What are the benefits of a SaaS integrator for an SME?
The challenges facing IT departments: Why use a SaaS integrator in the age of self-service? My answer is to use the example of SMEs with Office 365 vs Google Apps and Dynamics NAV vs Odoo (formerly OpenERP).
A SaaS integrator optimises the configuration of Office 365 for your uses
Office 365 is a powerful, very powerful solution. But end users who want to deploy it themselves forget that the promise of SaaS is simplification, not simplicity.
"Many of our customers want to migrate all their digital assets to Microsoft Azure Cloud tools. We naturally recommend that they go through our company, which specialises in Microsoft technologies. Some follow us directly. Others prefer to try for themselves. The reality is that the latter quickly come back to us because, even in the age of SaaS, you can't migrate Exchange and NAS at the click of a button.
It is with this customer feedback that Emmanuel Kerhoz, Cloud Architect at Valor Conseil (Microsoft Partner), explains that the deployment of Office 365 must take into account a number of points to ensure that it is carried out according to the rules of the trade. For example, to date, the migration of files named with special character sets has to be done using scripts. Another example is the need to set up OneDrive correctly to ensure versioning of recently migrated files, otherwise you're in for a disappointing experience. And there are many other examples, such as recovering write/read rights internally, or securing and monitoring access rights externally.
Emmanuel Kerhoz concludes very clearly: "Microsoft's Cloud solutions are simple to implement, but if they don't take your needs into account, you'll have to do it all over again. Experience of solutions and technical environments, combined with an understanding of your constraints, means that SaaS integrators specialising in Office 365 can save SMEs a great deal of time while optimising their usage. Let's hear it...
A SaaS integrator develops add-on modules for Google Apps
To present the advantages of using a Microsoft integrator without presenting those of a Google integrator would not do justice to our Office vs Google Apps (vs Zimbra) comparison!
Google Apps remains a UFO in the SaaS landscape because, to my knowledge, it's one of the only solutions that really offers simplicity, given that its functional proposition is sufficient for a large number of SMEs. And that's without taking into account the multitude of add-on modules, both free and pay-as-you-go, all based on the solution's dozen or so APIs.
But a CIO or Sales Director will tend not to try to make this solution interoperable with the existing information system, forgetting the services and added value of a Google Apps SaaS integrator...
"There are now a large number of APIs that can be used to make Google Apps interoperable with CRM systems. Google's APIs are, of course, very open, allowing specific developments to be made for each business need. We have developed a number of technological feats in recent months with add-on modules for Google Apps. Display information from your IS in Google Apps? No problem. Bringing up data from Google Apps in your BI tools? Of course, we can configure or develop the connectors to achieve this.
In the world of Google Apps, anything is possible for an SME," explains Laurent Jacquet, Managing Director at Business Cloud. Demonstrating the nature of feasible connections, I'm still amazed at the extent to which Google Apps' capabilities are underestimated...
A SaaS integrator takes your business issues into account with Odoo
Florent Thomas, Managing Director of Mind & Go, was a little surprised by my question "Why do SMEs still have to go through an integrator in this age of SaaS? "It's the integrator's proximity and understanding of the business issues that makes the difference. Odoo (formerly OpenERP, editor's note) is an open source software company, and the publisher carries out all the R&D on the framework, while remaining naturally far removed from the reality on the ground. Odoo's support is excellent, but it can't understand the customer's process behind the scenes. It's up to our functional consultants and our team to do that work.
Florent Thomas goes on to explain a whole series of practical implementations that are not possible using self-service via the Odoo website: "So naturally, if you're a very small business starting out with a traditional business and no IT infrastructure, you can do without us. However, if you need to set up a VPN to connect to your local LDAP... If you need specific developments on a community module directly on our servers or your servers... If you need to communicate with other systems... Then you won't be able to go through the publisher's site, and the SaaS integrator becomes essential".
After this introduction, I understood all the specific features of Mind & Go: vertical expertise from infrastructure to virtualisation and deployment, with the implementation of various management solutions (such as Odoo) derived from open source software, the value of which is to free oneself completely from the limits imposed by traditional proprietary software. According to Florent Thomas, SaaS has the advantage of being a standard that salespeople push; but to be satisfied with it from a certain size of SME, with processes that become specialised, would be a mistake because the tool must adapt to your methods and not the other way round...
A SaaS integrator verticalises Microsoft Dynamics NAV for your distribution business
Microsoft Dynamics NAV is the best-selling ERP in the world. There's a good reason for this: like all good Microsoft products, it can be configured and specified to suit all sectors of activity.
"We primarily recruit people from business schools, former CFOs and industrial directors, who think in terms of the "Enterprise" to support change. Our business is above all consulting and business processes for CPGs (Consumer Product Goods, editor's note), because what interests our customers is our business know-how. Being a SaaS integrator, in our case, means above all providing expert advice on implementation, not development, even if some of this is still necessary.
Franck Le Strat, General Manager at Isatech, explains that SaaS is now a business accelerator when it is deployed by a company specialising in a very specific sector of activity. And that, contrary to popular belief, the same volume of services is always provided to key accounts. Above all, SaaS offers flexibility and scalability. This is not the same with SMEs with fewer than 50-100 employees, where there may be very little integration and specific development.
It was on the basis of this acquisition of on-the-ground expertise in Dynamics NAV in SaaS and PaaS mode that Isatech developed Isacomerce: a verticalised solution for the distribution of goods in general and e-commerce in particular. Just goes to show that a SaaS integrator can completely repackage a publisher's solution to optimise it for your Internet sales strategy, with virtually no on-site intervention. That, too, is the magic of SaaS.
Article translated from French