The 3Cs of SaaS ERP: Cost, Customization, Control

Grazed from Business2Community.  Author: RJ Burgess.

Traditionally, companies have had to buy, build, and maintain their IT infrastructure in an expensive and complicated process. SaaS ERP provides businesses with an alternative where they can subscribe to services on a shared infrastructure via the Internet. Given the many advantages of the SaaS model over on-premise, businesses of all types and sizes are flocking to the cloud. The main reasons for the popularity of SaaS ERP, according to a study by ERP analytics firm Mint Jutras, have much to do with the three “Cs” – cost, customization, and control.

Cost
Costs are reduced in various ways when using SaaS ERP instead of on-premise software. The first is through lower IT overhead, as much of the spending required for implementing conventional enterprise software (purchasing and maintaining software, servers, their secure location, installation, maintenance, patching and service contracts) is eliminated. In fact, Phil Wainewright, analyst with Summit Strategies, calculates the cost of traditional enterprise software implementation to be 4-to-5 times the cost of the original license…


SaaS provides consumers with a pay-as-you-go service through monthly or annual subscription costs, a feature not usually offered with on-premise software. These pre-defined charges become predictable IT spend and incorporate into a company’s yearly budget. In some cases, businesses are able to cancel their subscriptions at any time. Moreover, many SaaS ERP services are based around per-user per-month charges and sometimes metered usage, so companies only pay for what they use; accounts can be added or removed at any time to suit the changing needs of the organization…

Read more from the source @ http://www.business2community.com/cloud-computing/the-3cs-of-saas-erp-cost-customization-control-0537873