We should pay due attention to this “peculiar” type of online services, briefly called SaaS, or Software as a Service, too. These are software systems you that use in the form of services. You enter one website and then master your entire accounting from there, or you automate the working process at the office of your clients, manage your mailing lists and automate the email marketing campaigns, organize the stocks of all of your stores throughout the country or anything else that comes to your mind.
In fact, The Grid and Dropbox are typical SaaS examples. This type of software becomes more and more popular and replaces the programs that are installed on your personal computer or laptop. The reason for these services to be so successful is that they give you the freedom to use them from any point in the world and from any device that has internet access. To develop something like that you need serious knowledge in a concrete field. For instance, if you are a pharmacist and you are well-acquainted with the working process at a pharmacy or medicine warehouse, you know what you need, what can be automated, and how to save time and work for your employees and colleagues. If you have good knowledge of the law and the available software systems do not satisfy your needs, you can develop a service that meets both the demands of your colleagues and yours.
There is hardly a business or a process that cannot be digitized. Even if someone has already got ahead of you in certain fields, you must be sure that there are still some processes that no one has thought of automating by using modern internet technologies. To develop such a system, however, you need good knowledge in a certain field, so as to know what your potential clients need and how to offer the service in the best possible way. In every job, there are tens of processes that can be reorganized with such systems. The problem is that many of you have not thought of it yet.
For instance, in the past, most restaurants used to take the orders using the most traditional method – writing down everything on a notepad by hand. Nowadays, in most places, this is done by using portable digital touchscreen devices on which the waiters simply mark your order and it is immediately sent to the kitchen staff and the bar. This method solves the problems with the slow writing, mistakes, going around the premises with this notebook at hand and transferring the information from paper to the digital device that issues the bill. Now imagine a software system that unites all restaurants in the country and allows the owner of the chain to see all orders, revenues, expenses, stocks, and even the records of the surveillance cameras. Let us unleash our imagination even further: add to all of the aforementioned a system that can calculate the average amount of food consumed by a client, break the information up in terms of age and gender, city and neighborhood, and you will find a better way to make your clients spend more when visiting your restaurant…
The purpose of such a system is to facilitate your work, make you free, automate the processes, find where time is being wasted, eliminate human mistakes or cut them to the minimum, analyze the collected data and make reports, the working out of which would have been impossible or would have taken too much time.
Such a system saves a lot of money and every company that realizes the complexity of its business or has the ambition of future development has already integrated such software applications in its everyday work. The good news is that the different processes that can be automated by these systems are endless in number. To make it clearer for you – if you are dealing with an AdSense website or another one selling advertising, it is like riding a bus with only one of your feet on the bus step and one of your hands holding the door grip, while your other half is hanging outside because the vehicle is crowded and there is almost no place left for you.
The SaaS business is another bus, there are passengers in it, too, but you can smoothly get on it and even find a place to sit. Of course, you can ride the first bus either for free or for a modest fee but you do not know where it is taking you and whether you will end up anywhere at all. The fare for the second bus is high and not everyone can afford it but you are absolutely sure that once you get on it you will reach the desired destination.
According to Saugatuck Technology, 49% of the companies plan to integrate SaaS systems into their processes, especially for critically important applications. You should bear in mind that if you create a software product designed for the companies from your country, you can easily adapt it to the needs of foreign companies, too. Many of the processes and activities are identical anywhere in the world and this can open brand new markets for you. Sometimes the sole investment you have to make is in translating the system in another language, which is a fast and easy process but it can give you access to companies based anywhere in the world – USA, UK, Russia, France, etc.
