It no longer takes an industry pioneer to say that SaaS is an up and coming way of delivering software service. The Internet is not yet ubiquitous and there are still many industries where the “enterprise” way of software delivery is still both a legacy standard and a current business need. However software vendors beginning to realize advantages of SaaS are investing resources to build (or buy) and deliver it.

Judging on the news coverage, many players are trying to SaaS-enable their application. Recent announcements include other launches of SaaS platforms as well, built from the ground up (Salesforce, Netsuite, etc.). SaaS enabled products from companies like Informatica, SAP, and Plexus Online (manufacturing performance) all lead to more industry awareness on the part of the consumer – North American business. Microsoft too looks like it will be jumping on a bandwagon with Windows Live.

A well-covered report by Gartner’s Robert DeSisto indicates that SaaS coverage in the software industry is now 5%, and is expected to grow to 25% by 2011.

For more good news check out the podcasts from the SaaSCon.

Blogosphere offers some of the most active commentaries on the SAAS evolution. Phil Wainewright’s blog features helpful and informative commentaries almost daily. Check out some of the other ones from Eric Norlin, Gianpaolo Carraro, Fred Chong, Charles Zedlewski, Amy Wahl, Tim Minahan, and Dan Ciruli. This list far from complete, look for more in the upcoming posts. Please let us know if you would like to recommend anyone else.

So these are some of the powerful indicators of where the SaaS model is headed. Here is our perspective on why SaaS is here to stay.

When a company licenses their own time and labor management solution, these are some of the challenges it has to deal with:

1. Licensed software typically needs to be installed on every computer that will be used by employees, managers & decision makers, even if only a thin-client, the software needs to be managed. The software typically cannot be used by anyone who does not have it installed: on the road, in the field, etc
2. Software license purchases usually require large upfront cash expenditure plus a recurring maintenance fee from the vendor company. As soon the cash exchanges hands, a shift of responsibility from vendor to customer generally takes place that is not optimal for software rollout – being the vendor is usually the expert!
3. The company needs dedicate support and maintenance personnel – whether to troubleshoot or install updates.
4. Speaking of updates, a) the company may have to pay for some of them if the latest and the greatest features are required or b) if there is an emergency update, how would the necessary patch be rolled out?
5. The company typically needs to purchase hardware to host the data – translating into additional hardware, software, and personnel cost.
6. As company grows, additional licenses may have to be purchased and maintenance cost may increase. When company downsizes – the costs do not necessarily go down.

One of the reasons why SaaS is touted everywhere is that it offers economies of scale unattainable by a single company. Our upcoming postings will expand on this and discuss other topics. Your comments are always welcome.

Here are some of the typical situations where HR automation can play a key role in a company’s continued success. In every instance, inability to do fairly simple tasks - when applied en masse - can cripple a company’s performance and damage employee morale.

Picture a factory with 511 workers, 45 managers, and 2 punch clocks. Optimum production is critical to meet tight manufacturing and shipping deadlines. It is October 25th the first day of the flu season. 70 workers and 3 managers do not clock in. 31 of the 42 managers present see that some of their teams are understaffed but without directive to do otherwise they urge the available workers to work harder to make up for their missing teammates but they risk failing on almost half the deadlines.

Do the factory executives know that the factory is at risk today for not meeting its objectives? If they had known, how can the factory leadership reassign the available workforce to get the most out of the day?

Proper use of automation allows factory supervisors to assess the situation as it is unfolding, within minutes of when employees are actually clocking in. Such decisions as to which team members should be reassigned to what projects can maximize output and minimize the downside of such an occurrence.

Now imagine a staffing agency responsible for staffing several nursing homes in different locations. Nurses have different skills sets, years of experience, and location preferences. Many of these nurses require flexible schedules as well. Nursing homes similarly have their own requirements, and sometimes might need a extra help depending on patient load.

As an example, with 100 nurses and 3 nursing homes. What is the optimal way to assign the nurses to make both parties happy every day, and ensure an adequate level of patient care?

Using automation, preferences for nurses and nursing homes could be simply “plugged” into an automatic scheduling system. Now the system can do its magic to find optimal coverage, taking into account nurses’ skills, availability, place preference, and other criteria such as planned time off. If a nurse has to leave early, it is now easier to make changes and alert other nurses to cover a needed shift when necessary.

Ritchie heads a 50-person customer support team, 45-person coverage is mandatory every business day. Summer holidays are around the corner and 6 of his employees came over to ask for a few days off.

With all the other tasks he is responsible for, Ritchie is having a hard time pulling up individual employee profiles to check coverage reports and availability of others to correlate that with the mandatory coverage for each day, to determine if his department will or won’t be understaffed. Sure, he can ask his human resource manager to look it up - but she is busy recruiting new team members and does not have the time. Meanwhile the list of time off seekers grows to 10.

An automated time management system with effective leave tracking allows employees to see how much time off they have left and ask for only what they have available. Managers can see at a glance, coverage for the day with all the scheduled time-offs accounted for. A decision can be made on the spot as to whether to approve time off or not - leaving the HR manager to focus on core tasks of finding more talent.

One possible criticism of automation is that it may seem cold and impersonal - everyone’s information is in the machine, everybody’s actions controlled by a machine. However, when used correctly automation can actually relate to the team on a personal level and provide a feeling of uniformity and fair application of company policy, something most team members like - at least the one’s you want to keep around for a long time.

Factory workers can concentrate on setting realistic objectives and on seeing results at the end of the day. A nurse can rest comfortably knowing that the system will remember that every second Thursday she has to take kids to the pool and thus cannot be scheduled work on those days. And call center team members can keep track of their time off and use their available personal time to the maximum benefit.

It is often taken for granted that people are responsible for creating some of the most amazing innovations, like planes, space shuttles, and genetic treatments. Most of these things were created in the context of companies, which provided environments, tools, and processes where people were better able to realize their creative potential.

The Software as a Service (SaaS) delivery model evolved to provide companies with some of the tools to help accomplish their visions using today’s technology. Collaborative software, software for tracking sales leads, and other various applications for improving human productivity in the workplace, including the most notable space today - CRM… all help companies achieve the same (or greater) level of automation without the need for technical resources on site (i.e. during the reign of enterprise software). This may be why SaaS is one of the fastest growing business models on the Internet.

We believe that SAAS will take the business world to a new level. We founded KnowledgeSum because we were fascinated with the idea of using this powerful web-based technology to improve human productivity in the workplace. Some of the areas we see evolving are core business processes, vertical and horizontal communications, and globalization of the workplace. With respect to HR, some of the changes we envision are greater accountability, responsibility, feedback, and productivity for both management and employees.

In this blog we will share our reflections on growing within a SAAS-enabled community and correlate it to our background and experiences in human resource management.