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So, you no longer own the infrastructure on which the applications run, you didn\u2019t have to buy it and invest large capital sums doing so. Experts employed by your supplier are ensuring the system continues to do what it\u2019s supposed to\u00a0 – they\u2019re also worrying, on your behalf, about whether it needs to run on newer and faster hardware.\u00a0 Your supplier is enjoying the economies of scale in terms of powering, cooling and managing the application infrastructures of lots of companies like yours in the most efficient hardware configuration they can \u2013 and passing that saving on to you, so that they can remain competitive.<\/p>\n

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You\u2019re not juggling complex and inflexible licensing agreements, you\u2019re likely consuming the service on a utilization basis and so by definition are not over licensed – and therefore not spending lots of time and effort trying to find, account for and reconcile vast number of licenses. <\/p>\n

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It\u2019s not hard to understand why organizations genuinely do enjoy a reduced TCO from the adoption of SaaS applications \u2013 but you don\u2019t get off that easily \u2013 you as an IT function have a critical role in ensuring that the reduction in TCO is deep and sustained. You have to learn how to monitor and respond to an environment where your users are consuming a business critical application from a third party \u2013 you will still be the first port of call in any outage, request or problem \u2013 and as such you\u2019ll need to get good at navigating your new world of dependencies, suppliers and integrations.<\/p>\n

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Tips for IT:<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Service awareness is a term that is creeping into the language surrounding the management of SaaS and cloud based infrastructure. In essence it means that the people, processes and technologies you use to manage your IT infrastructure must be aware of, and able to cope with, the fact that some of the key applications your users depend on are being delivered as a service.<\/p>\n

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Make sure that Service Level Management process and its supporting software system are able to represent and enforce the relationships between:\u00a0 the SLAs you agreed with the business in supporting the SaaS application \u2013 your internal OLAs for handing the relationship between yourselves and the vendor and the Underpinning Contracts (UCs) the vendor has in place in support of that service.<\/p>\n

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Your Configuration Management processes and underlying database have to be able to model: an application as an external service, the service dependencies and associated service impacts of that application and any integrations to other systems and services \u2013 internal and external.\u00a0 Your dreams of lower TCO will soon evaporate if you spend ten hours identifying the location and impact of any problems or the likely impact of a change.<\/p>\n

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To get proper control over your users\u2019 interactions with, and requests to, your SaaS vendor , Service Request Management (SRM) is a critical discipline. The much vaunted time rapid install and \u2018time to value\u2019 claims of SaaS happen to be true \u2013 and as a result it\u2019s really<\/em> easy for departments to sign up and start buying capacity from SaaS vendors. You need to be in complete control of this process and enforce the appropriate steps and controls SRM mandates.<\/p>\n

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3. Reduced Operational Risk<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

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SaaS vendors spend a great deal of time and effort worrying about systems stability, security and resilience so that you don\u2019t have to. Their<\/em> capacity to invest in cutting edge systems and facilities to underpin this low risk environment likely outstrips yours<\/em> \u2013 and therefore you should rest as easy as anybody can in this day and age about the relative integrity of the application you\u2019re consuming.<\/p>\n

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Most SaaS vendors actively promote details of their system performance and integrity processes to help you evaluate them as a supplier and to give you confidence they\u2019re going to take good care of your information and business processes. Some even go as far as live read-out of some of the key performance indicators they track so that you can actually see for yourself how well they\u2019re doing at keeping things performing, stable and secure.<\/p>\n

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They\u2019ve often invested greatly in pursuing certification in key ISO standards relating to best practice in systems management, compliance and security amongst other disciplines. So, by now you\u2019re probably picking up on a recurring theme here:\u00a0 that is most SaaS vendors generally have their act together and in order to get the best out of SaaS – so should you. The same principle applies to enjoying the peace of mind that comes from consuming a highly risk-mitigated service. <\/p>\n

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Tip for IT:<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Service outages do still occur with SaaS applications for a variety of reasons – some of those reasons lie in new, or at least marginal, territory for many Service Management teams. A good example would be the connectivity between your organization and the SaaS vendor \u2013 it\u2019s a complex relationship with multiple resolving parties involved. You need to make sure that your incident management teams, processes and systems understand and document the increased significance of external internet connectivity and the management of the suppliers involved. <\/p>\n

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Problem investigation and management is another best practice that you\u2019ll need to (re) familiarize yourself with. Your supplier is likely very good at it and will respond best if managed in a controlled and documented way. Get familiar with your vendor\u2019s processes, points of contact and the underpinning contracts they use in support of problem investigation.\u00a0 Bear in mind too, that your users won\u2019t care that you don\u2019t own the teams that are resolving the problem \u2013 you might not control the resources, but you do own<\/em> the problem. Make sure you\u2019re able to communicate updates and expectations widely and clearly .<\/p>\n

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Your role in systems access management and control doesn\u2019t diminish either, simply because someone else is provisioning and de-provisioning user accounts. To maintain compliance and integrity you need to rigorously enforce process around access and on-boarding requests as part of a concerted effort around Service Request Management .<\/p>\n

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Next time\u2026.<\/strong><\/p>\n

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So we\u2019ve familiarized ourselves with some of the benefits and challenges that SaaS adoption has brought for IT departments. What about IT as a service (ITaaS)? What is it? What are its claimed benefits ?and what will then implications be for systems management in this emerging paradigm?<\/span><\/p>\n

By: Chris Rixon <\/span><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Following on from my previous post about some of the things that have changed for IT departments as SaaS adoption has gained momentum \u2013 this time we\u2019re going to focus on the top 3 stated benefits of SaaS and how IT organizations can play a critical role in ensuring their […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[39],"class_list":["post-10606","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","tag-english-fr"],"yoast_head":"\nThree sources of value promised by SaaS - and how to unlock them - RJR Innovations<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.rjrinnovations.com\/fr\/three-sources-of-value-promised-by-saas-and-how-to-unlock-them-2\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"fr_FR\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Three sources of value promised by SaaS - and how to unlock them - RJR Innovations\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Following on from my previous post about some of the things that have changed for IT departments as SaaS adoption has gained momentum \u2013 this time we\u2019re going to focus on the top 3 stated benefits of SaaS and how IT organizations can play a critical role in ensuring their [...]\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.rjrinnovations.com\/fr\/three-sources-of-value-promised-by-saas-and-how-to-unlock-them-2\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"RJR Innovations\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/RJR-Innovations-107107129324171\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2011-07-05T16:04:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2016-10-13T14:21:27+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@RJRInnovations\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@RJRInnovations\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.rjrinnovations.com\\\/fr\\\/three-sources-of-value-promised-by-saas-and-how-to-unlock-them-2\\\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.rjrinnovations.com\\\/fr\\\/three-sources-of-value-promised-by-saas-and-how-to-unlock-them-2\\\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"\",\"@id\":\"\"},\"headline\":\"Three sources of value promised by SaaS – and how to unlock them\",\"datePublished\":\"2011-07-05T16:04:00+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2016-10-13T14:21:27+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.rjrinnovations.com\\\/fr\\\/three-sources-of-value-promised-by-saas-and-how-to-unlock-them-2\\\/\"},\"wordCount\":1516,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.rjrinnovations.com\\\/#organization\"},\"keywords\":[\"English @fr\"],\"articleSection\":[\"Blog\"],\"inLanguage\":\"fr-FR\"},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.rjrinnovations.com\\\/fr\\\/three-sources-of-value-promised-by-saas-and-how-to-unlock-them-2\\\/\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.rjrinnovations.com\\\/fr\\\/three-sources-of-value-promised-by-saas-and-how-to-unlock-them-2\\\/\",\"name\":\"Three sources of value promised by SaaS - and how to unlock them - RJR Innovations\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.rjrinnovations.com\\\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2011-07-05T16:04:00+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2016-10-13T14:21:27+00:00\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.rjrinnovations.com\\\/fr\\\/three-sources-of-value-promised-by-saas-and-how-to-unlock-them-2\\\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"fr-FR\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\\\/\\\/www.rjrinnovations.com\\\/fr\\\/three-sources-of-value-promised-by-saas-and-how-to-unlock-them-2\\\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.rjrinnovations.com\\\/fr\\\/three-sources-of-value-promised-by-saas-and-how-to-unlock-them-2\\\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.rjrinnovations.com\\\/fr\\\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Three sources of value promised by SaaS – and how to unlock them\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.rjrinnovations.com\\\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.rjrinnovations.com\\\/\",\"name\":\"RJR Innovations\",\"description\":\"Connect your business... 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