The Software as a Service model seems like a great solution. Low upfront cost… Robust feature sets…Mostly worry free infrastructure…
Sure, you are dependent on the platform. Sure your opportunity for business differentiation is more limited. But there are still many ways to standout by the way that you implement and execute using the software…
Just set up the best practice template for your business and away you. Just a few dollars per month per user and away you go..You are in business.
Seriously, you don’t want to get too creative with accounting anyway…The GAAP and compliance rules limit what you can do, anyway.
And it is not like you are not going to use a suite of general purpose office applications…Or the feature rich CRM system it email marketing or cloud storage and back up of files. You can even set up your whole phone system in the cloud.
It is just how business gets done now. You really can work from anywhere. Your whole business can be decentralized and you don’t even need to pay rent for a physical space.
It is freeing but it is also bland as hell. Sure, you can add your own ‘brand’ personality, but in reality everyone is running their business running the same tools.
The funny thing is that there is a still a lack of integration. It is still very difficult to embed a complex table from Excel and have it look good in Word or Power Point and have it remain dynamic. Cutting and pasting between apps results in more formatting surprises too.
And just try to pull information from one application to another. It works better when it is done from an API, but those integrations can be fragile.
But with security vulnerabilities all of these integrations need to be tightened up as well.
It seems like this is going in the direction toward conformity. Maybe your business distinguishes its information practices differently.
But the problem that I see is that the SaaS platforms don’t really let you be change the underlying assumption about how information is managed. I am afraid that underlying assumption limits the degree of freedom that you have with information.
