SaaS REVIEW (SOFTWARE AS A SERVICE)
SOFTWARE AS A SERVICE
Industry Content Supporter:
Stephen Paskel
VP, Senior Technology & Global Operations Manager
https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephen-paskel
What is Software as a Service (SaaS) and what is the big fuss about it? SaaS is a software licensing and delivery model in which software is licensed on a subscription basis and is centrally hosted. It’s sometimes called “on-demand software” or “web-based software” or “hosted software”. What makes it so unique is how it gets delivered. Users access the software from any PC via their web browser.
Centralized hosting isn’t new; it dates back to the 1960s when IBM provided their time-sharing computing power and database storage services to banks and other large organizations. In the 1990s, the Internet created a new class of centralized computing called “Application Service Providers” (ASP). ASPs provided businesses with hosting services that managed specialized applications to reduce costs through central administration. SaaS extends the ASP model. SaaS providers developed their software and moved away from working or hosting a third-party application, and the applications are purely web-based, whereas ASP applications were client-server.
The most popular SaaS applications are CRM-related, including a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tool, Google Apps, Amazon Web Services, ADP payroll applications, and file-sharing apps like Dropbox and Microsoft Office 365. Many new applications designed for the contact center, such as workforce management apps, contact center phone systems, ticketing, and service desk applications, are also available in SaaS format.
SECURITY
Industry Content Supporter:
Stephen Paskel
VP, Senior Technology & Global Operations Manager
https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephen-paskel
How does a SaaS application secure your data? Think of a SaaS application like a bank. Banks have thousands of users. Customers log into their online banking account and see their checking, savings, and other bank accounts from the online platform. Every customer uses the same “software application” but only considers the accounts they have access to, thus keeping accounts safe and secure. The platform provides a reliable and secure system on a massive scale without the worry of unauthorized access. You only need an internet connection and a browser when the application is web-based.
SaaS is a multi-tenant architecture, meaning all users and applications share a single, common infrastructure and code base maintained centrally. Each customer is called a “tenant.” Since all customers are on the same infrastructure and code base, SaaS providers can innovate faster, saving developers time by no longer working on outdated versions.
The user data is stored in a SaaS environment on the provider’s platform. A best-in-class provider will store data across multiple servers so when one server crashes it doesn’t pull down the entire network. With server-based software, businesses experience application crashes, stopping workflow and productivity. In the contact center, agents cannot access customer accounts, answer the phone, or sit idle and wait.
There are still many out there that believe that SaaS applications are not secure. We know that hacking happens daily 24×7. No company is immune to security breaches. Most organizations don’t have the staff to even remotely keep up with the 1000s of threats that occur each day. However, SaaS providers assign cyber security experts to their applications. These experts know the application better than anyone and understand potential weaknesses. Security experts monitor for daily threats and secure the application on the spot. Do you have a cyber security expert that you can dedicate to each application?
The costs are transitioned to recurring operating expenses, which allows contact centers to plan and budget more accurately. Never before has a way to scale a contact center for growth at a cost. Now, you pay for precisely what you need when you need it.
OUTAGES
Industry Content Supporter:
Steven Cramer
Sr. Vice President Operations
https://www.linkedin.com/in/scramer
Service Level Agreements in a contact center are critical. Because applications are hosted, there can and will be times of outages. Outages are typically due to the ISP having an issue. It is recommended in the contact center to have two diverse ISPs set up to prevent any outages. The software vendor is often blamed, but remember they are “server diverse”; they have multiple servers around the country, and it would take an awful lot to bring them all down. With a second ISP, your agents can still access any web-based CRMs, workforce management applications, and payroll.
A SaaS contact center phone system offers a backup plan in case of outages that premise-based switches do not. Premise-based switches are limiting, and the only way to have a backup to a physical switch is to have a second physical switch, hopefully in a second location. It won’t matter how many switches you have; if there is a flood in your contact center, your phone system will be out of service.
When the PBX is down, you will lose all the calls in the queue, and callers will quickly get busy, creating incredible frustration. In contact centers where customers call in and make payments, like mortgages and credit cards, they usually call at the last minute to pay before the due date. If they get a fast busy and are unable to get through, you have just made the caller’s anxiety level jump up a few more notches. Yes, transferring the calls from a physical switch when it is down is possible, but it isn’t easy. You need to contact the carrier, which can take days. There is also an extra charge for every leg the carrier transfers those calls to, perhaps another penny a minute. This can get pricey.
A hosted cloud-based contact center platform will auto-detect a break and automatically reroute call traffic to other locations. The contact center software eliminates outages by having server redundancy. By setting up servers regionally around the country, when traffic problems occur, the software will flip call traffic to another location. This takes less than five minutes. You can see it happen instantaneously on the manager’s dashboard. The only calls lost are the ones in process. You maintain productivity and customer satisfaction, eliminating any downtime. So why are so many contact centers still hanging on to old PBXs?
No matter the cause of the outage—cable cut, fire, flood, snow storm, or pandemic—you can connect from anywhere because you can be up and running in an alternate location as fast as you can log in. Is that fast enough for you?
INDUSTRY SERVICE TIPS
1. Evergreen can be Mean. Know the contract terms, especially the “renewal” terms, if any, and the number of days required for sufficient notice to opt out of the renewal.
2. Back-Up Plan: Contact your local convention center as a backup location. They have the infrastructure to handle a high volume of calls. Bring your laptops, log into the contact center platform with an Internet browser, and you'll be ready to take calls.
NEXT STEPS
Software as a Service (SaaS) is the next generation of software, and how it is delivered, priced, and managed makes it so exciting for contact centers. SaaS is software licensing delivered via the internet on a monthly subscription. Contacts can use SaaS phone systems, eliminating the need for a premise-based switch, which is limiting when adding and removing seats, moving the contact center, and performing disaster recovery. SaaS offers more scalability and flexibility.
SaaS makes it simple to manage because the SaaS provider manages access, upgrades, performance, and security, allowing IT professionals to work on other projects. The number of users typically prices SaaS and is easily adjusted when the need to add or remove users arises.