CIS500 Student Discussion Response

CIS500 discussion post responses.
Respond to the colleagues posts regarding:
“Top Management Concerns” Please respond to the following:
A small but fast-growing company has called you in as a consultant to help with their IT infrastructure. When they first started they put their business data in the cloud and changed their business processes to fit their SaaS. Now, they want to know if they should customize their SaaS to fit their business processes, or keep changing their business processes to fit their SaaS.
Propose a set of 3-5 initial questions you would ask them to help you prepare your recommendation. Be sure to explain why you are asking each question.
JA’s post states the following:Top of Form
To start, it is simply not practical to continually keep changing your business practices. The following are three questions I would ask to help prepare my recommendation:
1. Who are your target customers?
Any business, small or large or anywhere in between, must know their customers. This is the first step of building any business model. Exactly, whom do we serve? And I would add, it is beneficial to know your competitors in your market as well.
1. What do they want?
What your customers want is the key. For example, McDonalds provides an array of products peripheral to hamburgers; but hamburgers is its core product.
1. When can we provide it or how quickly can we provide it?
What is a realistic turn-around delivery time for the product that keeps costs down and meets volume needs? I believe in the mantra of “promise less and deliver more!”
In addition, SaaS offers a number of advantages—the most obvious is tremendous cost savings. The software is priced on a per-use basis with no up-front cost savings. The software is priced on a per-use basis with no up-front costs, so companies get the immediate benefit of reducing capital expenditures. They also get the added benefits of scalability and flexibility to test new software on a rental basis. Moreover, tapping the power of SaaS can provide access to a large- scale infrastructure, along with any needed support, which is especially valuable for a start-up or small company with few financial resources (p. 144). On the whole, I would recommend this company customize their SoftwareasaService (SaaS) to fit their business processes.
SD’s post states the following:Top of Form
A small but fast-growing company has called you in as a consultant to help with their IT infrastructure. When they first started they put their business data in the cloud and changed their business processes to fit their SaaS. Now, they want to know if they should customize their SaaS to fit their business processes, or keep changing their business processes to fit their SaaS.
· Propose a set of 3-5 initial questions you would ask them to help you prepare your recommendation. Be sure to explain why you are asking each question.
1. Do you know what SaaS is? Have you ever thought about whether or not the SaaS suite was customizable before? If so, did you ask that question of the service provider? I think you should understand the services you intend to get or have, so you don’t incur unnecessary problems later. Finding out all important information beforehand helps you figure out which direction to take your business. SaaS allows people to use cloud-based web applications. In fact, email services such as Gmail and Hotmail are examples of cloud-based SaaS services. Other examples of SaaS services are office tools (Office 365 and Google Docs), customer relationship management software (Salesforce), event management software (Planning Pod), and so on.
2. What kind of software do you think will be needed for your business? Are they in your SaaS current package? The answer to these questions will tell you if you should customize your SaaS. However, I think the company should customize their SaaS to fit their business processor. Organizations grow, acquire various organizations, enter new regions and globalize their supply chains which strain their unique business frameworks.
3. What’s the Difference Between SaaS and Cloud Computing? The cloud refers to a set of incredibly complex infrastructure technology. It can refer to anything that’s hosted remotely and delivered via the Internet. While SaaS refers specifically to business software applications that are delivered via the cloud.
4. Are you looking for SaaS services that will grow with your business without incurring extra expenses? It is only natural that you would want to safeguard your finances. Managing subscriptions for relevant SaaS is important for a clear path for growth.
References
Singleton, D. (2019). What is SaaS? Ten FAQs about software as a service. Retrieved from https://www.softwareadvice.com/resources/saas-10-faqs-software-service