Does the internet really cost $4 million a page?
Add up the cost of what your companies spent on IT. Divide it by what your employees end up doing with it. Panic. You see, most companies spend fantastic amounts of time and money finding, hiring, developing, fixing and running IT resources - when all they really want to do is use them. In fact, today's IT is the equivalent of building a new jumbo jet every time you want to fly to New York.
But there an alternative. Software as a Service (SaaS) providers are changing the way business uses IT, by offering them the equivalent of a seat on the plane. No building a unique system. No employing specialist people to run that system. No people having to follow specialised training to work that system. No excuses to deal with when that system doesn't do what it says it will.
With SaaS, the program is owned, managed and lovingly panicked about by a third party who specialises only making that application work really well. Your employees simply (and we do mean simply) access it via their normal web browser. So there's lengthy Tuesday afternoon training sessions, the complexity is hidden from the user, much the same it is in a jumbo jet. And no need to upgrade computers just to find out access your sales leads in Norfolk. And from a management point of view,
none of your capital, manpower or management is tied up in important activities like making sure all-staff e-mails with the new number for the pizza delivery company get through.
Then there's the entirely minor fact that all your fixed IT costs are transformed into variable ones - so your IT can react to situations much more effectively. And you can act like a client, not a boss to the people supplying it. No more Mr Nice Guy. You don't own this stuff, so it's not your problem. And yes, someone else knows what makes it tick better than you do. But that's the same whenever you fly. And as far as we know, that's a good thing. Not least because with cost-saving this radical, who's complaining?
