Software is a business model whereby the software in question is in the company’s servers, and it is accessible to the customers in a remote location. The company hosts the application, and it is made accessible to the customers through the internet. The customers of this kind of company are regularly charged a subscription fee like monthly to access the service. Some of the most common business functions offered are human resource, customer resource managing, enterprise resource plan, invoice and accounting services, and data management.
In the recent past, SAAS companies have gained popularity; below are some reasons SAAS companies are gaining popularity:
- Easily accessible and versatile –this has made their customers tend to become extremely loyal. It has become a significant disruption to those companies that previously offered on-premise software. The fact is that they are also very scalable, meaning that the customers can quickly expand their services as compared to the regular software that has to be broadened physically at the customer’s servers.
- Easy updates – For the software updates, the company performs them remotely with a dedicated development team and over some time and without requiring the customer to allocate resources and time to update them. Therefore, new features on the software occur every time without causing downtime on the customer end.
- Security – the SAAS companies are renowned for their high-level security as compared to the on-premise software solutions. Systems that have the machine learning capability recognize patterns and identify potential threats proven to have a high-security level.
- Flexible options to make payments – in this, we see that the customer does not have to spend on purchasing the software and the hardware but utilizes the available structures of charge like the number of users at a time.
Most of the trending SAAS business functions influence businesses to pressure them to indulge in remaining relevant in the industry. Examples of the leading trends disrupting the market in 2021 are Artificial Intelligence and machine learning. Artificial intelligence brings some severe changes in the business world as the machines become self-learning, carrying a high efficiency in the operations. Businesses that combine their marketing strategies with artificial intelligence have high interaction between the customers and the company with features like data alerts. Machine learning is also revolutionizing firms so that there is autonomous customer service like live chatbots. In this service, the customers interact and inquire about the products efficiently with less human input.
As much as the businesses have a lot to gain from the SAAS companies, there is a risk of over-reliance on the company’s service such that any down-time on the company side directly impacts the customer’s productivity. The company’s service’s downtime happens when the company has not invested in the infrastructure and workforce itself but depends on the SAAS company’s direct assistance. The service may also be expensive to the customer, and they may be bound not to leave before the contract expires. All in all, SAAS companies are disrupting businesses by setting the trend in the market by introducing technologies that every business needs to use so as not to become obsolete