How SaaS is accelerating the digital transformation of organizations
Software as a service, or SaaS, has completely changed the way organizations use software. It allows them to access software over the internet on a subscription basis rather than having to install it on their own systems. Organizations are now adapting to new trends, adopting new models and technology systems, and they’re winning the wars on talent, productivity, and competition. But many businesses are still working the conventional, labor-intensive way, relying on legacy systems that are often not fit for purpose.
Modern cloud-based solutions provide resources such as data storage, servers, software, and analytics over the internet or in ‘the cloud,’ and forward-thinking organizations are using cloud-based tools to streamline workflows, improve collaboration, increase efficiency and productivity, and increase profitability.
In our new comprehensive whitepaper titled ‘How SaaS is accelerating the digital transformation of organizations,’ we look in detail at the market trends identified by research and advisory firm, Constellation that are now emerging, the benefits of Saas and cloud migration, and the motivations and challenges of cloud migration facing organizations today.
Here we take a summarized look at just a few of the elements of the whitepaper.
Click to read SaaS: accelerating digital transformation Gated
Market trends
The 10 significant market trends that have recently emerged:
- Reduction in cost of ownership
- Regulatory relief as a service
- Digital monetization models
- Collapsing value chains
- Journey orchestration
- Autonomous enterprises and AI
- Cloud ERP platforms
- Analytics first
- Verticalization shifts to micro-verticalization and platform ecosystems
- Elastic pricing
What is SaaS, and what are its benefits?
SaaS is a software licensing and distribution model that enables businesses to buy software from vendors online on a subscription basis, with maintenance and upgrades performed by the vendors, which lifts the burden from IT teams.
There are numerous benefits for enterprises using SaaS, including:
- Lower costs
Costs are lower overall as you only need to pay for what you use. In addition, the cost of upgrades and maintenance is lower because it is usually shared between all of the vendor’s customers using a particular solution.
- Service scalability and flexibility
As SaaS is provided online, the opportunities for scalability and flexibility are huge. Organizations can instantly scale up or down depending on their unique needs.
- Integration
Integration involves linking various cloud-based solutions together so they can talk to each other and share data and information.
- Easy to use
SaaS offerings are easy to use and manage because they have been designed for use by real people, not just tech experts.
- Faster Innovation
Cloud-native systems allow innovation to flourish because organizations can respond to disruption, change, threats, or opportunities with more speed, resilience, and agility.
Why move to the cloud?
The digital transformation journey starts with business outcomes at the fore. Understanding and communicating business outcomes promote transparency and collaboration between departments. Microsoft cites the primary business outcomes driving transformation journeys as:
- Fiscal
- Agility
- Reach
- Customer engagement
- Performance
- Sustainability
All of these outcomes will speak to different stakeholders in an organization in different ways. Financial outcomes are the easiest to understand, but all of these outcomes will drive the journey for different stakeholders, and different organizations will relate to some and not others. Each business is unique, so understanding which outcomes are driving your individual organization is key to success.
Digital transformation plans are pushing ahead at full steam across all sectors, but it is clear there are challenges along the way, and business leaders need help to successfully achieve their cloud migration goals. However, despite there being challenges to navigate on the journey, the benefits far outweigh them, which is why in their 2022 cloud computing survey, Foundry found that 69% of IT decision-makers agreed that their organization had accelerated its migration to the cloud over the past 12 months.
How unit4 can help your organization with digital transformation
Organizations in every sector need to increase financial resilience, and closely monitoring income levels and technology and utilizing data will help achieve this – such as a modern cloud platform with extensibility.
With Unit4’s comprehensive cloud-based ERP, HCM, and FP&A software for people-centric organizations, you can adapt and optimize how your people work to help you manage complexity and focus on the things that matter. Unit4’s next-generation smart ERP software solutions are built with businesses like yours in mind. With us, you can ‘Experience Real Purpose’ with an adaptable solution that’s right for your business, now and in the future.
For even more information on digital transformations of organizations, please download the full whitepaper here.
And if you would like to learn more about ERPx and discover the best migration path for you, please click here. If you have any questions, feel free to contact your Account Manager at any time to discuss your cloud adoption journey, or click here to book a demo.
