Share what you know with millions of people
Focus is the best place to turn what you know into remarkable content
0
Top 3 reasons to consider a SaaS BI system over on-premise?
If you could only provide three reasons for using a SaaS BI model over on-premise for a 100-500 employee size company what would they be?
Events
- Dos and Don'ts of Small Business Marketing May 29 @ 11 am PT
- Lead Nurturing 202: The Next Generation May 31 @ 11 am PT
- The Tricks to Paid Media June 6 @ 11 am PT
- Display Advertising for Brand Awareness June 20 @ 11 am PT
Related Activity
3 Answers
1.) Up-Front Cost - since the SaaS model will likely charge by the month, your up-front cost will likely be less with it. But looking out to a 2-3 year view, the total SaaS cost could easily be more
2.) Technical Expertise - any company offering SaaS BI probably has more technical experts around operating the solution than you do.
3.) Time to Implement - since their whole business is implementing their solution, you would likely achieve a faster time to implement using a SaaS BI than by doing it yourself.
The advantages of the SaaS model are no capital investment or IT architecture needed, but secure hosting, automatic upgrades, ‘always on’ functionality, and access wherever there is an internet connection. Add to this the accessible pricing model, and this is a simple way for all organizations to have advanced BI capability, or add to their existing systems.
I agree with Dan, although I have a slightly different take:
1.) Immediate and Long Term Affordability - SaaS solutions are subscriptions to services provided over the internet. So there's no hardware to buy, no software to deploy, and no consultants to engage. You also pay by the month, so there's not a huge upfront cost hurdle. Long term costs are also typically lower than traditional on-premise solutions. For these reasons, SaaS subscriptions are often operating budget expenses instead of capital budget expenses, which bypasses having to petition a capital budget committee to get approval.
2.) Power and flexibility - SaaS providers often have a more complete BI solution, since it's a service. So instead of cobbling together ETL, data warehouse, analysis package, and reporting package, you have it all at once, quickly. This makes SaaS BI faster to deploy, and also easier to extend to new projects as they come along.
3.) Ease of updating and scalability - Traditional BI can be hard to update and scale, it's often an 80% redo of all of the initial effort, which can be tremendous. SaaS BI is automatically updated for you, so you always have the most recent features and capabilities. And when you want to add more users, you just ask them to add more users to your subscription. And when you want to reduce users, you just ask them to remove users from your subscription.
This is what can make SaaS BI easier to use, without sacrificing on power.
In the interest of full disclosure, I work for Birst, a SaaS BI provider. (www.birst.com)
Answer This Question