SaaS Contract Management Platforms, Yes Or No?

No matter where you get your business news from, the jury is clearly in, and the verdict is that the shift to cloud based services is a fact growing so fast, it'll make your head spin. Many recent surveys and reports point to a steep rise in the growth in number, and investments, in cloud based technology. Most of the business world can be carved into two segments: Those that are already in, or raring to go, And Those who are either hesitent to adopt, or don't accept that it will eventually happen. Either way, everyone has their ears perked.

According to a recent IDC survey “More than 70 percent of those surveyed said they believed that by 2014, a third of all IT organizations will be providers of cloud services to customers or business partners.”. openSource has been providing its platform as a web-based service for over a decade now, and has already joined ranks of the growing group of IT businesses that offer their product as a service from the cloud.

To avoid confusion I want to make a clear distinction. There are two general vectors in which cloud based services are being adopted by businesses worldwide. The first, which is not in the scope of today’s article, is the trend for businesses to move their business IT infrastructure into a cloud environment, private or shared. The second, our focus, is a shift towards cloud based software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications, such as Microsoft’s Web Based Office apps, or Gmail, Salesforce, and many others.

Reasons to consider SaaS 

To get things started we must first mention the areas in which organizations can benefit from adopting cloud based SaaS.

Save Money

• Sliding scale, pay-as-you-grow business models
• Savings on IT personal
• Reduced IT infrastructure

Better Performance

• Standardized performance
• Reduced operational complexity and related costs
• Global access increases productivity
• Increased organizational productivity and efficiency

Moving ahead

• Easier sharing and collaboration outside of your organization
• Easier integration with other services (salesforce)
• Bestows a competitive edge that enhances the stature of your firm
• It is the Future

Think about it, No fuss, no muss. Rather than keep employees busy maintaining servers, upgrading software, backing up archives, and dealing with managing your company’s contract life cycles, they could be busy fine tuning business performance and net income.

Contract Management As a Core Competency

In my previous post I rattled off a list of reasons which I hoped would make clear the overwhelming benefits of adopting a contract management software solution, or CLM Contract Lifecycle Management, as others prefer to call this technology. It is clearly evident that contract management is quickly turning into a core corporate competency, and strategic asset that provides its users with a competitive advantage that literally draws a clear line between those employing it, and those who don't. The advent of cloud based SaaS has revolutionized this market primarily through its scaling abilities, which in turn tend to translate into substantial cost reductions. In pre-cloud days, hardware and IT personal expenses made sliding scale pricing virtually impossible. In today’s IT reality, small, and medium size companies can expect to find enterprise level products, priced to match their volume of work. Enterprises can adopt an SaaS for one depratment as a test case, and then deploy it swiftly to others once it has been properly integrated, and proven its worth.

So What are the downsides to Cloud Based SaaS?

The concerns raised time and again by executives considering moving critical business components into the cloud fall into three neat categories

Security

Fear of having delicate information reside on servers outside of the organization, and fear of Data loss, are main concerns. Since these fears top the list of cons for cloud services, they have also become the prime concern of service providers. The standards for data security on cloud based contract management services do not fall below those of client based services. In fact a quick check with your IT department might convince you that you’re data can be just as vulnerable (if not more) when in house. The same logic applies to data loss. Most cloud services offer advanced backup regimens and policies, which should be studied well before enrollment and regularly tested after integration, just as you should your onsite backup system. How many times have you heard horror stories about backup systems gone wrong? When approaching any new service, whether cloud based or not, you should perform diligently check its security.

Performance

Funny enough, the solution that gives you as much power as you need, when you need it, has one built in flaw which believe will soon be a thing of the past, and that is the inherent time lag involved with any data flowing over the net. This issue recedes from prominence as your bandwidth widens, creating a situation where most corporate locations should experience a time lag so minimal that it wouldn’t negatively affect the user experience. With that said it also remains to be seen how quickly the actual service performs, especially if complex processes are involved. Again I urge those of you considering to Try out a service you are considering to get a feel for its competency.

Availability

The fear of having a cloud service go down, leaving your company in the lurch is not meritless. Last April everyone was served with a vivid reminder that cloud services are susceptible to outages. The April Amazon outage exemplified the need for cloud customers to take an active role in creating failsafe emergency solutions, and staying responsible for their company’s uptime. In the aftermath of the Amazon outage, O'rielly's George Reese explained why the incident should actually be seen as the cloud's shining moment.  You have to keep in mind that going cloud still means you own the shop, and you carry the burden of responsibility towards your customers.

openSource is a cloud based SaaS contract management solution with a long and impressive track record. We have been providing web based services since 1995, and have a perfect record with reference to the security, and availability fears discussed here. We are happy to share our experiences and answer questions relating to our core competency (contract & document management). We offer free trials of our product, and consultations to anyone interested in finding out more about our technology. Feel free to watch our short demo video or contact us at info@opensourceinc.com.