Jemina Boyd • October 1, 2021
But not all vendors and SaaS solutions are the same. PairSoft has put together a list of questions you should ask to help you choose the right SaaS provider.
If your business is growing, your needs today may be completely different from your needs over the next five years. Transactions will increase. Platforms will evolve. Consumers will demand more.
That’s why it’s important to ask whether the SaaS solution you’re looking at now will adapt to your future needs. Too often, SMBs are sold solutions that only address their present demands, without regard for where the business is heading and what technologies are emerging just around the corner.
The cloud enables SaaS vendors to gain great reach, but trade-offs are sometimes made for greater market share. The more users they target, the more uniform their offerings can become.
Impressed by the off-the-shelf layout and design of the out of the box solution they’re offering you? Once it’s deployed and you start interacting with the solution will your SaaS vendor be able to customize the solution to accommodate specific business processes, needs and demands? A provider that can customize their solutions is always worth the investment.
SaaS providers with years of experience designing solutions for companies in your industry can make a world of difference. They’re familiar with your requirements and know exactly what configurations and features are necessary to optimize performance.
What’s more, they’ve been developing their SaaS solution longer, building a wider knowledge base in the process and adapting to the latest cloud trends.
Is the vendor you’re looking at committed to innovation, or are they content to sell you an off-the-shelf solution they never intend to update? Is the company behind the SaaS product you’re looking at committed to continuous development based on user feedback? Solutions that hardly evolve often result in poor user experiences, which has a huge impact on productivity and profitability.
The cyber environment in which solutions operate also changes constantly. Will your SaaS provider continue to monitor and update its cybersecurity safeguards as threats evolve? A proven track record of software updates and steadily improving security systems are important things to look for.
Have you gotten your hands on the product you want and experimented with its user interface? If not, you’ll definitely want to play around with it before you buy it. Make sure it doesn’t require intensive training or paying for extra consulting service hours to execute the tasks you need it to.
Keep your team in mind, too. Will they need training, or is the software intuitive enough to ease such concerns? Make sure it has utility and usability in equal measure.
Is your SaaS product hosted locally, or does it take advantage of leading global platforms that can ensure access to everything you need no matter where you are? If possible, always look for SaaS solutions that leverage the infrastructure of large, trusted companies and products like Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services or Oracle Cloud.
It is an unequivocally good idea to take advantage of the robust SaaS solutions now available, but it is also absolutely necessary to choose your product and provider wisely. Asking these questions before making a decision will enable you to do just that.
For any other questions, or for more help in selecting the right tool for you, call us. We also offer a powerful SaaS solution ourselves. PairSoft is a cloud-based document management system that eliminates paper and streamlines your business processes. Schedule a personalized demo and give it a try today.
Jem Boyd has 10+ years of ERP strategic marketing and implementation experience across a variety of platforms. She specializes in developing PairSoft's platform relationships as well as campaigns with Microsoft, NetSuite, Sage, and Blackbaud. She is based in Nashville.
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