SaaS updates: Who’s in the driver’s seat?

To take full advantage of software as a service (SaaS), companies must keep up with the rapid innovation cycle of SaaS providers, who release new functionality through software updates.

Of course, the information technology (IT) department plays a critical role in implementing these updates and keeping apps current. But staying current and advancing the business are two different things.

That’s why, when it comes to choosing which SaaS enhancements to adopt, business leaders should be involved in the decision. These functional heads—across finance, human resources, risk, procurement, and other parts of the business—are the ones whose teams work with the app every day, and they understand how new SaaS capabilities can drive their strategic needs.

A three-wheeled approach

In many organizations, these business leaders are taking charge of SaaS optimization. In addition to partnering closely with IT, they often engage a managed services provider to advise on SaaS releases, perform testing and implementation, and help manage changes to processes. In this model, the three parties work together in harmony:

• Business leaders. As product owners, they understand their processes and advocate for new functionality to improve them.
• IT. As manager of the technical layer, IT oversees factors such as release management, systems integration, and tuning within cloud tenants.
• Managed services provider. As an objective third party, leading providers bring technical proficiency and detailed knowledge of SaaS releases (due to their alliances with software vendors)—plus expertise across functions, processes, industries, and change management. That means they can help business leaders evaluate the benefits and challenges of new functionality while helping IT improve its capacity on the technical layer. Leading providers also bring market perspective, helping business leaders understand which functionality their industry peers are adopting so they can stay competitive.

When moving systems to the cloud, many companies buy into the promise of better, cheaper, and faster—without considering the ongoing work that’s required to sustain the platform.

But the companies who get long-term returns on a cloud investment are the ones who create a process for ongoing evolution—often with the help of a managed services provider. That’s how they’re able to capitalize on emerging innovation, absorb the changes from SaaS updates, and continually advance the business. 

Learn more about how companies are capitalizing on SaaS innovation.