How the Service part of SaaS can help out in troubled economic times (say like now for instance).

So as the pool of money organizations has to spend on external programs shrinks does this have an impact on SaaS providers?

The honest short answer is, of course it does. However with lower initial costs and quicker times to deployment SaaS solutions also begin to look attractive as compared with installed software solutions (there is an advantage to a SaaS solution), however lower spending means fewer new opportunities.

The big challenge for a SaaS organization revolves around the ability to quickly recognize contracted recurring monthly revenues. This means the sooner you can move from contract signature to deployed solution the better.

What are the barriers to a quick deployment? There are the internal barriers for any SaaS provider; things like how long can you actually roll something out? Does it take a team 6 months of work, or can you roll out a solution to production in a matter of days? These factors are entirely within the control of the provider.

In my experience some of the biggest barriers to launch (the key milestone to recognize revenues) are clients, especially in the enterprise space. The more dependent upon a client your deployment process is, the longer it will take. That is a pretty straight forward equation. This seems to be easily solved by limiting the number of decisions clients need to make, however as each product offering becomes increasingly complex the number of decision points increases.

This is where the Services part of Software as a Service can come into play. Having a set of well defined best practices around configuration of your product is crucial to shortening deployment times. These best practices need to be well documented, and backed up with demonstrable experiences (i.e. stats, research, metrics, etc).

All of your best practices needs to be able to tie back to the specific business goals the client has purchased your product in order to attain. If your product can address multiple business goals then you need multiple sets of documented best practices and all client facing deployment teams need to be confident they know and understand them and all the nuances that entails.

Large enterprises are used to being able to dictate requirements, however in a SaaS model that flexibility doesn't necessarily exist. Large enterprises also can get stuck being focused on minutiae and lose sight of the larger goals. It is the job of the services team to keep clients focused on the larger business goals to stay on target for the quickest possible deployment.

That is an easy statement to type, harder to realize. I recognize that, but the services side of the Software as a Service is a crucial component that should help ensure that time to recognize that monthly recurring revenue decreases. Documented best practices is often a tool that is overlooked and underutilized.