Time to value: how SaaS helps organisations achieve cost-effective outcomes

In a room of approximately 50 people, barely three raised their hands when asked who believed software-as-a-service (SaaS) solutions were cheap.

Some of the supposed benefits of SaaS include enhanced accessibility, scalability, and cost savings. Yet, this latter benefit seems to be overshadowed by the costs of purchasing SaaS in comparison to off-the-shelf solutions.

This cost may deter many organisations from adopting SaaS solutions at first, the speakers noted.

However, organisations should consider the long-term benefits that the software can provide beyond the service fees, Aiven’s Vice President for APAC, Stu Garrow said. His company offers open-source cloud data platform for organisations across sectors.

As availability of resources differs for organisations and agencies depending on size, purpose, and levels of operations, it is difficult to generalise how much an investment in SaaS could cost an organisation.

Following a series of panels covering the benefits of SaaS solutions for the public sector to the best practices for ensuring safe adoption of SaaS, GovInsider Live – SaaS Day wrapped up with the closing panel Keeping costs low: strategies for maximising value and minimising costs in SaaS deployments.

Speakers talked about how to minimise budget use while maximising outcomes, the holistic cost of SaaS solutions, and what it means for an innovation-seeker public sector.

How much does SaaS actually cost?

The benefits of SaaS adoption are often more significant than the direct costs of the software, the speakers shared.

“What we really need to think about is the holistic cost of delivering an outcome rather than the cost of the software because these often pile into insignificance compared to anything else,” said Garrow.

Singapore’s Ministry of Trade and Industry (MTI), Senior Assistant Director and Digital Services Manager, Bindu Sukumaran, referred to this as the cost-effective benefit of SaaS – “for the money that we spend, how much value are we getting? That is how you assess the cost,” she said.

Malaysia’s Johor Corporation (JCorp) Head of Digital Strategy and Innovation, Budiman Bujang, added that legacy systems which cannot support agile, quick, and integrated services are part of the indirect costs of not adopting SaaS.

He explained that that to achieve the desired outcomes, organisations must be willing to make choices such as adopting SaaS to streamline service delivery, particularly in the public sector.

In adopting SaaS, the indirect costs of maintaining legacy systems that barely process the required operations are lifted, and organisations can “achieve time to value,” Budiman said.

The existing ecosystem of SaaS in Singapore’s public sector is another advantage that makes SaaS adoption cost-effective, Sukumaran noted. She added that integrating knowledge and similar practices can shorten procurement periods, translating to cost savings.

The upside outweighs the downside

The public sector has found the following benefits upon adoption of SaaS solutions: enhanced collaboration, optimised service delivery, and time efficient operations, the panellists shared.

Sukumaran shared that her team came up with a centre of excellence concept that builds up capabilities and releases playbooks on how to connect account management systems and training. These help different departments to onboard SaaS solutions with enhanced agility.

For instance, MTI has used SaaS to enable cross functional teams to integrate know-hows and information toward a collaborative “tell me once” approach, Sukumaran said. This also enabled MTI teams to enhance government engagements with businesses (G2B) by reducing repeated communication and increasing time efficiency.

The scalability that SaaS solutions offer has been essential for Singapore’s Central Provident Fund Board (CPFB) to achieve service satisfaction in providing a personalised experience, said CPFB’s Senior Deputy Director, Abdul Samad Gulam Hussain. The team uses SaaS to communicate with citizens and provide services.

For example, Samad noted that SaaS enabled the team to use behaviour analytics to broadcast information for specific groups, addressing citizen expectations for government services to be tailored to individual needs.

With these solutions, the CPFB is reframing the concept of software-as-a-service to “service-as-a-satisfaction,” said Samad.

Budiman added that to reap these benefits, organisations must be ready to embrace digital transformation and integrate SaaS into existing processes to innovate services according to each organisation’s needs.

SaaS or no SaaS?

The moderator highlighted that besides cost, another concern when it comes to adopting SaaS is uncertainty in terms of data security, data governance, and capacity for customisation.

“When we opt for SaaS solutions, we always look at the areas of data ownership and portability,” Budiman noted. He added that these aspects address most of the concerns about SaaS.

Organisations must establish an understanding with the SaaS provider that the data is private and owned by the organisation, so that it can be portable and readable by any other platforms of choice, avoiding vendor lock-in, he said.

In a world of multi-vendor and multi-cloud options, portability can become a negotiation tool for organisations, said Garrow, which in turn translates to the ability to obtain the most cost-effective option.

“Portability will become a key way to ensure that you can reduce costs,” he noted. “If you can use that negotiation power to get a better deal, you can move from one provider to another.”

When answering the closing question, why or why not SaaS? The speakers agreed that the public sector needs to innovate to meet the needs of the citizens and stay agile in the digital era – SaaS is there to ease the journey.