SaaS: Top reasons why SaaS is better than Desktop software.

SaaS is hot these days. SaaS is simply a natural progression of software delivery brought on by increasing spread of broadband and growing acceptance of online services by users. Heck, online services are just desired but expected. But, delivering software as a service is fundamentally different from their desktop counterparts.
Key to a SaaS product is not just the distribution mechanism, but treating it as a "whole" product. Here are some of the key ways how a SaaS service can differ from its desktop brethren:

• Availability: Services need to be 24X7. To compete effectively with a desktop version, online services have to establish reliability by making sure they are always available.
• Agility: Services are agile. It is far easier to roll out updates to services than updating software products. Due to high costs of distribution, incremental updates are difficult for desktop products. With online services, distribution costs are zero to minimal. Due to this very fact, online services tend to be way more agile than their desktop brethren.
• Interactive: SaaS services have a true opportunity to go beyond their staid desktop counterparts. Due to their interactive nature, they can learn and collect boatloads of information about customer preferences. As this revolution advances, do not be surprised to see more and more personalized interaction.
• Customer Service: This is often an overlooked aspect. To reduce customer contact costs, companies zealously try and avoid providing good customer service. It is important to treat the customer contact not as a cost, but as an opportunity to develop closer ties to the customer. This is also where a service is fundamentally different from installed software. With a service, customer service is expected. Any SaaS company worth its salt has to deliver on this promise if they expect to survive longterm.
• Secure: With online services, security is often a primary concern. Customers hesitate to store their sensitive data online. Attitudes are changing, but skeptics still abound. Especially for new online services, it is imperative that they make customers comfortable about the security of data.
• Collaboration: This is where a SaaS company can truly deliver and differentiate. Unfortunately, being continuously focused on functionality, companies tend to look at the collaborative aspects of an online service as an afterthought.

For successful customer outreach, it is always imperative to focus on key customer pain points. But that usually leads to feature functionality that may not be enough to drive SaaS service adoption. It is important that companies focus on the whole product from sales to customer support when thinking SaaS.