More on Software as a Service

Today I’m going to talk more about the Software as a service model. It’s amazing how many benefits that it really offers. I’m going to center on 1 today – Customization. With a traditional client/server based software deployment if you want something customized you are going to need 2 things – Lots or time and Lots of money. The reason you need lots of time is that
1. The company has to develop, test and then distribute a new version to you. What does that mean though? In the software world anything you change can have far reaching effects on other components. I’ve seen instances where simply changing the color of a button can change some random functionality in a whole other place in the software. So a client/server based software company is going to have a process in place where they plan out the change – what all needs to be modified in order to accomplish the customization. Then they need to implement the change – actually build the customization. Lastly they need to test – this seems like the easiest part but it really is the most time consuming. They need someone to click every button and make sure everything works. As you can see – it’s not a quick or easy process.
2. Once the changes are made and they send you the new version of the software you will need to have your IT staff schedule a time to install the new version. As simple as this sounds it’s also time consuming. Backups need to be made, server changes have to happen and then client workstations need to be updated. You are looking at a minimum of 4 hours of down time while the software is updated. Unless of course your IT staff work on weekends.
3. Realistically you are looking at a month from the time you asked for the customizations before you actually see your requests realized.
You are going to need a lot of money – why- because they are going to charge you a LOT to do it. For most customizations you are looking at $125 per hour for the development time – if it takes 1 person a week to develop, test, bug check and deploy you are looking at $5000. Don’t count on it taking less that a week either – customization is where the software companies make the easy money.

With a Software as a Service model it’s a whole different ball game. First of all – they take care of everything no need to get your IT staff involved. Second (at least with QPro) they are built for customization. I always tell clients that with QPro we realized early on in the process that we would never be able to build a product that met everyone’s needs straight out of the box – so instead we made everything customizable. With software as a service customization is quick and easy. Let’s say that you enter a new market and therefore need some new locally specific documents needed to your QC Doc List – software as a service – 2 hours - Client/Server model – 1 month (and $5000). Which do you want to do?