Software as a Service SaaS Initiative for a Strategic Advantage to Organizations

Strategic Network Design 1
Software as a Service SaaS Initiative for a Strategic Advantage to Organizations
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Strategic Network Design 2
What Software as a Service SaaS initiative entails
It is 2018 and the manner in which enterprise and technology companies market
themselves is evolving at a considerable pace. In the face of the increased competition among
organizations for attention on digital channels, the technology firms in the business to business
B2B model can struggle on the right channel to reach the right decision makers and increase their
sales funnel. Connecting with these decision makers about goals or important issues concerning
business can be a great opportunity for success of almost any enterprise technology organization.
For technology-oriented companies to maximize their investment in the marketing facet,
the company should look for a promising initiative as well as tools that have the most potential
for engaging its decision makers by ensuring that they are cognizant of the challenges faced by
their target industry and have a unique solution that can ensure the success of the organization.
Towards that end, this thesis will explore a key marketing initiative that promises to deliver
strategic advantage to organizations. The strategic initiative that has modified the way of
thinking, collaborating and development in the companies as well as business domain, is the
concept of Software as a Service SaaS.
Before it dives into this fundamental initiative in the business domain, this article will
first define and explain what is actually meant by the term Software as a Service SaaS.
Examination of literature suggests various definitions of Software as a service SaaS some of
which are:
“Software as a Service SaaS is a software distribution model where applications are
hosted by a vendor or service provider and made available to customers over a network,
typically the internet.” (Gibson, Rondeau, Eveleigh, and Tan, 2012, pp. 198-205).

Strategic Network Design 3
“Software as a Service delivery model can be considered an extension or delivery of
application service provisioning ASP which is a delivery model that contains hosting,
maintenance and support of software.” (Mäkilä, Järvi, Rönkkö, and Nissilä, 2010, pp.
116-124).
Here above, are just a few definitions of SaaS retrieved from some of the top ranking
sites in google search engine. Basing on the sources, a rough analysis of SaaS definition shows
that all of the definitions stated above have the following aspects in common: a web-based
service model, provided over a network.
For further understanding of the general concept of SaaS initiative in the business model,
we will consider a pioneer in this domain called Waters, “Software as a Service is the leader in
customer relationship management and cloud computing” (Waters, 2005, pp.32-39). The author
further cites that SaaS is a method by which applications are delivered over the internet. Rather
than installing and maintaining a software, a user just simply accesses it over the internet thus
freeing them from the burden of software and hardware management (Waters, 2005, pp.32-39).
Evidently, analysis of literature suggests that SaaS is a critical aspect of multiple
organization’s operations. As an example, Salesforce, one of the renowned customer relationship
management platform that offers various cloud-based services including applications for sales,
services, and marketing have enabled their clients to act very quickly through SaaS (Lomotey,
and Deters, 2013, pp. 13-24). As on-site development projects can go up to several years, with
SaaS as an initiative, the project can be completed within one week or even a day
(Salesforce.com, 2018). Certainly, there is a growing sense that Software as a Service SaaS is a
better initiative that promises to deliver a strategic advantage to various organizations. However,
what is the strategies that render SaaS these advantages?

Strategic Network Design 4
Definition of strategy
Before we discuss many strategies, it is imperative to define the term strategy. The
strategy is construed as a long-term action plan for achieving a goal that is set in the context of
the fast pacing technology (Golsorkhi, Rouleau, Seidl, and Vaara, 2010). It is a critical aspect
that our organizations must consider if they are to succeed in the world of competition. Not only
does well-planned strategies lead to valued services for organizations to keep up with the ever-
increasing demand of business across the world, they also have potential to improve the
marketing and ensure the success of business organizations. Various organizations can
immensely benefit from SaaS-based strategies in different ways.
Firstly, SaaS can offer an immense advantage to various business organizations through
content marketing strategies. Currently, business companies around the globe have implemented
a content marketing strategy to build their brand, attract visitors to their websites and generate a
considerable income. The good thing about content marketing is that it has compounding power
of return and just like other smart investment, its value increase with time (Baltes, 2015, p.111;
(Tyrväinen, and Selin, 2011, pp. 2-16). Most importantly, content marketing continues to drive
leads, as other ways of marketing e.g. pay-per-click will only do so as long as the organization
will continue to spend more money. It is for this reason that I suggest SaaS-based content
marketing as a strategic advantage to companies.
Secondly, SaaS technology has precipitated the opportunity to use Dropbox on business
platforms. This strategy has multiple types of potential customers and attracts them through the