Leading enterprises that have leveraged Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) to gain competitive advantage are collaborating more effectively through social business tools, improving the customer experience, and accelerating time to market through their SaaS initiatives, a recent IBM survey said.
The survey was conducted with more than 800 IT and business decision makers worldwide by the IBM Center for Applied Insights.
With global spending on SaaS expected to touch $45.6B by 2017, the study gains relevance. The survey indicates that organizations in which IT and business leaders work together to select, secure and deploy SaaS applications are in fact the ones who deliver the greatest value to their organization.
Also, organizations that are gaining the most out of their SaaS deployments are more likely to see it as a critical piece of their enterprise cloud strategy when compared to their peers, IBM study said.
Nearly one in five companies that responded to IBM’s survey has deployed SaaS broadly and is now gaining competitive advantage as a result. These Pacesetter organizations have also developed mature and cohesive enterprise-wide SaaS strategies which have helped them improve market agility, achieve a deeper level of collaboration and make better decisions than their peers.
Compared to peers that are newer or less advanced with their SaaS adoption, Pacesetters are 79 percent more likely to have increased collaboration across their organization and ecosystem through SaaS. More than twice are as likely to have leveraged analytics across the organization to turn big data into insights using SaaS. Further more than twice are as likely to have increased innovation using SaaS.
SaaS benefits organizations in multiple ways. In addition to lowering total cost of ownership, SaaS helps organizations to execute on programs that drive business growth better than their peers who lag with SaaS deployments.
“It’s common knowledge that deploying SaaS broadly has economic advantages, but the truly innovative companies have recognized that SaaS delivers real competitive advantage to fuel top-line growth, as well,” said Craig Hayman, IBM general manager, Industry Solutions and executive sponsor of the study.
“Whether they are using it to enter new markets, transform or create entirely new business models, or improve relationships with their customers and suppliers, pacesetting organizations are embracing SaaS in a meaningful way,” Hayman said.
