Maximizing the Benefits of SaaS:

Start Right and Keep Moving

Achieving long-term returns from SaaS requires
cultivating the appropriate mindset—just get started,
be fast and flexible, don’t over-customize—as well
as a bit of planning and governance to ensure that
organizations realize the potential for rapid speed
to value and long-term business transformation.

By Saideep Raj, Managing Director, Global SaaS

Practice, Accenture
Always look for the next tipping
point—when SaaS functionality
provides more flexible business
capabilities at a lower cost
Mature SaaS applications are fast, flexible,
cost-effective, increasingly popular with
both business leaders and their employees,
and well suited for getting business
done. From a planning perspective,
however, many organizations struggle
to understand which SaaS applications
to implement, as well as the best
techniques for coordinating SaaS use
across the enterprise to minimize risks
and maximize business returns.
The best approach for knowing how
or why to implement SaaS is through
constant evaluation, testing and
reassessment. For example, Accenture
is helping a leading manufacturer to test,
pilot and capitalize on today’s mature
SaaS applications—especially customer
relationship management (CRM),
supply chain automation and business-
to-business exchanges—as well as to
integrate required applications and data
across more than 100 business groups.
The CIO’s goal, through these efforts,
is to build and maintain a “living”
application roadmap to keep the
company’s infrastructure fast, functionality provides more flexible
flexible and poised to adopt new business capabilities at lower cost.
SaaS functionality as it matures. Then pounce.
Every organization’s plan for SaaS
Build a cloud
adoption will differ based on multiple
migration strategy
factors, including business rationale
With its low costs and substantial
and organizational readiness for change.
benefits, SaaS take-up is skyrocketing.
Even so, based on businesses which
Already, many organizations use SaaS-
are already seeing substantial returns
based CRM software such as Microsoft
from their SaaS investments, Accenture
Dynamics CRM, Oracle CRM On Demand
has identified five techniques which
and Salesforce CRM. Organizations are
any organization can use to maximize the
now also much more likely to use SaaS
benefits of SaaS. These include building
applications—instead of traditional,
a good foundation, quickly launching
packaged applications—for human
and iterating software until it meets
capital management, supply chain
business requirements, fostering business/
management, office suites and
IT collaboration and an agile mindset,
digital content creation software.
governing SaaS and maintaining a living,
evolutionary SaaS architecture. Cloud platforms from Amazon.com,
Google, Microsoft, Oracle, salesforce.com
By practicing these five strategies,
and others cost-effectively bundle the
detailed in full below, organizations
vertical capabilities as well as development
can maximize the benefits of SaaS by
and integration environments required
constantly rethinking and reevaluating
to move many types of applications to
how and why SaaS is being used. In
the cloud.
particular, they must always look for
the next tipping point—when SaaS
For example, Lawson Inc. in Japan,
working with Accenture, recently
rebuilt and migrated 400 Lotus Notes
applications, including business
workflows, onto Force.com. Lawson’s
business case was clear: the move would
reduce operating costs and increase
application flexibility. Furthermore, the
license and management savings from
using cloud computing more than paid
for the migration.
Similarly, to better serve the families
and teachers of 1.1 million students,
this U.S. Education Agency, working with
Accenture, designed and launched a new
call center, integrating databases from
multiple departments—including Student
Enrollment, Pupil Transportation, Family
Engagement and Advocacy, and Special
Education Initiatives—to enhance the
city’s 311 (government information
and non-emergency) hotline. Using
Oracle CRM On Demand, the project
cost less than a traditional approach
and integrated effectively with the
DOE’s existing environment.
With such savings in mind, many
business leaders are now asking:
might any cumbersome enterprise
application move to the cloud unless
proven otherwise? And what about
adopting SaaS not just at the customer-
facing edge—for CRM and customer
service, HR and marketing—but even for
core systems such as ERP and financials?
Five ways to quickly
maximize SaaS benefits
To know when and which SaaS
applications to adopt, and then to
maximize their benefits, Accenture
recommends organizations pursue
these five strategies:
1. Build a good foundation.
To lower total costs and ensure
infrastructure remains highly scalable,
start projects right. For example, before
adopting salesforce.com, one French
cable provider worked with Accenture
to overcome the complex data migration,
cleansing and integration challenges for
hundreds of thousands of records stored
in data warehouses. Interestingly, this
up-front work did not impair project speed
or increase the total cost of ownership.
Rather, it enabled the organization to
rapidly align its sales processes, integrate
required legacy systems, adopt salesforce.
com and then remain prepared for rapidly
using more SaaS.
2. Jump in, then iterate.
The SaaS formula for “speed to value” is
simple: define desired business outcomes,
and specify how SaaS can achieve these
goals. Of course, many organizations
moving to SaaS already have mature
business capabilities. Trading this live
functionality for a SaaS alternative, on the
fly, may resemble nothing less than brain
surgery. How can organizations relearn
with SaaS, to achieve a similar level of
process maturity? The answer is to think
iteratively: Launch as quickly as possible
and refine as you go.
3. Govern SaaS. Change
can be challenging.
One of our pharmaceutical clients,
for example, is embracing more SaaS
applications, yet must also comply
with numerous regulations and—to
avoid adding risk—avoid fracturing
existing controls. Working with
Accenture, the company launched
a SaaS governance and release
management program, through
which it monitors every SaaS
application’s evolution, ensuring
it conforms to business rules for
requirements gathering, process
definition and compliance controls.
4. Increase collaboration.
Beyond being an application procurement
technique, for many organizations SaaS
provides a baptism into agile development
practices and the business benefits of
iteration. For example, one European
telecommunications company has
applied these precepts to foster greater
transparency and demand much greater
collaboration between the business and
IT groups which create new applications
using SaaS. As a result, it now releases
major functionality not once per year,
but every six weeks. This approach also
helps the company balance what a SaaS
application can do (via customizations)
with what it should do (to remain cost-
effective and manageable).
5. Maintain a dynamic roadmap.
Constantly study, test and pilot
SaaS to identify, from a functionality
perspective, the next tipping point
that enables the business to do more
with SaaS, at less cost. For example,
the aforementioned manufacturer now
maintains a dynamic, evolving SaaS
roadmap to know what to implement, and
when. Interestingly, while the company
has tended to trial new technology in its
more established markets, based on this
roadmap, it has begun to aggressively
implement SaaS in less established
markets—including Africa and the Pacific
Rim—to cost-effectively and rapidly keep
pace with recent surges in demand.
Springboard to transformation
Forward-looking Accenture clients view
SaaS not as a set of software features,
but as a springboard to achieve more
transformational or revolutionary goals
which deliver sustained—and perhaps even
unexpected—long-term benefits. The cost
is the same; all that differs is the mindset.
If talk of “business transformation”
sends business leaders running for the
hills, know this: We’re not talking time-
consuming or costly. Rather, the message
is more organic: SaaS is inspiring new
operating models. Embrace its more
network-centric approach to information
sharing, collaboration and innovation.
And as you iterate your software using
SaaS, seize the opportunity to refine
your business practices.
By advocating that businesses first lay the
groundwork—configuration, integration,
a healthy collaboration environment and
a well-designed roadmap—for any major
SaaS project, Accenture isn’t trying to
throw a wrench into enterprise SaaS
adoption. Rather, we’re saying: Do begin
fast. Progress quickly. Remain flexible.
Pursue beneficial network effects.
But as you cultivate that mindset,
also build a foundation that you can truly
rely on, pursue transformative capabilities,
and verify that the appropriate controls
are in place to ensure that SaaS supports
new business processes, rather than
breaking them. In other words, to move
at speed and rapidly achieve benefits
from SaaS, use the above five strategies
to start right, and keep moving.
About Accenture
Accenture is a global management
consulting, technology services
and outsourcing company, with
more than 176,000 people serving clients
in more than 120 countries. Combining
unparalleled experience, comprehensive
capabilities across all industries and
business functions, and extensive research
on the world’s most successful companies,
Accenture collaborates with clients to
help them become high-performance
businesses and governments. The
company generated net revenues
of US$21.58 billion for the fiscal
year ended Aug. 31, 2009. Its home
page is www.accenture.com.

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Accenture, its logo, and Saideep Raj
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