Software as a Service: Overview

Software as a service (SaaS) provides a fundamentally faster way to achieve business value. This growing approach to building and maintaining applications in the cloud, offers a number of benefits, including:

• Faster application deployment, especially when integration with enterprise resource planning systems is optimized.
  
  
• Access to a broad array of functional and business capabilities with reduced requirements for IT infrastructure and lower up-front costs than with on-premises software.
  
  
• Greater flexibility to adapt to changes in business and sales cycles.
  
  
• Lower total cost of ownership due to off-premises hosting of non-core infrastructure and inclusion of maintenance budgets within service contracts.
  
  
• More time for the IT department to focus on innovation and creating new applications and less on software maintenance, support and management.
  
  
• Increased user adoption and performance.

Furthermore, SaaS can have a big impact on business models because its use encourages the development of processes that span the enterprise, making it easier for a company to become even more focused on what distinguishes it from their competition. For example, Navitaire, a wholly owned Accenture company that provides online booking services for airlines, used SaaS to revolutionize the airline industry by providing better administrative and strategic services to airline customers at a lower cost, enabling airlines to focus on competitive differentiation rather than spending their energies on reservations.

Listen to our podcast of Saideep Raj, Accenture Managing Director—SaaS Group, explain how SaaS can accelerate ROI and business value.

Read our brochure and learn about how Accenture can help you use SaaS to achieve business value faster. [PDF, 380KB]

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Accenture has a proven track record of using SaaS to help organizations achieve high performance and measurable business results. Accenture brings the right people to bear on SaaS engagements at the right time, across 17 industries and many functional domains.

Accenture’s highly specialized SaaS experts are already trained in the type of SaaS solutions that our clients want. Building on more than 30 years of systems integration and data management experience, our professionals have all the skills critical to implementing enterprise-wide SaaS solutions.

• SaaS vision: Accenture has the vision to understand how SaaS can be used to optimize business performance.
  
  
• Accenture SaaS Business Solutions suite: Accenture’s proprietary solution suite offers a flexible approach to implementing SaaS. The solutions can be applied to any computing platform and adjusted to different levels of engagement, while being tailored to address pressing business issues in human resources, customer service, sales force automation and back-office functions, across industries.
  
  
• Packaged SaaS-specific assets: Accenture’s assets help reduce implementation times and deliver proven business results. A SaaS value accelerator enables the rapid deployment of technology in eight to 12 weeks, with limited configuration or customization (if required). A SaaS delivery toolkit, featuring an estimating capability for accurate project estimation and scorecards, is also included. In addition, Accenture provides business process frameworks and pre-built code to speed the development process.
  
  
• Accenture uses its global delivery network and deep SaaS skills to work collaboratively and iteratively with clients to deliver SaaS projects at highly competitive prices.
  
  
• SaaS technology partnerships: Accenture has a strong and growing system of strategic alliances and relationships with established SaaS vendors and enterprise solutions providers as well as emerging and traditional independent software vendors.

Software as a service has the potential to help companies transform the way they do business, enabling greater flexibility. Accenture leverages more than 30 years of experience in systems integration to offer clients an innovative, proven range of services to help them use SaaS effectively as part of their drive to achieve high performance:

• Providing systems integration and technology services for clients seeking to implement third-party SaaS solutions. For example, Accenture helped an open source solutions provider use SaaS to transform its sales force automation approach and achieve staggering results—a 75 percent reduction in errors related to sales orders and the creation of a deal pipeline that routes 10,000 new leads per month.
  
  
• Assisting clients with planning, developing and hosting their own SaaS applications to offer to their customers. For example, Accenture is advising a communications company on how best to become a SaaS provider to extend its offerings and break into new segments to gain greater market-share and achieve longer retention of more satisfied customers.
  
  
• Building, hosting and running Accenture’s own SaaS solutions for clients to use. For example, Navitaire’s online booking system uses SaaS to support the airline industry. Navitaire allows airlines to focus on new opportunities, increase operational efficiency, enhance customer service and optimize profits.

The Accenture SaaS Business Solutions suite can be customized to address pressing industry-specific and cross-industry business issues in human resources, customer service, sales-force automation and back-office functions. Tailored for any SaaS platform, they help organizations assess and plan their SaaS strategies, and integrate SaaS solutions with existing systems in complex, global environments.

As they do this while in the fast and flexible manner organizations expect from SaaS. Any level of service—from enterprise-wide to departmental implementations—can be provided. The Accenture SaaS Business Solutions suite includes assessment and planning, implementation and integration, platform development and application maintenance.

View our client successes to learn how Accenture has helped leading organizations use SaaS to solve today’s tough business problems, transform how they operate and achieve business value faster.