Don’t let an IT timeline slow value creation in your organisation

Change the time line, become the hero

Routinely, as a C-Level Executive, Senior Manager or Department head you are presented with an important business challenge and you are told to confirm the issues, resolve them effectively to get the organisation back on track, and it goes with out saying that time is of the essence.

The issue could be anything from sales and marketing performance, which is slowing new customer acquisition, to customer service outcomes that are affecting your key relationships or compliance and business process bottlenecks, which are significantly impacting your profitability and efficiency of operations.

Are you going to be the hero if you get these types of issues addressed in 6-12 months? Not likely. Are you going to be the hero if you get them resolved in 30 days? Absolutely!’

When you go out and muster all of your resources, you will pick your best problem solvers, frame up the path to success, and give them the tools to complete the job, tools which often involve use of technology. However, you may find yourself caught in an entrenched dilemma:

"Business issues are sometimes so time-critical that they cannot wait on a normal IT process—they must be resolved in “30 days or less”.

Consider the following scenarios in which you are likely to find yourself, as you look to resolve a critical business problem:

• Most organisations would be anchored by at least one core software system that helps drive their business (ERP, CRM, CMS, etc.), and you might be able to address your issue if you had a simple way to add on to the core system to enhance the 20% of functionality that it is not achieving. Unfortunately, the vendor is the only one who can make those changes, and their turnaround time is 4-6 months, or post the next software upgrade, which may be even longer.

• You discover that your needs cannot be filled by off-the-shelf software, and that using your internal IT team to build a solution is going to require a tremendous amount of your and their time; development of business requirements, functional specifications and resource allocations, and that the time target is 4 months plus.

The unfortunate fact is that business issues and IT solutions don’t always co-exist happily because of differing timelines in creating value. Friction happens when you try and push critical, time-sensitive, business issues through a long-term IT process involving specification, resource allocation, testing, and piloting.


Software as a Service changes the game

Over the last several years, a new way of applying technology, called Software as a Service (SaaS), has emerged and has brought itself in line with the realities of business: time is critical, costs must be closely aligned to the value being created, and the solutions must be as flexible as the environment in which they are being deployed.



The term SaaS has become the industry preferred term, generally replacing the earlier labels of “utility computing,” “Application Service Provision,” and “on-demand software.”

The concept of SaaS is simple and engaging: rather than buying a software license for an application, such as enterprise resource planning (ERP), or customer relationship management (CRM), and installing the software on individual computers or networks, a customer signs up to use the application in an on-line environment. This environment is hosted by the company that develops and sells the software, giving the buyer more flexibility in the software’s deployment, and less frustration in maintaining the software over the life of that application.

Essentially, SaaS solutions focus on delivering strategic value faster, and in a more controlled manner than traditional on-premise or packaged software systems. By providing highly functional software over the Internet as a service, SaaS-based strategies can reduce several cycles that would normally extend the time of getting to a successful outcome.

Using Software as a Service you can develop and distribute, in a matter of weeks, software applications that may previously have taken months or years to implement and see a return on investment.




Typically, you will find that Software as a Service reduces the pain points of traditional software solutions, in several important ways:

• Ease in defining, building and customising to your needs giving you better solutions faster

• Predictable expenses for budgeting

• Smoother upgrades for maintaining top performance

• Reduced overhead over the long-term.

So, if

your organisation is facing a challenge that requires the rapid and reliable transfer of knowledge and information, internally and externally, or

you are time poor, and the mission urgent, requiring fluid processes that bring your team up to speed fast when addressing critical issues,

then Software as a Service should be considered as a key strategic element to deliver timely and efficient project leadership, get up and running quickly, reduce costs, and achieve results in less time than traditional software options.


This will make you the hero!