The Trend Towards the Cloud Continues

It’s easy to forget that companies are still using on-premise solutions when you see cloud adoption rates over the past few years. In fact, according to Gartner, the traditional deployment model for on-premises software is expected to significantly shrink from 34 percent today to 18 percent by 2017. With this data, we can assume that 82 percent of all software deployments will be in the cloud in the next two years. And if you’re not providing a SaaS-based solution, you’re limiting your company to a fraction of the sales you could be generating.

We’re in the midst of something of a computing revolution. It’s comparable to how products were built and distributed prior to the industrial revolution versus after the industrial revolution. The cloud is continually a topic across the internet and it will not be losing traction anytime soon.

Cloud is constantly being covered as a trend – especially in the small and midsize business (SMB) space. But why?

Because it’s simple.

When we look at cloud vs. on-premise solutions, there are a number of reasons leveraging a cloud, or more specifically software as a service (SaaS), based solution is much easier not only for SMBs, but larger organizations as well.

Here are 7 reasons why cloud-based solutions are helping businesses thrive and how they will continue to do so into the future:

1. Upfront costs are minimal.
   • Outside of an implementation fee, there’s nothing to pay for upfront. SaaS uses the same model as your electric company or cable provider – it’s simply a month-to-month payment for the service you provide, which typically allows customers to cancel at any time. The perpetual license constraints no longer have to be a problem or risk for your prospects.
2. Installation isn’t necessary.
   • Leveraging a new solution no longer has to be the major undertaking it was in the past for customers. As a result, leveraging a new solution can provide an incredibly short time to value for the customer, allowing ROI to be realized much faster.
3. Hardware doesn’t exist.
   • Unless we’re talking about employees clocking in and out on a computer or a time clock, the need for hardware no longer exits. The entire solution is accessible on the web via a browser.
4. Maintenance isn’t required.
   • Security, reliability, availability, performance, and infrastructure, oh my! These don’t have to consume your thoughts and create that stress knot in your back anymore. They’re all covered by the service-level agreement (SLA) guaranteed by the vendor you partner with.
5. Data backups are no longer your problem.
   • The risk of data loss is mitigated with SaaS. With an on-premise solution, if your location was hit by a natural disaster and flooded for instance, the businesses solutions would be inoperable. With SaaS your data is always accessible from anywhere at any time, and if the vendor’s data center is taken down, you can confirm with the SLA that there is a warm standby facility ready to go that mirrors your and your customers’ data.
6. Upgrades are automatic… and free! 
   • Upgrades to the software simply happen with SaaS. You’ll see new features as they’re released typically every one to three months. There’s nothing your IT team needs to do in order to make them available. And the pay-as-you-go model mentioned above means that you’re already paying for you and your customers to get access to the latest and greatest version of the software – there’s no additional cost.
7. IT resources can focus on other initiatives.
   • With the vendor taking care of the software, support, and troubleshooting for you, your IT resources are suddenly freed up to focus more on high-value activities and work on the greater strategy of technology and the role it plays in your and your customers’ businesses.

The cloud and, more specifically, SaaS helps organizations of all sizes to operate more efficiently. Check out more information here or consult an expert at 303-645-4270. 

Single Platform vs. Integrated Platform – What does that mean?

Throughout our experience as a company, we have learned how cautiously vendors tend to phrase how their solutions are “integrated” with each other or with other vendors. The way it’s marketed can look fantastic on a piece of collateral or on a website, but when it comes down to actually using the solution, it can be far different.

With the success of our last blog post “3 Reasons Why Employers Are Requiring Single Platform Workforce Management Solutions,” we thought it would be prudent to continue to elaborate on the difference between integrated and single systems. 

It is very evident that the market is moving away from the integration of disparate systems to “play nice” with each other and towards the use of single systems that are architected and designed as a cohesive suite of applications.  If you ask five different people what integration means, you’ll likely get five different answers. Instead of trying to come up with a single definition of what integration means, we want to help you navigate through the marketing fluff and show you two of the ways you can expect your solutions to work with each other.

Single Platform – This is the most ideal scenario for your company. A single platform for multiple applications SHOULD mean that this is a platform built from the ground up on one database. In saying this, there would be only one database for the data housed within all of these applications.

What does that mean and why does that matter to you?

This kind of solution enables you to have a single record for:

• An employee in the case of workforce management or human capital management
• A prospect in the case of sales and marketing, or more specifically CRM and marketing automation
• A customer in the case of a support platform and CRM

All of these would result in only one field throughout all your solutions for a last name. The biggest benefit to this is really that there is no exchange of data that needs to take place – essentially all of these solutions can act as a single application. This kind of solution essentially goes beyond any formal definition of integration where separate applications or software solutions are connected together.

Beware, though! Vendors using this phrase may be talking about an integrated platform…

Integrated Platform – An integrated platform may be branded as a “single platform” or vice versa, but these are usually yesterday’s applications cobbled together with a common or similar interface that makes it seem like a single platform. We like to call this lipstick on a pig. One way to uncover this is by asking whether or not all these solutions were built on a single database from the ground up. If they were developed separately, that should be a red flag, as what you’re evaluating is likely just an integrated platform.

It’s not bad… but it’s not the best. And with all the consumer software technology we use today, we expect the best. There has to be an exchange of data with an integrated platform between applications. The main difference between this and the single platform mentioned above is that changes made in one application likely won’t flow over to the other application simultaneously, or in ‘real-time’.

What does that mean and why does that matter to you?

• Without a single database:
  • There are multiple employee, prospect, or customer records that need to be maintained. And as a result, this could mean having to enter the same data more than once.
  • Additionally, with these separate records, this would require separate implementations, and therefore, a longer time before you’re actually up and running with your solution.
• Also, if data isn’t exchanged in real-time, it impacts the integrity of the data and you may not necessarily be able to make your decisions in real-time because you’re waiting for a scheduled data exchange between Application A and Application B.

Integration can be overwhelming when we start uncovering the level at which the integration takes place, whether it’s simply a single sign-on or a tighter, more seamless integration, a one way integration vs. a two way integration, etc.

What does this all mean??? Your best bet is to just find a single platform of applications that all reside on a single database. It’s what we’ve all come to expect from software. The only problem is one vendor can’t specialize in all of these different areas… unless we’re talking about workforce management.

Click here to learn more about how Mosaic can help your business thrive with our single-platform, single interface, and single employee record workforce management solution.

You can also visit us at www.mosaices.com and call us at 303-645-4270. We look forward to an opportunity to speak with you. 

3 Reasons Why Employers Are Requiring Single Platform Workforce Management Solutions

You’re almost guaranteed to hear on any software demonstration the word “integration”, but what does that mean? Put simply, integration means having Software A and Software B exchange data between the two, though integrations do not have to be limited to just two systems.

Companies using multiple software solutions, such as HR, payroll, and time and attendance, are now demanding that these technologies be integrated. This has forced the software developers with disparate solutions to cobble together connections between their products, while developers with solutions on a single platform are already offering real time data integration. Integration sounds nice, but wouldn’t it be even better if all of your applications existed on a single platform that has been created to work together seamlessly? The great news is that this capability already exists!

In this blog article, we thought that it would be important to talk with employers to discuss exactly why having a single system is so important for their businesses and how they have experienced the power of a single-platform solution.

1. They now know that a single-platform solution is not only available, it is affordable.

A single system suite of all the needed workforce management solutions is not a new concept in the marketplace today. In fact, they’ve been utilized for years now by the enterprise corporations that saw the benefits and could afford the high price tag that came with them. But as technology has evolved, this deeper level of functionality has been made available to small and midsized businesses (SMBs) at a price they can actually afford.

Now that these SMBs are “seeing the light” on the benefits of multiple applications on a single platform, they’re beginning to demand these fully embodied solutions as a prerequisite. Service providers without the ability to offer this are simply unable to compete with those that can, and service providers offering single-platform solutions are in a unique position to grow market share and mind share within their space.

2. Drives easier and more efficient decision making with reliable data.

Data integrity is everything. You have data for a reason; it’s going to inform decisions that you’re making in your business. If you have the same data residing in multiple places, there’s always an opportunity for data to get out of sync and for it to be wrong in one or multiple of those places. When that’s the case, and you’re consulting one of those systems, you’re pulling the wrong data and making decisions based on the wrong information.

When data takes time to flow between disparate solutions, businesses are unable to get an instant snapshot of their workforce and make decisions on the fly. Having all of your information on a single platform also helps with efficiency by removing the need for data exporting, importing, duplicate data entry, as well as separate resources, software, and multiple logins. Clients simply access one solution sharing data across all of their applications.

3. Creates a competitive advantage and helps with compliance.

Through a more efficient system with reliable data, businesses with single-platform solutions are simply able to operate at a higher level than those with disparate solutions. If you had the choice between being able to proactively manage your business on the fly as changes and obstacles occur, or having to wait a day or two in order to make reactionary changes, which would you want to use? This example shows exactly how businesses with a single workforce management solution can easily gain a competitive advantage in the marketplace.

Are you concerned about managing your Affordable Care Act (ACA) compliance? A single suit of solutions enables businesses to analyze real-time labor data and make the necessary changes to ensure they remain compliant before issues arise. Workforce management solutions such as these are the best way to manage your workforce in today’s world of employment, and we’re seeing that the ACA is especially responsible for driving the demand for single-platform solutions on the workforce management front.

Are you in need for a single-platform workforce management solution? What are some of the issues that you could see yourself living without by moving away from disparate solutions?

Please share your experiences and learn more about how Mosaic can help your business thrive with our single-platform, single database, and single user-interface.

Visit us at www.mosaices.com and call us at 303-645-4270 today!