Replacing an on-premises system with a software-as-a-service (SaaS) solution requires careful attention to existing connectors and systems. The original application is part of a complex network of on-premises databases, tools, and other systems and must be maintained seamlessly to ensure the service your employees and customers rely on keeps working as before. Let’s take a look at the technical implications of getting your SaaS apps to play well with your on-premises applications and databases.

Hybrid Means Integration

Most organizations today are approaching cloud in an incremental manner. That means hybrid IT environments that include both cloud and on-premises resources will be with us for the foreseeable future. Consequently, organizations need to connect SaaS apps with on-premises resources.

Connecting with Databases

In my blog “5 Questions to Ask About Data in Your SaaS Environment,” I noted that you may not be able to move all the data that supports a SaaS app to the cloud. Security policies, for example, might require you to keep some of the data inside the firewall. So, you must provide a means to maintain the connections between the cloud-based SaaS app and the on-premises data.

Connecting with Applications and Services

Today’s IT infrastructures include a jumble of interconnections among applications, services, and data. For example, an on-premises onboarding application for new hires may create a workorder in an on-premises IT service management (ITSM) system. That workorder kicks off a series of tasks that gets approval for a computer and access to the appropriate IT apps and services, passes it to procurement so appropriate items are ordered, receives the items, and schedules installation. The ITSM system reports back to the onboarding application when the request is fulfilled. If you move the ITSM app to the cloud, you have to ensure that this complex process continues to work in both directions.

Scoping the Integration Effort

Your on-premises integrations, especially the ones that have been in place for a number of years, may have been created using application programming interfaces (APIs) such as C# or Java direct calls. More recent ones may have been developed using REST (REpresentational State Transfer). REST is a stateless, client-server, cacheable communications protocol that has a higher built-in level of security than C# or Java direct calls.

When you move an on-premises app to SaaS, you have to determine whether you need to replace integrations that use C# or Java. A major consideration in making this determination is protecting the data that flows between the on-premises and the cloud components of the hybrid environment. A determining factor is the direction of data flow; that is, whether the flow is from the SaaS app to the on-premises solution or vice-versa.

Let’s assume that the data flows from cloud to an on-premises app using traditional APIs such as C# and Java calls. Here, switching to the more secure REST for the API calls would protect the information in transit. You also need to open ports in the on-premises firewall to allow authorized traffic, regardless of the API used to initiate the push. That’s because firewalls present a barrier for most APIs.

If the flow is from on premises to the cloud, the SaaS provider may have restrictions that require a more secure API protocol than C# or Java direct calls. In this situation, switching to REST usually suffices.

In some cases, the programmer who coded the initial integration may no longer be available. Moreover, you may not have documentation on the integration. So, recoding the integration might be tricky.

One alternative is to introduce a layer between the on-premises and cloud solutions, such as a client gateway, that allows bidirectional integrations to continue using the current API. Keep in mind that this approach requires opening up secure ports. What’s more, you may need buy-in from your organization’s security team. The security review process could delay implementation, postponing the benefits of the SaaS app. Moreover, the security team may nix the gateway approach entirely.

Cost Considerations

Be sure to consider all the costs associated with integration in the hybrid environment. For example, the SaaS provider may have a subscription model for the hybrid situation that charges based on the volume of data flowing into or out of the SaaS app. You need to account for this additional cost, which you didn’t incur when everything was on premises. What’s more, if you use a gateway, you may find that the SaaS provider charges extra to use its secure ports. That also translates into additional ongoing costs.

Integration and its associated costs are certainly important considerations in deciding whether to move an app to the cloud. But you must think about the move in the broader context of your strategic objectives. Examples include improving employee productivity by simplifying app use or extending app access as in the case of the large number of people working from home as a result of COVID-19. Strategic objectives are driving the move to SaaS in many organizations. As a result, the cost is considered a worthwhile strategic investment that will yield long-term business benefits.

Experience Counts

If you’ve ever moved from one home to another, you’ve learned that experience counts. Each time you move, you find ways to get the job done faster and more efficiently. That’s why many people hire a moving company whose trained and experienced employees can pack up your stuff and get it loaded, transported, and unloaded—all in short order and without breaking your grandmother’s fine china.

Likewise, many organizations that are moving to BMC SaaS solutions are partnering with BMC Customer Success to take advantage of the team’s experience gained through participation in hundreds of customer SaaS migrations. Our trained technical specialists have helped large and midsize organizations across many different industries plan and implement the move to SaaS. They’ve played a key role in helping customers avoid pitfalls, mistakes, and missteps on the journey to cloud and ensuring fast, reliable implementation. Examples include:

• Developing detailed roadmaps that facilitate and accelerate the move to SaaS while minimizing costs and reducing business risk
• Determining what data to migrate to the cloud and what data to maintain on premises, taking into consideration cost, security, timing, and efficiency
• Implementing data migrations of all sizes
• Identifying which integrations can be migrated as is and which must be rebuilt for cloud-to-cloud or hybrid interactions
• Implementing integrations that deliver secure, reliable interoperation and data access across on-premises and cloud solutions.

Well Worth the Effort

When you move to SaaS, you most likely will have to integrate SaaS apps with on-premises resources. But the effort is more than offset by the rewards. Once integrated, you can enjoy the significant advantages of SaaS, such as nearly limitless scalability that allows you to flex up or down as needed, vendor-provided maintenance and support which saves you money, and wide remote access.

We’d love to hear about your SaaS successes, questions, or concerns. Please share them by e-mail to blogs@bmc.com. If you need assistance with your transition to SaaS, please fill out our form and a BMC Customer Success expert will reach out to get started.

Digital transformation is driving a parallel transformation in software support, with software as a service (SaaS) playing an important role in disrupting traditional support practices.

Replacing an on-premises solution with a SaaS offering like BMC Helix can yield many benefits—CapEx to OpEx, steady stream of updates, and new functionality—for the customer. However, the accelerated pace of updates means customers have less time to absorb the new features and functionality. Vendors like BMC are reinventing their support strategies to focus on accelerating broad adoption of their SaaS solutions within customer organizations to help bridge the “SaaS consumption gap”.

Flipping the traditional support model upside down

SaaS is turning the traditional support model on its head. Traditional support is structured in tiers—typically Levels 1, 2, and 3. In this model, users contact the service desk, Level 1, where agents are skilled to handle routine issues, but not much more. To reach in-depth expertise, you have to wait for Levels 2 and 3, but you have to go through Level 1 first. The new SaaS model makes the most experienced and skilled agents the first point of contact for end users by leveraging three key elements:

• Dispatch swarming
• Automation
• Self-help

Dispatch swarming

Dispatch swarming applies the talents of multiple people to fast-track resolutions. Instead of an individual taking on a case and then passing it up the ladder, if required, a swarm of three-to-five people with varying skill levels tackles the issue together.

They start with a quick huddle to determine if a resolution already exists. If not, they brainstorm to determine the best path to take and the best resources to engage to get the job done quickly. If necessary, they formulate a list of questions to ask the customer to gain additional insight that will accelerate the resolution process.

Automation

Automation is at the heart of the Autonomous Digital Enterprise (ADE), a future-state business framework that integrates intelligent, tech-enabled systems across every facet of the business to help organizations differentiate themselves and add value through agility, customer centricity, and actionable insights. It’s also integral to the new SaaS support model. As with on-premises applications, many users have the same question or issue at the same time, and they all expect an answer immediately.

SaaS vendors can’t keep up with the constantly expanding size of the user base and the intense need for speed if they rely solely on manual efforts. Automating every action that can be automated and eliminating human involvement wherever possible enables vendors to scale up while ensuring high-quality support.

Effective methodologies include, for example, a service catalog that makes it easy for customers to select and submit service requests. Automated processes work behind the scenes to fulfill routine requests without the assistance of the vendor’s support team.

Self-help

Self-help channels put users in control of resolving their own issues and getting answers to their own questions. YouTube channels and knowledgebase articles, for example, provide a mechanism for delivering instructions on how to use a new feature or walking a user through an installation.

Implications for support teams

SaaS is just one way that companies are evolving the role of centralized IT as they shift from traditional IT service delivery to a technology operating model that directly affects business outcomes. Traditional IT support team members tend to be highly technical and they’re assigned to respond to and fix end user issues. Under the SaaS model, the support role becomes consultative, helping end users use the SaaS app effectively.

To respond to this changing need, SaaS vendors like BMC create support teams with people who excel at:

• Customer engagement
• Showing empathy
• Guiding customers in getting more from the SaaS solution
• Helping customers look beyond what they are doing today and think in terms of what’s possible in the future

Do SaaS customers need internal IT support?

There’s no simple, one-size-fits-all answer to this question. Although SaaS vendors take primary support responsibility, organizations that implement SaaS solutions may need internal IT support for some SaaS apps.

While SaaS vendors can provide some support with SaaS apps like marketing automation solutions that integrate with other apps and data, their visibility is limited to the SaaS app portion of the environment. Here, an internal IT support team would work with the SaaS vendor to address integration issues.

Two factors influence whether or not internal IT support is needed:

• The level of customization or coding required
• The integration of the SaaS app with other systems and data sources

In general, out-of-the-box solutions like Office 365 require less internal IT support. Apps that offer high-level coding—such as a graphical, drag-and-drop editor for creating workflows, like analytical reporting software Tableau—may require only minimal IT support. Business units typically provide their own Tableau support instead of relying on central IT. Apps that permit low-level coding that digs into the feature set typically require IT technical experts.

Support success

By understanding your SaaS vendor’s approach to support, you can leverage it to your maximum advantage, better align your internal IT team with the vendor team to optimize efficiency, and empower users to put new features to work quickly. Working together, you can ensure your SaaS apps yield a higher ROI with every new software release.

If you need assistance with your transition to SaaS, please fill out our form and a BMC Customer Success expert will reach out to get started.

If you’re a software-as-a-service (SaaS) customer, you’re already enjoying the many advantages of SaaS: no upfront capital expenditure, nearly limitless scalability, and vendor-provided software management, just to mention a few. But is your SaaS app yielding maximum return on investment (ROI)? Unless you’re tapping the app’s full feature set, it’s not.

With SaaS, major product releases occur at a much faster pace than with on-premises software. SaaS vendors often roll out three or four major releases every year. Compare this to on-premises software, which has a major release every one to two years.

Major releases typically deliver major enhancements. That means you’re gaining new capabilities at a much faster rate than in the past. It also means that you have far less time to absorb those new capabilities. Consequently, your users are presented with new features before they’ve had a chance to consume the ones they already have.

Consequently, the level of consumption of a SaaS app’s feature set is dropping. The result is what the Technology & Services Industry Association (TSIA) calls the consumption gap. Unless you’re leveraging the full power of your SaaS solutions, your organization isn’t deriving the full value from its SaaS investments.

The changing support role

When you implement a SaaS app, you give primary responsibility for support to the SaaS vendor. But SaaS vendors approach support in a completely different way than traditional, on-premises support teams. With on-premises software, the support team’s primary role is break/fix, whereas the primary role of SaaS vendor support teams is to help customers bridge the consumption gap—driving up adoption and increasing ROI.

To achieve this objective, SaaS vendors have disrupted the traditional support model by changing its focus to make it more consultative and more customer centric. They are applying best practices and innovation to attain the level of support their customers demand.

Rising to the occasion

Software support has evolved over the years, becoming increasingly proactive and personalized. There are essentially five stages in this evolution, with each stage delivering an improved level of support.

• Stage 1— Reactive. The support team waits for a customer to report a problem and then works with the customer to resolve it. Customers often become frustrated with reactive support because they typically have to wait for a response. Hence, problem resolution time may stretch out, dragging down productivity. Reactive support isn’t acceptable in the SaaS world.
• Stage 2—Self-help. The support team provides tools that empower customers to resolve many issues on their own. Examples include knowledgebases and FAQs that users can search to find resolutions to known problems. Chatbots can also assist users in handling routine issues. Self-help is a huge plus, but it is still a reactive approach.
• Stage 3—Proactive. Proactive mechanisms alert the support team to issues before customers become aware of them. The team resolves the issues and advises the customers of the fixes that have already been made. For example, the team receives an alert that disk space is running low and allocates more disk space so that customers aren’t disrupted. Proactive support leverages performance-monitoring tools that spot issues and, where possible, automatically trigger the appropriate fixes.
• Stage 4—Predictive. The support team leverages intelligence gleaned from telemetry and usage data to spot opportunities to proactively reach out to the customer to offer assistance. For example, take a customer who has acquired a SaaS-based IT service management (ITSM) solution that includes a chatbot feature. Telemetry detects and reports that a customer has just enabled the chatbot feature for the first time. The support team acts immediately, offering to help the customer launch the chatbot by:
  • Providing informative articles, YouTube videos, and other resources aimed at making early chatbot efforts more successful
  • Apprising customers of the vendor’s professional services, which are available to help identify use cases, speed chatbot technology implementation, and optimize chatbot processes to improve ROI
• Stage 5—Prescriptive. In this highest level of support, the support team gains insight into how customers are using the product. The team leverages that insight to proactively prescribe ways that the customer can more fully exploit product features and functionality. As in the predictive example, the customer has acquired a SaaS-based ITSM solution that includes a chatbot feature. In this case, the customer has not yet enabled the chatbot. The SaaS support team uses telemetry to observe that the customer’s service desk is processing hundreds of identical tickets each month for an issue that has a known workaround. The vendor reaches out to the customer, prescribing how to use the chatbot feature to guide users in implementing the workaround on their own, without involving the service desk. The chatbot simplifies and speeds resolution so that users return to productivity more quickly. In addition, it reduces the workload on the customer’s service desk.

Asking the right questions

Different SaaS vendors are at different stages in their support evolution. That’s why it’s important to evaluate the level of support a SaaS vendor is capable of delivering. The higher the level, the more value the vendor can help you gain from your SaaS solution. While you’re at it, look at your internal IT support organization and make sure it’s positioned to work effectively with the SaaS support team, now and into the future.

Be sure to set realistic expectations. Vendors may not necessarily be able to deliver prescriptive support today, but they should be moving in that direction. At a minimum, they need to be at a proactive level. Don’t, however, lose sight of the prescriptive level. It’s the ultimate level of support due to its highly personalized nature, and the gold standard for where forward-thinking SaaS vendors are going.

If you need assistance with your transition to SaaS, please fill out our form and a BMC Customer Success expert will reach out to get started.

The collision avoidance technologies in modern automobiles are remarkable. Peripheral radar alerts you to nearby vehicles and obstacles. Backup video shows you what’s happening behind you. Cruise control nudges the steering wheel when you start to change lanes to confirm that your maneuver is intentional.

Collision avoidance technologies guide you to avoid accidents as you make driving decisions. An organization’s technology governance framework does much the same thing for decision-makers. It provides guardrails that help decision makers avoid compromised systems and data, cost overruns, and business disruptions. Simply put, the governance framework reduces risk.

BMC Customer Success has gained considerable expertise in working with BMC customers to maximize the effectiveness of their governance frameworks. In this blog, I share some of our experiences to help you strengthen governance in your organization. In particular, I focus on decisions related to acquiring software-as-a-service (SaaS) apps.

What Is Governance?

There are countless definitions of governance. So I’ll begin with our definition here in the BMC Customer Success organization. Governance is a collaborative, fact-based decision-making framework within IT that supports IT’s constituents and key stakeholders. It’s a formal framework of guidelines that helps ensure that consistent processes, execution, and full consideration of business interests are all represented when decisions are made. The governance framework is codified in the form of policies such as security and operating policies.

With respect to SaaS, governance is a key factor in minimizing risk, especially security risk. In my previous blog on security, I emphasized the importance of vetting SaaS providers with respect to security and cited the security questionnaire as a key element of that vetting process. The security questionnaire is just one example of a governance framework component.

Another example is a list of SaaS applications that the central IT organization has evaluated and authorized. The list serves two purposes:

• It mitigates security risk by allowing business units and departments to acquire applications only from vetted providers.
• It keeps costs in check by avoiding the proliferation of multiple products with overlapping functionality, foregoing volume discounts and necessitating additional technical support.

Building Your Framework

In building a governance framework, it’s imperative to involve the people who are stewards of capability and stakeholder interests, both internal and external to IT. This includes the people with technology expertise, including security specialists, enterprise architects (EAs), IT managers, and other thought leaders. It also  includes, of course, the businesspeople who benefit from the SaaS apps and use them day to day.

Security people offer insight into the corporate policies that protect systems and data. They typically have developed detailed security questionnaires for vetting SaaS providers to ensure that their solutions comply with the organization’s security policies.

EAs help determine if the SaaS solution aligns with the organization’s operating policies, that is, does it plug into the organization’s operating model. For example, some organizations have adopted the IT4IT Reference Architecture, a standard of the Open Group. This umbrella framework focuses on information needed to manage IT and the flow of data among IT management systems.

Business people bring insights into their business needs and how the SaaS apps help them address those needs.

Encouraging Adoption of Your Framework

A governance framework is ineffective unless it’s integral to the decision-making process. The framework must remain top of mind among decision makers as they make technology choices. This includes the business people who bring SaaS apps into the organization.

Shadow IT has long been a concern for IT because of the security risks and cost inefficiencies that arise when IT is unaware of apps brought into the enterprise. In many organizations, SaaS is a significant contributor to shadow IT. Consequently, it’s important that IT be aware of all SaaS apps so they can be brought under the governance framework.

IT often has only limited visibility into the SaaS apps that business units are acquiring. Discovery tools that identify SaaS apps and indicate whether or not they are authorized can identify all SaaS apps across the enterprise. Tracking tools such as RSA Archer GRC can serve as systems of record for security and compliance. Sharing data captured by these tools can be an eye-opener for business unit decision makers.

To bring SaaS under the governance umbrella, however, IT must rethink how it communicates and collaborates with business units. Experience teaches us that persuasion is preferable to heavy-handed mandates. Here are some ways to persuade business units to adhere to the governance framework:

• Help them understand the downside of uncontrolled SaaS proliferation.
• Emphasize that governance is a value-add.
• Have strong policies in place and communicate them clearly.
• Ensure a clear understanding of decision criteria.
• Have a system of record and operating model as a reference.

In working with business people, it’s essential to position IT as an enabler of the business , not an obstacle. IT should be responsive to their needs while also demonstrating how adherence to the governance framework increases their SaaS visibility so they can make informed decisions related to cost and compliance.

Making Quality Decisions within Your Framework

The governance framework provides the guardrails for decision making. However, it doesn’t ensure quality decision making within those guardrails. You need to ensure that line of business managers ask the right questions as they go through their decision-making process. Here are six questions they can ask to evaluate the effectiveness of their decision-making.

1. Do we understand the context of the decision?

• What is the business case?
• What problem are we addressing?
• What background information is available?

2. Do we understand the options?

• What options are available?
• What is the feasibility of each option?

3. Do we have the information we need to make a fact-based decision?

• What information is available?
• Is the information current, complete, and reliable?

4. Do we understand the trade-offs?

• What is the big picture, that is, what do we want to achieve overall?
• What are the trade-offs across the various options?
• What are the value implications?

5. Is our reasoning valid?

• Is the reasoning logically sound?
• Are we keeping the big picture in mind?
• Are we using the information we have effectively?
• Are we taking full advantage of available tools?
• Can we clearly and succinctly communicate the reasons for our decision?

6. Will we commit to action?

• Are we ready to make the decision and initiate action?
• Are we ready to commit the necessary resources to support that action?

A Formula for Business Success

The combination of a solid governance framework and effective decision-making practices is a formula for business success. This winning combination enables your organization to enjoy the many advantages of SaaS—seamless scalability, no upfront capital costs, unparalleled agility, lower costs, and more—all while minimizing risk.

If you need assistance with your transition to SaaS, please fill out our form and a BMC Customer Success expert will reach out to get started.

While there are many issues to consider when it comes to adopting software as a service (SaaS), the decision-making process passes through two primary decision points or gates. The first relates to financial preferences: CapEx or OpEx. CapEx means going with on-premises apps and their associated capital expenditures. OpEx means going with SaaS apps and their pay-as-you-go cost model.

The second gate is all about security. As organizations consider their evolution to an Autonomous Digital Enterprise, the future state of business, Adaptive Cybersecurity is a required tenet, and cloud can be an enabling technology, given its flexibility. To proceed through this gate, you need to thoroughly vet the SaaS provider to ensure that your business data receives the appropriate level of security for your organization. The compelling advantages of SaaS are enticing more and more organizations to overcome their concerns about cloud and approach this second gate.

Quite frankly, the security people in your organization hold the keys to the second gate. In many cases, they have the ability to delay or even stop a SaaS project in its tracks because of security concerns.

In this blog, I focus on that second gate and what it takes to unlock it.

The SaaS Security Gate Has Two Checkpoints

To unlock and safely pass through the second gate, you need to clear two checkpoints: security control and data sovereignty.

Security Control

Security control requires adjusting to a new reality. With SaaS, you give up your control of security and place it in the hands of the SaaS vendor. The vendor is now in charge of security policy. The situation is analogous to renting a house versus owning it. When you own a house, you set the house rules. When you rent a house, the landlord sets them. The landlord may, for example, restrict the number of people who can occupy the house.

At this point, it’s important to clear up a common misunderstanding. Some people mistakenly believe that by signing a SaaS provider contract, the customer organization is agreeing to comply with the same security policies that govern the vendor organization. However, the vendor’s policies apply only to the vendor organization and not to the customer organization. For example, just because the vendor complies with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) doesn’t mean the customer has to comply with it.

Data Sovereignty

With respect to data sovereignty, you need full knowledge as to where your data will be hosted, where it will be processed, and who will be accessing it. That sounds simple enough. However, it’s extremely complicated because a SaaS vendor’s data centers and personnel are typically scattered across various locations around the world. In this complex landscape, you need to make sure that:

• The data will be housed only within the areas allowed by your internal policies, industry standards, or government regulations.
• The data will be processed only within the areas allowed by your internal policies, industry standards, or government regulations.
• The data will be accessed only by the people who are authorized by your organization.

Clearing the Checkpoints

Major security breaches are highly visible and they often have severe consequences. As a result, senior leaders typically give security people strong veto power over SaaS solutions. If you’ve made the OpEx decision to go to SaaS and you want to pass through the security gate with minimal friction, involve the security team right from the beginning. Doing so avoids costly surprises that can delay or even halt your SaaS adoption efforts.

Let’s return for a moment to the own-versus-rent analogy. Before you sign a rental agreement, it’s wise to scrutinize the terms to fully understand the landlord’s rules. Likewise, before you sign up for a SaaS subscription, you need to examine the vendor contract and security policies so you know what level of protection you can expect. Your security people can serve as a valuable resource in this effort. They know precisely what to look for and can help you ask the right questions to ensure that your data or services won’t be compromised.

The first thing to do is to ask the vendor for a list of the security standards with which the vendor complies. The standards worldwide are many, varied, and are based on geography and industry sector. The more prevalent ones are below:

• ISO 27001 (International Organization for Standardization) is a worldwide certification standard for information and cyber security.
• HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) is a U.S. law requiring the creation of national standards to protect sensitive patient health information from being disclosed without the patient’s consent or knowledge.
• National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is a cybersecurity policy framework of computer security guidance information.
• PCI DSS (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard) is the information security standard for organizations that handle branded credit cards from the major card platforms.
• FedRAMP (Federal Risk and Management Program) is a cyber security risk management program for the purchase and use of cloud products and services by U.S. federal agencies. Government agencies may work only with cloud service providers that have gained FedRAMP approval.

You need to be sure that the vendor complies with all the security standards relevant to your situation and that the vendor’s security policies meet your requirements. For example, you may require that all data be processed within a certain area or region, or that data be encrypted to a specific standard.

After reviewing the vendor contract, security standards compliance, and security policies, you will probably have questions. In this case, the security team can help you put together a questionnaire for the vendor. Many security teams have a questionnaire tailored to their organization’s particular requirements. If not, a multitude of questionnaires and customizable questionnaire templates are available online.

Proceeding to the Benefits

Once you have cleared the checkpoints and passed through the security gate, you’re ready to move ahead with your SaaS implementation. Soon you’ll be enjoying the significant advantages of SaaS, which include seamless scalability and greater agility in meeting rapidly changing market requirements. Most important, you can proceed with confidence knowing that your data is secure.

If you need assistance with your transition to SaaS, please fill out our form and a BMC Customer Success expert will reach out to get started.

I am constantly impressed by the ubiquity of data collection. Video cameras are everywhere. My car collects and transmits data. Supermarket and drug store cash registers record my every purchase. Every click I make online is captured.

Organizations collect all of this valuable data because it provides deep visibility into nearly every aspect of the business: customers, employees, products, supply lines, distribution lines, and more. That visibility improves decision making. Data is also the fuel that propels automation, which delivers the efficiency and speed you need to be successful in the digital economy.

As your organization moves increasingly into cloud technologies such as software as a service (SaaS), it’s essential to implement effective management and protection strategies for the data you store in the cloud. This blog focuses on the business value of data and the implications of SaaS on data management.

Data Promotes Business Success and Innovation

Today’s digital enterprises are aggregating a variety of data types, including:

• Customer data that provides visibility into behaviors, interests, wants, and needs, enabling companies to personalize customer interactions
• Product monitoring data that offers insight into product usage and performance, allowing companies to constantly improve product quality, functionality, and performance
• Inventory data that provides visibility into product velocities, permitting companies to keep shelves stocked with the right products

Organizations that figure out how to transform this data into actionable information and apply it to guide, optimize, and automate actions are the ones that will excel in the digital economy. Many organizations are employing analytics, artificial intelligence (AI), and machine learning (ML) technologies to leverage the massive volumes of data they accumulate.

Here are two real-world examples of how data is transforming business:

• A university implemented intelligent chatbot technology that leverages data gained via tribal knowledge to support students using the university’s wireless network. Although many students work late at night, IT couldn’t justify staffing the service desk 24×7. With the chatbot, the university provides effective support to students 24x7x365.
• A truck manufacturer developed a monitoring system for its vehicles to capture such data points as fuel economy, geographic location, idle time, and potential problems. The company launched a diagnostic service that alerts drivers and fleet managers of impending issues. The service also automatically routes a driver to a nearby service center that has the right parts in stock, minimizing vehicle downtime. Now vehicles spend less time off the road and yield a higher return on investment.

The Questions to Ask

Many organizations are migrating from on-premises apps to SaaS apps to take advantage of rapid implementation, zero upfront capital cost, unprecedented agility, and nearly limitless scalability. Moving to SaaS involves moving data from the legacy infrastructure to the cloud. The additional benefits are compelling in that the SaaS vendor can take over critical aspects of data management, which include monitoring database health for reliability and securing the data.

Moving data to the cloud to support SaaS apps, however, requires careful planning because it raises issues you don’t encounter with on-premises apps. To address these issues, you need to answer the following five questions.

1. What data do you move to the cloud?

Don’t think of the data surrounding an on-premises app as a monolithic entity that you need to move in total to the cloud to support the SaaS app. Doing so might drive up costs unnecessarily. Instead, consider implementing a hybrid model in which you segment the data into a portion that must reside in the cloud and a portion that remains on premises.

As part of this endeavor, examine the data access and archive requirements for your applications. For example, due to industry standards or corporate policy, you may be retaining five years of historical data online within an on-premises app. You may find, however, that two years of online historical data is enough as long as you archive the remaining three years of data and keep it offline and on premises. By minimizing the amount of online data in the cloud, you can reduce your data storage costs.

2. Are you taking into account the dynamic scalability of the SaaS environment?

On-premises apps and SaaS apps differ in their ability to handle data volumes. The on-premises environment has operational constraints on scalability whereas the SaaS environment offers the flexibility to dynamically scale, allowing for data analytics across much larger data volumes. Consequently, when you plan your data storage requirements, take the scalability difference into account.

3. Are there integration implications?

It’s likely that you will decide to keep some data on premises. For example, data sources are often shared by multiple business systems. Moving data to the cloud to support a SaaS app could interfere with accessibility to that data by on-premises applications. In addition, compliance with corporate policies or government regulations may mandate that certain data remain on premises.

In cases like this, you may need to integrate the SaaS app with on-premises data. If so, be sure to thoroughly re-evaluate long-term integrations and document new integrations with the SaaS application to maintain transparency about what on-premises data the SaaS app can access.

4. What are the security implications?

For SaaS vendors, exceptionally strong security is a mandate, so they make hefty investments in safeguarding client data. Their emphasis on security means that vendor security is often substantially stronger than that of their customers.

However, factors such as corporate security policies and government regulations may require that certain data remain on premises. As a result, you need to decide what data you can safely move to the cloud and what data must remain on premises for security or legal reasons.

5. How do you track costs?

Data volume is related to usage. In general, the higher the usage, the larger the data volume and the higher the cost. Consequently, you need to track usage to understand data growth. If the data is delivering results in the form of business success, the investment is worthwhile. In any case, however, tracking usage eliminates surprises at invoice time, optimizes costs, and more accurately forecasts future needs.

Move with Confidence

By getting answers to these questions, you can move to SaaS with confidence. As a result, you’ll enjoy the significant advantages of SaaS while protecting one of your most valuable assets: your data.

If you need assistance with your transition to SaaS, please fill out our form and a BMC Customer Success expert will reach out to get started.

Implementing a software-as-a-service (SaaS) solution takes a sizeable investment of time and money. But it’s definitely an investment worth making. As I pointed out in my previous blog, “5 Critical Success Factors for Organizational Change,” SaaS offers numerous advantages over on-premises systems. Additionally, SaaS accelerates your evolution from a traditional business to an Autonomous Digital Enterprise.

But most people have become comfortable with their current conventional tools and processes. They often resist replacing the old way of doing things with a new way. A few may even attempt to undermine efforts to change things.

So what’s the best way to ensure that resistance to the new SaaS solution doesn’t slow you down or even derail your journey? First, you need to persuade people to embrace the new solution by effectively communicating the what, the why, and the how surrounding the change. Second, you must clearly communicate the benefits the solution offers to each individual affected by the change. That means painting an appealing picture of where each stakeholder fits into the desired future state.

Read on to learn how to drive SaaS success with an effective communication strategy.

Develop a Communication Strategy

Change management experts constantly stress the importance of effective communication in overcoming resistance to change. With that in mind, include the development of a communication strategy early in the planning and design of the new solution. The strategy must clearly define:

• What the SaaS solution is
• Why it’s essential to long-term business success
• What senior leaders have identified as the high-level business objectives
• How the change benefits each stakeholder group
• Who will be most affected by the change

You must develop consistent messaging around each of these five key areas and communicate that information regularly to stakeholders.

One-way communication, however, isn’t enough. When stakeholders have a say in the new way of doing things, they are more likely to buy into the change and adopt the new processes and tools. Consequently, your approach must facilitate two-way interactions that capture user input and feedback. You must also demonstrate that the project team is listening to stakeholders’ wants and needs and incorporating them into the design, implementation, and refinement of the SaaS solution.

Align Communication with the SaaS Rollout

Breaking your communication strategy into phases makes it more manageable and helps ease people’s concerns over what to expect. We recommend a three-phased approach that encompasses developing a detailed communication plan, employing a variety of activities from pre-implementation through initial rollout, and measuring and publicizing successes post-implementation.

Phase 1—Planning

An effective communication plan aligns with high-level business objectives for the SaaS solution and serves as a roadmap for communication activities. Your plan should:

• Define objectives and expected outcomes for the future state
• For each stakeholder group spell out what will stay the same, what will change immediately, and what will change over time
• Establish key messaging to drive content development for communication campaigns targeting stakeholders

Phase 2—Ramping Up and Rolling Out

This phase involves the many communication activities that will occur during the transition from pre-implementation through early rollout. Activities include, but aren’t limited to:

• Disseminating clear and concise messages that explain the desired future state and expected outcomes
• Keeping stakeholders up to date on major milestones reached and next steps
• Educating stakeholders on what to expect and explaining the value that the solution will deliver not only to the enterprise but to everyone affected by the change
• Interacting with stakeholders through multiple channels, including online channels such as email, text, website, and electronic newsletters, and offline channels such as show-me sessions, workshops, educational opportunities, and Q&A sessions
• Developing training and education offerings that give people the skills they need to excel with the new solution
• Agreeing on metrics that measure success and publicizing successes along the way

Phase 3—Ongoing Monitoring and Measurement

In phase 3 you continue to measure post-implementation progress, identify and communicate accomplishments, and search out additional ways to exploit the capabilities of the SaaS solution to maximize return on investment. Efforts in this phase include:

• Ongoing measurement and communication of change effectiveness
• Identification and communication of gaps and challenges that need to be addressed
• Continued education that keeps employee skills sharp and increases job satisfaction
• Celebrating successful outcomes and milestones

Tap Resources that Can Help

Fortunately, there are numerous resources available to help you develop and execute your communication strategy. Here are three examples:

• Your corporate communications team typically plays a significant role in facilitating change processes. Take advantage of their communications expertise to understand the best ways to keep stakeholders in the loop and enthusiastic.
• Your marketing team may have multichannel marketing tools that you can use to automate delivery of email and SMS messages and provide a range of opportunities for engaging people—both online and offline—and tracking their engagement levels.
• SaaS vendors typically provide both tools and service offerings to help customers create and execute a sound strategy. Tools include templates for a communication plan, with outlines, trackers, and calendars. Engage with vendors at the level that best suits your situation. You can take a do-it-yourself approach leveraging the vendor’s tools. You can turn over specific aspects of the communication effort to the vendor. Or you can bring the vendor in as a major participant in the development and execution of the communication strategy.

Unleash Your Creativity

BMC customers have come up with a number of innovative and compelling communication mechanisms to stoke enthusiasm and promote adoption. Here are a few examples:

• Personalizing messaging according to the interests and needs of each stakeholder group and reaching people through the channels they prefer
• Establishing user forums to capture the end-user perspective and incorporate it into the user interface and other aspects of the solution
• Cultivating champions who passionately embrace the change and influence their peers’ attitudes toward the new solution
• Generating buzz with unexpected and fun pop-up events in cafeterias, breakrooms, and other areas where employees gather, or in virtual meeting places and communication hubs when in-person forums aren’t available
• Creating a communication central landing page for all communications and related links
• Offering education and training in a variety of formats based on stakeholder needs

With creative, effective communication you’ll transform resistance to change to enthusiastic reception of change, which translates into success that you can measure and demonstrate.

If you need assistance with your transition to SaaS, please fill out our form and a BMC Customer Success expert will reach out to get started.

Software as a Service (SaaS) is playing a central role in digital transformation as organizations set their sights on becoming Autonomous Digital Enterprises. SaaS enables organizations to replace costly and cumbersome legacy systems with pay-as-you-go services. The time to value with SaaS is markedly shorter and the implementation is far less costly because there’s no equipment to acquire, install, manage, maintain, and support. Additional benefits include enhanced agility in delivering innovation as well as value to the business and nearly limitless scalability.

SaaS isn’t about simply replacing one technology with another and then doing things the same way as in the past. You have to rethink, revamp, and even revolutionize to fully realize the value of the SaaS model. One critical aspect is the requirement for organizational change, which can be challenging and may be met with resistance.

This is the first of two blogs on the impact of SaaS on organizational change. It presents five critical success factors that help you navigate the change successfully. The second blog will describe the elements of an effective communication strategy that helps overcome pushback and gain the enthusiastic support of all stakeholders.

1. Obtain Executive-level Sponsorship

IT organizations have long recognized that the success of a technology initiative requires the wholehearted and visible support of one or more senior leaders. It’s important that these executive-level sponsors engage throughout the project and be available for problem solving when disagreements threaten to derail or delay the project.

For an initiative within a line of business (LOB) or department, you must have buy-in from the top—the chief marketing officer if you’re implementing a marketing automation solution, the chief information officer for an IT operations management or service management solution, or the vice president of human resources for an HRIS system. For an enterprise-wide initiative to implement a standard solution across LOBs and functional areas, you’ll need sponsorship from not only the executive leadership team, but also project sponsors from within the LOBs.

Ongoing support from sponsors keeps people moving in a common direction toward achieving top management’s vision.

2. Establish a Cross-discipline Center of Excellence

SaaS success requires close cooperation and collaboration among key stakeholders. Toward this objective, many enterprises are establishing cloud management teams, often called centers of excellence (CoEs), to bring the right people together to steer SaaS and cloud projects.

The CoE comprises people whose collective knowledge, skills, and job responsibilities can drive the success of the SaaS implementation. CoE members guide the planning and rollout, measure progress toward objectives, and tout successes to encourage adoption.

CoEs typically include the following types of people:

• The LOB/department app owner chairs meetings, manages costs, and tracks performance against objectives and expected outcomes.
• Central IT serves as a trusted advisor, performs integrations and customizations, and ensures compliance with the enterprise governance framework.
• Security people vet the app from a security standpoint and bring it under the enterprise security umbrella.
• Procurement personnel negotiate a favorable contract with the SaaS vendor.
• Corporate communications people apprise people of the organizational changes to come, along with timelines, benefits, progress, and successes.
• Finance people track costs and roll them up into total enterprise tech spend.

3. Identify and Communicate Organizational Changes

In the move from an on-premises system to SaaS, the vendor takes on responsibility for managing and maintaining the app and the underlying infrastructure. That takes a huge load off the IT staff, but to take full advantage of the resulting benefits requires some organizational changes.

Once you have established the high-level goals and objectives of the SaaS initiative, you need to seriously think through how the organization must change to ensure success. Some jobs will go away, but new jobs will be created. Determine what skills you’ll need, assess your current resources to identify gaps, and determine the best way to fill those gaps. One approach is to build internal expertise through training and recruitment. You can also look outside to bring in expertise, such as from your business partners. If you do engage outside help, be sure to develop plans to transfer knowledge to internal people.

Work closely with the employees who are likely to feel the biggest impact so you fully understand their capabilities and interests. Develop plans for training and education that will give them new skills and prepare them for new, more rewarding positions in the modern Autonomous Digital Enterprise.

You’ll need to develop a comprehensive communication plan to keep people aware and informed of progress throughout the SaaS journey. The plan should focus on the positive impact of the new solution and how it aligns with overall business goals. The second blog in this series will describe the elements of an effective communication plan.

4. Engage the User Community Early and Often

Executive-level sponsorship works from the top down, driving success through communication of clearly articulated objectives and unwavering support for marshalling resources behind those objectives. Engaging the user community, on the other hand, works from the bottom up, creating a groundswell that spreads across the enterprise and encourages broad adoption of the changes required to meet objectives. Engage users right from the beginning of the project.

Start by working with the app owner and users to understand their needs. Convey the reasons behind the change and how the change will benefit them. Develop two-way conversations that give users a voice in driving the change and foster a sense of ownership.

Tap the expertise of corporate communications to develop a plan that keeps users informed and in the loop. Larger SaaS vendors often provide materials and guidance in developing and managing a sound communication plan.

BMC clients have come up with a number of creative efforts that have generated user excitement and promoted adoption. One company created a user forum at the beginning of the project to capture the end-user perspective. Another customer conducted regular pop-up events throughout the planning and implementation phases to generate buzz and keep people informed on progress and successes.

5. Partner with Your SaaS Vendor

Your SaaS vendor has a huge stake in your success. Find out what services and tools the vendor offers to help you implement and manage the SaaS solution. Also, take advantage of the vendor’s technical expertise. For example, connect the vendor’s technicians with the people who are familiar with your internal systems to smooth integration with these systems.

Some vendors have a customer success team whose sole purpose is to help customers get the most from the SaaS solution. Take advantage of that team in both planning and implementing your SaaS solution.

The advantages of SaaS are many and include cost savings, greater agility in responding to your marketplace, and immediate scalability. But to fully realize these advantages, you need to embrace organizational change. By applying these five critical success factors you can gain both top-down and bottom-up support to propel you along a successful SaaS journey.

For as long as I can remember, IT has been under pressure to keep technology costs in check. Most likely, you’re feeling that pressure too as your organization embraces SaaS to accelerate the transformation to an Autonomous Digital Enterprise. But today, controlling costs isn’t enough. The C-suite expects you to achieve business value from the money you’re spending and be able to clearly demonstrate that value to senior management.

In my previous blog on cost management, 5 Practices for Controlling Costs as You Move to SaaS, I discussed how to position your organization to manage costs effectively as you move to SaaS. In this blog, my focus is post-implementation SaaS cost management. I’ve found that a twofold approach works best:

• Continuously track SaaS costs and maintain clear visibility into the sources of these costs
• Assess and report on the value you are realizing from your SaaS investments

By considering both cost and value, you can make better-informed decisions and optimize spend for maximum return on your SaaS investment.

Tracking SaaS Costs

To cite a management truism, you can’t manage what you can’t measure. In the case of SaaS, you need to measure consumption because that’s what drives costs. Consumption metrics vary depending on the services the SaaS solution delivers. Examples include the number of transactions performed, the number of users, elapsed time used, and storage volumes.

Effective cost management ties consumption and related costs to line of business, department, or cost center, and ideally to individual users. Consequently, when you receive your invoice at the end of each billing period, you’ll have visibility into who is using the app and to what extent. With this insight, you can chargeback or showback costs and keep the appropriate managers informed of and sensitive to their SaaS usage and costs.

SaaS vendors offering enterprise-class apps usually provide data and reports for tracking usage and costs. The more mature the app, the more sophisticated the tools and the more robust the data. If you’ve worked with your SaaS provider up front to understand the data, tools, and reports available for tracking consumption and costs, you can put cost control mechanisms in place from day one. As a result, you’re ready to measure consumption and chargeback or showback right from the start.

The more you can automate cost data gathering, analysis, and reporting, the better. Automation is especially important for enterprises because the large number of user groups makes manual cost allocation difficult at best.

It’s essential to track usage and costs not only at invoice time but also throughout the billing period. This monitoring enables you to identify usage spikes and the groups creating those spikes. Some SaaS vendors provide dashboards and other monitoring tools that present usage in real time. Spikes can be due to wasteful service consumption or data growth. On the other hand, spikes may indicate wider than anticipated adoption of the SaaS solution and that’s a positive development that should be communicated.

Assessing Realized Value

Tracking costs is important. However, assessing the value realized is equally important because it enables you to optimize SaaS spend.

In my previous cost management blog, I explained how important it is to establish the high-level business objectives you want to achieve and identify the metrics you need to measure progress toward those objectives. Examples of objective categories include lower costs, higher revenue, increased employee productivity, improved customer experience, and reduced risk. Keep your list concise—approximately three to six critical objectives.

Ensure that the outcomes are measurable with objective metrics that align with the type of SaaS solution you have implemented. For example:

• Metrics for a service management solution might include first-call resolution rates and average incident resolution times. These metrics roll into high-level objectives such as higher service desk productivity, lower support costs, and improved customer experience.
• Metrics for a marketing automation system might include the number of qualified leads delivered to sales and the volume of campaigns created and executed in a given period of time. These metrics roll into high-level objectives such as increased revenue and customer centricity or stronger customer engagement.

Be sure to establish a baseline at the outset so you can compare before and after statistics.

If your SaaS vendor tracks these types of metrics and provides data and reports to its customers, take advantage of these capabilities to measure realized value. As with cost-tracking tools and data, you’ll find that the more mature the SaaS app, the more sophisticated the outcome tracking tools and the richer the data. You can then compare the value realized to the cost incurred to calculate return on investment. You may discover that, although you’re spending more than you expected, you’re receiving additional value that more than offsets the cost overrun.

Outcome tracking statistics also provide valuable feedback for monitoring the effectiveness of programs. For example, some marketing automation solutions track customer online behavior such as cart abandonment. This kind of feedback enables the marketing team to measure campaign effectiveness and fine tune ongoing campaigns to maximize effectiveness.

Tapping into the Vendors’ Expertise

Motivated by an intensely competitive environment, SaaS vendors are committed to helping their customers achieve maximum value from their SaaS solutions. Through engagement with customers over the years, mature vendors have gained valuable experience and expertise in a variety of businesses in different industries. This includes not only technical experience in integrating their solutions with their customers’ internal systems but also experience in helping customers realize maximum business value from their solutions.

Some vendors, including my company, have dedicated value realization teams that work with customers in establishing business objectives, identifying metrics to measure these objectives, and communicating successes to the organization. Take advantage of this expertise to help you establish meaningful business objectives, identify the right metrics, and demonstrate success.

A Broader Perspective for Success

Many organizations are moving to SaaS because of its many advantages over on-premises systems. Consequently, their SaaS spend is increasing and SaaS cost management has become a paramount consideration. By managing cost in the broader context of ROI, you can optimize SaaS spend to get the most business value from your SaaS solutions.

If you need assistance with your transition to SaaS, please fill out our form and a BMC Customer Success expert will reach out to get started.

There are a number of great reasons for moving to SaaS. One of the most compelling is the significant cost savings over on-premises systems. Industry experts estimate that the SaaS price tag is significantly lower than traditional systems, and given current market volatility and unpredictable business needs, the importance of being conservative with spend has never been greater.

SaaS costs, however, often do prove to be higher than expected. Sometimes this happens because enterprises don’t establish adequate cost control measures upfront. But it could also be due to faster-than-anticipated adoption that delivers additional business value. Consequently, you need to not only control SaaS costs but also accurately assess the business value you realize from your investment. Cost overruns are often offset by increased business value.

This is the first of two blogs examining SaaS cost management. Both consider the context of BMC’s Enterprise 2025 vision, in which every industry will experience seismic changes as people, technologies, data, devices, and an ever-expanding network converge to transform all work and life. By embracing intelligent, tech-enabled systems and championing agility, customer centricity, and actionable insights, your company can evolve to an Autonomous Digital Enterprise, poised to take on today’s challenges as well as those still to come.

This blog presents five pre-implementation practices that can help you avoid missteps as you estimate costs and develop an accurate SaaS budget. The second blog will address post-implementation cost control with a focus on measuring value realized.

1. Minimize the number of SaaS solutions with overlapping functionality

Enterprises are handing over control of technology budgets to lines of business (LOBs) and functional areas such as human resources (HR), finance, marketing, and sales. These groups are opting for SaaS because it’s relatively easy to implement and costs less than on-premises solutions.

Making these purchases within the business delivers real benefits, including unprecedented flexibility in pursuing the initiatives and outcomes that will enhance business success. Unfortunately, it’s not uncommon for enterprises with multiple LOBs to have three or four different solutions for the same purpose, such as service management, marketing automation, or human resources.

Persuading LOBs and functional areas to reach consensus on a single enterprise solution for the same function, or at least to minimize the number of different solutions with overlapping functionality, goes a long way toward containing costs and reducing risk. Here are several talking points to help you influence the business to embrace standards:

• Standardization enables the enterprise to negotiate heftier volume discounts with the SaaS provider. Every LOB and department benefits from more favorable pricing.
• IT staff members develop knowledge and skills around standard solutions. Consequently, they can handle customizations as well as system and data integrations faster and at lower cost. Plus they can provide effective technical support that helps keep employees productive.
• With standards in place, governance and security teams can more readily ensure adherence to the enterprise governance framework and corporate security policies. This reduces the risk of noncompliance with legal mandates and industry standards. Plus, it protects systems and data from unauthorized access. As a result, the enterprise is less likely to be hit with fines and penalties or be the victim of a major security breach that distresses customers and damages the company’s reputation.

2. Look beyond feature set

Businesspeople evaluate SaaS solutions based primarily on each solution’s feature set. But features are only part of the story. To be fully effective, many SaaS solutions require integration with other business systems and data—for example:

• Integrating a service management system with the human resource information system (HRIS) provides information on users.
• Integrating marketing and salesforce automation systems with customer data, inventory, and order entry systems provides richer insight into customer behavior.

LOBs and departments don’t typically have the technical resources to handle the integrations, so the task is delegated to the IT staff. If IT isn’t involved in solution selection, business owners might opt for a solution that doesn’t include out-of-box integrations or application programming interfaces (APIs) that fast track the integration effort. The consequences include higher costs and lengthier implementation time.

In addition, because every business has unique requirements, customization is usually desired. Here, IT should encourage the business to choose a solution that provides an easy, noncoding customization mechanism. The result is that customizations won’t complicate things when it’s time for software updates. It also helps ensure that customizations don’t violate best practices.

Finally, it’s important to encourage LOBs and departments to choose a solution that aligns with the overall technology strategy of the company with respect to standards, governance, and security.

3. Look beyond Day 1

LOBs are often surprised by how quickly SaaS costs exceed budgeted amounts. These overruns often occur because business owners base their SaaS budgets on the expected Day 1 usage and data. However, usage and data volumes can swiftly expand beyond Day 1 levels for a variety of reasons:

• Rapid data growth is common with SaaS solutions and additional data storage capacity adds to your costs. Leave room in your budget for this growth. But also think in terms of not moving all your data—but only the data you need. Use a new SaaS solution as an opportunity to assess your data management strategy and fine tune it—or revamp it entirely—for the SaaS world.
• SaaS solutions open the door to innovation that drives business growth. Innovation often means more users taking advantage of the SaaS solution. Plan for it so you aren’t caught off guard.
• As users adopt the solution, they find new ways to leverage it and they often want to take advantage of capabilities that weren’t purchased for the initial launch. Make sure your budget allows for making these additional capabilities available.

4. Align licensing with expected usage

SaaS pricing structures can be complicated and they vary widely from one SaaS vendor to another. For example, many providers offer tiered licensing based on the level of features used. Some users need access to the full feature set. The majority, however, can often do their jobs with a subset of features. Carefully evaluate your users and determine which features each one needs before you close the deal. That way you won’t pay for functionality that sits idle.

5. Look beyond costs

It’s important to select SaaS solutions that provide tools for tracking costs to enable effective control and optimization of SaaS spend. But it’s also essential to look beyond costs to assess the value delivered by the SaaS solution.

To that end, establish clear business objectives for the SaaS solution and put in place a mechanism for determining if you’re realizing the value expected. (In the second blog of this series, I’ll dig deeper into value realization.)

Lower cost, more innovation

By applying these five practices, you can boost SaaS success by controlling and optimizing your SaaS spend. What’s more, you’ll offload the time-consuming task of managing and maintaining on-premises hardware and software from IT staff—and as your organization considers its evolution to an Automated Digital Enterprise, reimagining the role of IT is paramount. With their time freed up, staff can redirect to business innovation. The result: a sharper competitive edge for your organization and higher job satisfaction and forward-looking productivity for staff.

If you need assistance with your transition to SaaS, please fill out our form and a BMC Customer Success expert will reach out to get started.