Compare SaaS ERP Solutions to Traditional Solutions

Here’s the great news about your findings as you compare SaaS ERP solutions to traditional solutions: both solutions have their high points, and can increase your overall productivity. If you choose a traditional ERP solution, you have the control to host the program on your own company-managed servers. In comparison, SaaS ERP solutions mean someone else manages the software and hosts it for you, with you paying for what you use.

As stated in a study from Panorama Consulting Group, more organizations are continuing to see the benefit of ERP. According to a recent poll, 55 percent of respondents had plans to launch or continue working within an ERP system, despite economic hard times. Both systems have their rewards and potential challenges, but zeroing in on the areas of flexibility, accessibility and cost can help you make the best decision for you.

Flexibility: Traditional Comes Out On Top as You Compare SaaS ERP Solutions

In terms of flexibility, traditional ERP emerges as the winner as you compare SaaS ERP solutions to traditional ones. Why? From an IT point of view, it’s got the power you need to tailor your applications to your specific industry and organizational needs. You control the software’s deployment from your server, so you can make adjustments and additions as you grow that are purely customized.

Yes, SaaS ERP solutions can offer you their own type of flexibility to configure your software choices, but it will be more expensive to carry out truly customized solutions or rewrites. Though you may pay more for this customization of your traditional ERP software, you may find that the payoffs are worth the expense.

Compare SaaS ERP Solutions In Terms of Accessibility

Your ability to deliver on precise delivery promises to customers, handle inventory influxes or forecast what a scenario will do to your bottom line depends on supreme accessibility. You’ll find this in SaaS ERP solutions over traditional models, especially as SaaS solutions become more adapted to the mobile app world. With more than a third of all global businesses expect to rely on mobile technology in the near future, SaaS ERP solutions are already providing the necessary accessibility.

Another bonus of the round-the-clock, real-time accessibility offered from SaaS ERP solutions: turning downtime into uptime, as your sales or operations team makes strategic decisions and inputs key data all your divisions can access from the car, the plane or anywhere. This also lessens your chance for data entry errors that can make a devastating impact on inventory processes, for example.

Which Costs More as You Compare SaaS ERP Solutions?

Which area comes out on top in terms of cost in a comparison of SaaS ERP solutions to traditional ERP solutions? Neither. It’s a tie. Typically SaaS ERP solutions show a lower initial cost, since you can pay by the number of users or by the specific software applications you need. Savings also occur in reduced need for IT infrastructure improvements. You can, however, see rising costs as you grow that may make the solution similar in cost to a traditional ERP tool.

You may also incur extra costs for maintenance and management of the SaaS version, a factor to carefully consider as you compare SaaS ERP solutions to traditional solutions especially since you’ll probably hang onto your monthly or annual payments for the life of the service. Still, this type of solution may make sense for smaller organizations with fewer resources available for their initial investment.

Traditional ERP Has Unique Cost Factors as You Compare to SaaS ERP Solutions

The cost of traditional ERP systems, however, may be higher initially as you compare SaaS ERP solutions to these types of systems but it’s still a tie overall. Over time, your costs for maintenance or upgrades to the SaaS ERP solution may reach similar cost levels for deploying a traditional system from the beginning.

Traditional ERP systems may also bring their own expenses related to upgrading to newer versions of software, and this can add up over several divisions who are using the system. However, part of your expense for a traditional ERP solution includes the flexibility you need to customize your system and increase its ROI over time.

As you compare SaaS ERP solutions, let the core elements of flexibility, accessibility and cost help drive your decision, especially as the individual features of top vendors begin to complicate your choice. As you compare based on your organization’s unique goals, also consider your objectives for implementing any ERP solution such as to improve performance, to integrate systems across multiple users and to lower capital and overall expenses.