John Clough of BDO raised a question behind AccountingWEB’s walled garden (sorry James) which has the makings of a lively debate. “What’s the difference between ASP and SaaS?” There is a lot of misinformation floating about among professionals on this topic so now is as good a time as any to offer an explanation. Here I’ll talk about the business promise of SaaS and pose the question: Does ASP offer any of this?
In my view SaaS’ technical underpinning offers the tantalising promise of changing the way business is done. Today, we tend to operate in departmental silos but the opportunity to meld and aggregate information from different systems using SaaS style offerings can change the way you work and the results you achieve.
If I think about WinWeb (a client), they’re bringing together a set of related business critical applications to make SMB’s lives easier using SaaS as a delivery mechanism. They offer components as modules you can tack into the base application. Each part fulfills a specific need and is addressed accordingly. They are, in effect, creating a platform for business. They can offer the accounting module for free to single users because they see other services as having a clear business value that customers will likely pay for. I agree.
Twinfield (another client), is looking at a range of options that splice their accounts app to CRM. They may well end up offering a mix and match approach where the customer chooses the best route for their business. That’s an interesting way of delivering choice.
When I look at how I work today – no on premise network, no cabling everywhere, no network management, no application management. In other words, a good 30% of my time cost has evaporated, allowing me to concentrate on things that matter.
Instead, I have a clutch of applications running elsewhere but accessible through browser tabs with automatic notification of information updates. I’m changing my billing to a service that automates the follow up I need but with manual over-rides. It’s set up with triggers so I don’t have to worry about debt collection. I have a shared space where I can easily work collaboratively with clients. I have another service that allows me to centralise document creation and storage but which allows me to provide secure access to clients on an individual or group basis. I can field multiple IM conversations with Skype.
At a different level, my interaction with people has fundamentally changed. All the services I use have a social dimension that allows me to discover new information about topics of interest at almost zero effort on my part. The only effort I need to put in is to add to the various discussions in which I’m interested. It pays enormous dividends. A simple example. Many sites have a list of sites the site owner likes. That provides me with an easy way to discover new people who have interesting things to say. I can change my lists any time I wish or any time my information preferences change. That’s happened many times over the last 10 months. It allows me to enrich information.
All of that’s a far cry from having a discrete accounts app, email, file storage, word processor etc etc. that are disconnected and require a lot of PC horsepower. And it’s a far far cry from having a single application hosted on my behalf as would be the case in an ASP accounting scenario. I’m no longer tethered to specific networks but can flit from place to place, depending on what I need to do at the time.
We’ve only scratched the services surface and I see massive opportunities for professional accountants. A pity the incumbent vendors have yet to appreciate the business opportunities. Anytime you guys want to engage – feel free. You all know where I am.
Does ASP offer any of these advantages? For those that want a dive into the technical differences, which serve as the jumping off point for the business discussion I’d recommend checking out what Phil Wainewright has to say about SoSaaS.
PS: This is an open ended, evolving thought stream. As I say, we’re barely scratching the surface.
