SAAS on Easy Path

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SaaS
Oracle Edition

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SaaS For Dummies®, Oracle Edition
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Table of Contents
Introduction........................................................ 1
Foolish Assumptions.................................................................. 1
How This Book is Organized..................................................... 2
Icons Used in This Book............................................................. 3
Where to Go From Here............................................................. 3

Chapter 1: Definitions, Buzzwords, and Acronyms. . . . . 5
Getting Social, Going Mobile..................................................... 6
The Cloud and SaaS.................................................................... 7
More “aaS” Acronyms to Know................................................. 9
Infrastructure, served up to-go....................................... 9
A platform stocked with tools....................................... 10
Serving up data............................................................... 10
Cloud Computing — Public or Private?................................. 11
Hosted Solutions vs. the Cloud............................................... 14
What’s Digital Disruption?....................................................... 15

Chapter 2: Your Challenge: “The Digital Agenda” . . . . 17
The Rules of Tomorrow........................................................... 17
What Can The Cloud Do For Your Business?........................ 19

Chapter 3: Newfound Power of the
Business Manager . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
New Responsibilities of the LOB............................................. 23
Sold on the Cloud...................................................................... 25
Powerful Marketing Advantages............................................. 26
Service Before and After the Sale........................................... 28
Find and Keep Talent................................................................ 30
Fuel Financial Excellence......................................................... 32

Chapter 4: The Path to SaaS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
Think Before You Leap............................................................. 35
Get Personal.............................................................................. 36
Connect With the Suite Spot.................................................... 37
Be Secure................................................................................... 39
The Business Case for the Cloud............................................ 40

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Chapter 5: Ten Things To Know About the Cloud . . . . . 43
The Cloud is the Answer.......................................................... 43
The Cloud is Not One Thing.................................................... 43
The Cloud is Personal.............................................................. 44
The Cloud Isn’t Just for Software............................................ 44
The Cloud is for Line of Business Managers......................... 44
The Cloud is Flexible................................................................ 45
The Cloud Should Make Life Easier........................................ 45
The Cloud Can Help Your Cash Flow..................................... 45
The Cloud Isn’t All About Saving Money............................... 45
The Cloud Needs an Exit.......................................................... 46

Appendix 1: Evaluating a Cloud Provider. . . . . . . . . . . . 47
Is the Company a Proven, Viable Provider?.......................... 47
Does the Provider Use a Layered, Unified
Security Approach?.............................................................. 48
How Does the Provider Ensure Data Integrity?..................... 49
Taking the Quiz......................................................................... 49

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Introduction

O

dds are that you’ve heard a lot about the cloud in recent
years. If you’re like most people, it was a pretty mysterious term at first, and you may still have plenty of questions
about what the cloud is and what it can do for you. You might
even be tempted to think that it’s just another Internet fad
that will come and go before most people get a chance to
figure it out.
Don’t count on that. The cloud is for real, it’s here to stay,
and it’s not just for trendy millennials. In fact, the cloud has
increasingly powerful implications for businesses That’s
why the roster of companies offering cloud products does
not just include tech whiz kids working out of their garages.
Those offering amazing solutions in the cloud include some
of the biggest and most respected names in technology, such
as Oracle.
If your business wants to compete and win in the digital world
that’s all around, you’ll need to make smart decisions about
technology. That quite possibly will include tapping into cloud
solutions for some functions, or lots of functions, ranging
from sales and marketing to human resources and finance to
customer service.
SaaS For Dummies is in your hands to help get your head in
the cloud. Read on to acquaint yourself with the many related
buzzwords and acronyms, and start to get a feel for the place
you’ll want to be in the digital world. Learn about the technology choices that increasingly are in the hands of those who run
business lines. Get up to speed on what the cloud can do for
you — but remember that you need to fully understand the business challenge you hope to solve before leaping into the cloud.

Foolish Assumptions
We don’t know you, but we know you picked up this book, so
we’re going to make a few assumptions about you, the reader:

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SaaS For Dummies, Oracle Edition



✓ You’re a business manager, not an IT person, perhaps at a
large or midsized organization.



✓ You want to improve business efficiency and productivity, and you’d really like to know more about how cloud
applications can help solve your business challenges.



✓ The way you do business has changed dramatically in
recent years, and you face higher-than-ever expectations
from customers, employees, and partners.



✓ You don’t care that much about the ingredients, nuts,
and bolts of your cloud apps — you just want them to
work their miracles for your business.

How This Book is Organized
Get to know more about software as a service and all of the
other remarkable things the cloud can do for your company.
Then get ready to develop your cloud strategy and pick a
provider.


✓ Chapter 1: Definitions, Buzzwords, and Acronyms —
The cloud is an alphabet soup of terminology, and if
you’re going to develop a taste for that soup, you’ll need
to understand such terms as SaaS, IaaS, public and private clouds, hosted solutions, and digital disruption.



✓ Chapter 2: Your Challenge: “The Digital Agenda” —
Business plays by new rules these days, and if you plan
to enjoy a healthy future, you need to be a modern, digital business.



✓ Chapter 3: Newfound Power of the Business Manager —
Cloud solutions are among the reasons business managers are in the driver’s seat more than ever when it comes
to acquiring technology. The cloud has answers for your
part of the company, whether it’s human resources,
finance, sales, marketing, or service.



✓ Chapter 4: The Path to SaaS — First you must determine
the functionality you need to solve your specific business
challenges. Then, dive in and develop your cloud-based
approach.

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Introduction

3



✓ Chapter 5: Ten Things to Know About the Cloud — The
cloud isn’t just a thing or a place or a product; it’s a channel that connects your needs with new solutions.



✓ Appendix: Evaluating a Cloud Provider — Whether
your business is already in the cloud or on its way there,
here are some questions to ask to ensure you pick the
right partner.

Icons Used in This Book
Check the margins of SaaS for Dummies. You’ll see some cute
little icons there, but they’re not there just to be cute. Those
icons exist to get your attention, to be sure you know you’re
about to read some important information you won’t want to
miss. Here are the ones you’ll find in this book:


As you evaluate your cloud options and get ready to head in a
cloudy direction, here’s a pointer to help you succeed.



We’re not in the habit of wasting words, so every word on
every page is there for a reason. That said, the words by this
icon are of particular importance, so please don’t miss them.



Technology can be both powerful and perilous. Read this
paragraph for some important information about what could
go wrong if you’re not careful.



Technology is also pretty darned technical, needless to say,
and we already noted that we’re assuming you’re not a techie.
Nevertheless, by this icon are some technical details you
might find intriguing.

Where to Go From Here
Ready to head into the clouds? Then turn the page! There’s
a lot of ground to cover. Just like any book in English, these
pages are numbered, they’re in numerical order, and text
flows left to right. Always best to keep things simple and
familiar.

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SaaS For Dummies, Oracle Edition
But could it be that you’re a bit of a rebel? Are you one of
those people who prefer not to follow convention? Are you
into skipping around? Reading back-to-front? Taking in a little
now, a little later? Fine! We don’t mind! This book is structured
to meet your needs, however you wish to approach it. We’re
just pleased you picked it up, so . . . enjoy!

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Chapter 1

Definitions, Buzzwords, and
Acronyms
In This Chapter
▶ Socializing and mobilizing
▶ Getting your head in the cloud
▶ Understanding the acronyms
▶ Choosing public or private clouds
▶ Building upon hosted solutions
▶ Disrupting the technological world

T

he Internet has provided an ever-moving target of gamechanging advances and technological jargon with which to
keep up. People in their middle ages — who are old enough to
remember going in-person to the library, researching through
card catalogs and actually using phones to speak with one
another — are astounded to see concepts from science fiction
turn into reality. Those who are younger are amazed at the revolutions that have occurred constantly throughout their lives.
This chapter examines a small segment of these advances in
the way people and organizations handle their software, storage, networking, hardware, and other needs related to computers and communication devices. It’s an alphabet soup of
acronyms and buzzwords.

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SaaS For Dummies, Oracle Edition

Getting Social, Going Mobile
“Social” is a term that’s both expansive and limiting. With
regard to the many things that can be accomplished with
computers and other devices, it’s among the most astonishing
trends to come along in generations.
People are more constantly connected with one another than
they’ve ever been. One recent study found that Americans on
average spend more than two hours every day on their smartphones and surfing the Internet on their computers. Other
studies have come up with even higher estimates.


What’s limiting is the temptation to think of social as pertaining primarily to one’s social life — life away from work. In reality, the same digital trends driving personal use of Facebook
and Twitter have infected the working world, with applications
that allow unprecedented collaboration and communication
between coworkers, with customers, and among other occupational partners. Social technologies aren’t just about sharing
photos of cute kittens or reviews of new restaurants — they’re
revolutionizing business.
They’re doing so in large part because these technologies
have become so incredibly mobile. There are now nearly as
many mobile devices out there as there are people on Earth.
Literally. Seven billion or more smartphones and tablets
are in the pockets and purses of human beings around the
globe — that’s mobile technology on an unbelievable scale.
And there are so many useful things one can do on those
smartphones that a lot of users hardly ever actually talk on
them. (Of course, there are also a lot of comparatively useless things one can do with a smartphone, too, but everyone
needs a little frivolity now and then).
Making all of this possible are volumes and volumes of data.
The electromagnetic spectrum swirling invisibly around
your head is filled with data, zipping between networks and
devices, or from one device directly to another.



There’s unprecedented power in this data. The problem is,
tapping into that power is no small feat. In fact, there’s a term
for these data sets that are so massive and complex that they

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Chapter 1: Definitions, Buzzwords, and Acronyms

7

can’t really be adequately processed with the applications of
yesteryear (or last year). This is big data.
How can one efficiently capture, visualize, analyze, store, and
share data this big? How much more powerful can one data
set become when it’s analyzed alongside another massive
set of different but related data? What kinds of connections
could be spotted if it were possible to truly integrate and dive
deeply into big data? The possibilities are nearly limitless.

The Cloud and SaaS
Every useful thing you do on your computer, your tablet,
your mobile phone — whatever device is in front of you — is
made possible by a software application. Typically, the device
you’re using is running that application itself.
The question is, where do all of those lines of code live? Are
they stored on the device, or someplace else? For years, the
answer to that question has commonly been, “on the device.”
You purchase software, install it on the device, then launch it
when you need it. Whatever documents or data you create are
typically stored on the device, too.


The concept of software as a service, or SaaS, is more or less
the opposite of that model. Instead of purchasing a copy of the
application and installing it on your computer or other device,
the SaaS concept provides you with the use of the software on
a subscription basis, and the application resides elsewhere,
loading onto your device when you launch it.



That “elsewhere” has become popularly known as the cloud.
Simply put, the cloud is a metaphor for some location other
than your local device, somewhere out there on the Internet.
In some cases you know precisely where that server is that is
serving up the application and related data, but often the location is a bit, well . . . cloudy to the user.
For the most part, that distinction doesn’t really even matter
to the user — the cloud brings that application and any necessary data to wherever the user might be. Like clouds up in the
sky, this cloud is everywhere, all the time.

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SaaS For Dummies, Oracle Edition
What kinds of things can you do through SaaS and the cloud?
Don’t groan when you hear this, but when it comes to accessing
software via the cloud, the sky is the limit. Line up enterprise
resource planning applications via SaaS, or apps focused on
human resources management, perhaps customer experience
management, supply chain management, or enterprise performance management. That’s just a handful of the possibilities.
So why choose SaaS? Isn’t the concept of running your own
apps and storing your own data on your own local devices a
tried and proven concept? Perhaps, but SaaS has a lot going
for it. For example:



✓ Reduced upfront costs: Because SaaS is a subscriptionbased model, you’re paying for the applications as you
use them, not all at once upfront. You can be up and running for a lot less capital at the outset.



✓ Speed: You can also be up and running and benefiting a
lot faster. With the app in the cloud, your IT department
doesn’t have to install and then maintain it on dozens or
hundreds or thousands of devices. It’s just there, as easy
to access as a web page with pictures of cute kittens.



✓ Scalability: As your company grows — or your customer
base, or your needs — it is a lot easier to ramp up your
SaaS application to keep pace. No need to install more
servers, for example, or to install an app on more devices.



✓ Flexibility: In most cases you and other users can
access SaaS apps and the information they control
through desktop or laptop computers, through tablets,
through smartphones — whatever device you have
with you, wherever you happen to be.



✓ Up-to-date upgrades: A SaaS subscription means you’re
plugged into the latest version of the software, and you
don’t have to lift a finger to benefit from upgrades. From
your perspective as a user, upgrades just happen, almost
magically. You don’t have to pay for them, either, because
it’s all part of the subscription. And it’s important to note
that depending on the provider you pick, you may be able
to specify when an upgrade takes place, so that the changeover fits your organization’s schedule needs.
So where did the term cloud computing come from? It’s not
entirely clear, but there are references that go back as far as

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Chapter 1: Definitions, Buzzwords, and Acronyms

9

the 1990s. The use of the terminology really picked up steam
in the first decade of the new millennium.


The concept, however, goes back a lot further than the name.
Consider the early mainframe computers, which users would
access through a network of terminals that did not have their
own processors. All of the work, all of the data storage, all of
the processing — it all happened in a central place.
Today’s cloud computing isn’t totally analogous, to be sure,
as today’s devices do the work of processing. But it pays
homage to that earlier model in which remote users were
linked in to a central hub of activity and derived their power
from that connection.

More “aaS” Acronyms to Know
The “as a service” model is great for applications, as outlined
above. In fact, it’s such a great concept that there are other
“aaS” incarnations providing alternatives for delivering related
technologies through cloud computing.

Infrastructure, served up to-go


Just as SaaS allows you to subscribe to the software rather
than owning it outright, IaaS is a computing model that
delivers cloud infrastructure on a subscription basis. IaaS is
short for infrastructure as a service. Some people refer to the
concept as HaaS, short for hardware as a service (not to be
confused with the Hass type of avocado, which is sometimes
marketed as a Haas).
Through the concept of IaaS, a cloud service provider provides computing capacity in the form of virtual machines,
storage, and network connectivity. The service provider owns
and maintains infrastructure, and typically houses it, and
pricing is based on some type of pay-per-use arrangement.
IaaS providers may also offer everything from IP addresses to
virtual local area networks (VLANs) to firewalls to software
bundles.
In a typical IaaS situation, the user can access a web-based
portal that serves as an operations management console. The

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SaaS For Dummies, Oracle Edition
infrastructure scales on demand, which makes the concept
appealing to growing and fledgling businesses alike, because
they don’t have to invest in infrastructure of their own.

A platform stocked with tools


Another component of cloud computing is known as PaaS, or
platform as a service. Through PaaS, the consumer accesses
a cloud-based application platform to develop and deploy
applications or services with the help of the provider’s libraries and tools. Any applications that users create are hosted by
the service provider.
The services that PaaS providers offer can vary. Some offer more
than just a platform to build and deploy upon, adding tools for
application testing, application integration, security, and team
collaboration. There may be mechanisms for monitoring, workflow management, and other aspects of service management.
Like other “as a service” models, PaaS cuts down on both
costs and complexities. The start-up costs are lower, and services can be scaled up as the need grows. All of the hassles
and expenses of buying and maintaining hardware and platform technology are the responsibility of the service provider.
The various resources for application and service development are shared by other users.
The advantages go beyond reduced cost. It’s also possible to
reduce development and deployment time through the use of
PaaS. No wonder it’s one of the fastest growing segments in
the cloud computing today.

Serving up data


The concept known as data as a service, or DaaS, often goes
hand-in-hand with SaaS. The idea is to provide data on-demand,
wherever the user needs it, through whatever device that user
is holding, on whatever platform is required.
Ease of getting to the data is just one of the benefits of this
concept. Consider how users have dealt with the explosion of
electronic data through the years.

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Chapter 1: Definitions, Buzzwords, and Acronyms

11

Because raw data doesn’t mean much to the average human
being, it’s necessary to access that data with some sort of
software application, which presents and helps to interpret
the data. It’s pretty common for the data and the software to
be bundled together — one particular set of data can be handled by one particular application, while another set of data
may be handled by some other application.
That’s a pretty limiting way of doing things, because it gets
complicated if a user has a need that requires data from those
two different places. Data is divided into siloes, and how many
times has anyone ever described siloes as good things? This
scenario is also complicated and expensive, because it can
mean more different applications to maintain, troubleshoot,
and upgrade.
As upgrades happen, data formatting may evolve, which
just makes things that much more complicated. And one
more thing — with data in too many places, there’s a much
greater chance that some data will be much more up-to-date
than other data, resulting in the potential for confusion and
conflict.
DaaS unwinds this problem by maintaining data separately
from the applications that access it. Data becomes a standalone asset, accessible across all channels and applications.
It’s more cost-effective, less troublesome, and much less
complicated.


Beyond that, it’s a whole lot more powerful. With more centralized and accessible data, you’re better able to leverage
that data into better business decisions, and spotting trends
becomes a whole lot easier.

Cloud Computing —
Public or Private?
Cirrus, stratus, cumulus, cumulonimbus. There’ clearly more
than one kind of cloud. And there’s also more than one kind of
cloud computing. In the broadest of terms, cloud computing
can be divided into two primary varieties: public and private.

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SaaS For Dummies, Oracle Edition
Simply put, public clouds are those used by more than one
business or organization. Private clouds have single tenants,
and the hardware and network associated with each of these
private clouds are dedicated to just one client. There are
pluses and minuses associated with both models.



With a public cloud, each user gets a piece of the cloud environment. It’s typically a pay-as-you-go model, great for users
whose needs are going to fluctuate a lot. Users generally
aren’t on any kind of contract, so there’s lots of flexibility.
The hardware in a public cloud is shared. As a public cloud
tenant, your needs are being served by the same servers and
storage devices and networking that someone else is using.
You may wonder whether this poses a security issue, whether
your data will be safe on shared infrastructure, which is a
very good question to ask, because some cloud providers
have much more robust security than others. The answer is
that if you choose a provider carefully, you can sleep at night
knowing that your data is secure.



You’ll feel safest if your provider is a viable, stable company,
one that’s been in the business a good while, is strong, and
can be expected to be around for the long-term. You’ll also
feel much better if your provider can promise isolated tenancy,
which means that each customer’s data is stored in its own
separate database.
Providers also differ in how they handle access control —
your most secure provider option will have centralized control and integrated identity management, which means that
even if you have multiple cloud applications, each user has a
single login. That login can be customized to ensure that the
user can access only the applications or levels of data that
are appropriate. And if that employee leaves, the single login
can be shut down immediately and easily, preventing the possibility that former employees inadvertently retain access to
sensitive data.
With a public cloud, the hardware is shared, and that can
potentially mean you don’t have control over its performance. The virtual server you’re assigned will reside wherever the provider wants to put it. For many users, this works

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Chapter 1: Definitions, Buzzwords, and Acronyms

13

out just fine. For some users with certain demanding needs,
it’s less than ideal, or even a deal-breaker, but it doesn’t have
to be.


Again, be sure to look into how one provider handles this
compared with another. The isolated tenancy model that
makes data more secure also helps to improve performance.
If you’re not familiar with the term noisy neighbor syndrome,
it’s pretty much what you’d imagine — some other customer
of the same public cloud is such a heavy user that it impacts
the cloud’s performance for you. Because isolated tenancy
keeps databases separate, it can prevent noisy neighbor
syndrome.
One other aspect of a public cloud is that it’s often selfmanaged. That’s one of the things making it cost-effective. It
means that users must manage the setup of their servers, and
many users want it that way, anyway. Anyone who prefers to
leave the details to someone else may not appreciate that.
With early generations of cloud technology, a private cloud
was the obvious choice for users who had demanding security and regulatory compliance requirements. In this regard,
public cloud providers weren’t always able to handle the challenges, compared with the option of having dedicated hardware, storage, and network equipment.



Today, that’s not an issue, as long as you choose the right
public cloud provider. The most advanced providers have
even the most stringent regulatory compliance needs covered, even if you’re required (or desire) to keep local data
stored locally, within the same country. Pick a provider with
data centers around the world, and that potential problem is
instantly solved.
With a private cloud deployment, it’s possible for each user
to fully customize and control network and hardware performance. And it’s also possible to establish a hybrid deployment,
such as one that links virtual servers with dedicated servers.
Because a private cloud involves dedicated equipment, the
pricing model tends to be different from that of a public cloud.
It’s not likely to be pay-as-you-go.

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SaaS For Dummies, Oracle Edition

Hosted Solutions vs. the Cloud
The concept of hosted solutions is nothing new, really. The
term essentially refers to relying on an outside provider for
some service that’s hosted on the provider’s server somewhere else. Users connect to the hosted service by way of the
Internet or a direct connection.
Companies have long used hosted services for such things as
email, backing up critical data offsite, and hosting websites. In
fact, the idea goes way back to the days when users would sign
up for timeshares on mainframe computers hosted by others.


So how is that different from a cloud solution? Isn’t the cloud
just a way to connect to some service that’s hosted elsewhere? Well, sort of. You could accurately say that cloud solutions are examples of hosted services. But they’re a whole lot
more than traditional hosted solutions.
For one thing, cloud solutions pretty much always are accessed
via the Internet, while hosted solutions may or may not be. It
could, instead, be a direct network connection. Because cloud
services are typically delivered via the Internet, users often get
to their cloud solution by launching a web browser, rather than
some other software application.
Second, cloud solutions are big on interconnectivity. Though
users may get at the service through a web browser, they
also may access the cloud solution via a smartphone or
tablet app. Often they can choose whatever method suits
their immediate situation. That kind of interconnectivity
is more difficult to achieve through other kinds of hosted
solutions.
Also, cloud solutions are typically designed to be quickly and
easily scaled up or down as needed, which may or may not be
the case with hosted solutions. That scalability is often built
right into the pricing model of a cloud solution.



And, cloud solutions tend to be collaborative in nature. The
information stored in the cloud isn’t just there to be accessed
easily by one user — in many cases it’s there so that many users
can easily share access to the same things, work together on
them, and communicate freely and effectively about their work.

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Chapter 1: Definitions, Buzzwords, and Acronyms

15

What’s Digital Disruption?
It’s practically cliché to talk about the pace of change. Who
hasn’t been dazzled, or made dizzy, by technological developments of one kind or another? The question is, will you ride
the latest technological wave, or will it wash over you?
That’s the query at the heart of the term digital disruption.
Technology is opening many doors of opportunity for better
ways to meet customer needs. But those doors aren’t just
opening for you . . . technology can work just as dramatically
for your competitors, too. And for potential competitors
you’ve never even heard of before.
On top of that, these advances are more cost-effective than
ever, in many cases. They’re also happening at a much more
rapid pace. Some improvements are relatively small, some
dramatic, but they’re happening seemingly all the time.


That’s digital disruption for you. Companies that hope to stay
ahead in this kind of environment need all of the help they
can get in order to accelerate ever-faster, in a cost-effective
manner. Cloud solutions can slow the cost curve while speeding up the development curve, both of which are critical if you
hope to be the perpetrator of digital disruption rather than its
victim.

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SaaS For Dummies, Oracle Edition

These materials are © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Any dissemination, distribution, or unauthorised use is strictly prohibited.

Chapter 2

Your Challenge: “The
Digital Agenda”
In This Chapter
▶ Caring about the digital challenge
▶ Making decisions about the cloud

H

ow long has your business been around? A year? A hundred years? It doesn’t really matter, because no matter
what kind of history you have, if you want a future you’ll need
to play by tomorrow’s rules.
This chapter explores the challenges inherent in being a
modern, digital business — why it’s important, what’s in it for
you, and how businesses are approaching the opportunities
that cloud solutions offer.

The Rules of Tomorrow


It’s the digital age, and whether you like it or not, new technologies will have a profound impact on your operations, your
relationship with customers, your interactions with employees,
your dealings with regulators — you name it, there’s likely an
impact. To thrive in the digital age, you need to set your own
digital agenda. To be a successful modern business, you must
be a digital business. This isn’t just a matter of technology; this
is transformation of the business as you know it.
Start with customers. They’re all about the experience these
days. Sure, they still are demanding a top-notch product,
but they’re more particular than ever about what happens

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between the time they decide they want something and the
time they obtain it, plus the subsequent time when they’re
using it, enjoying it, or having issues with it.
They expect marketing that speaks to them, easily accessed
information, responsive salespeople, a slick transaction, swift
fulfillment, and excellent service after the sale. They want it
all for a competitive price, too.



Your digital agenda must address customers’ needs and
expectations on their terms. That may mean adding Twitter
to your channels for answering service needs. It could mean
enabling customers to pick up online orders in person, or
have in-store orders easily shipped somewhere else. It likely
means helping on-the-go customers hunt down your products
or find your locations at the touch of a GPS-powered smartphone button.
Employees, too, have more demanding expectations than ever.
For starters, they want technology that makes their work more
effective, with fewer hassles. They expect easier collaboration
with colleagues, wherever in the world they or their colleagues
might be. They need real-time information served up with analytical tools that will help them make intelligent decisions. They
also are demanding more control and easier access when it
comes to the actual experience of their employment — including such tasks as managing their employee benefits and checking on the number of days off they have in the bank.



Finding, recruiting, and retaining those employees in the
digital age is a challenge in itself. Social connections are
increasingly essential, as many of the best employee finds
these days are happening through types of connections no
one even dreamed of a decade or two ago. As is the case
with customers, achieving true loyalty from the most valuable employees is increasingly challenging. Employees, like
customers, can be fickle.
Everything happens ultra-quickly in the digital age. Progress
seems to happen at the speed of light — and of course, you
hope that type of speed holds true with regard to your company’s growth. But if that’s the case, you need to be able to scale
up to keep up with your innovation.

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Chapter 2: Your Challenge: “The Digital Agenda”

19



Your innovation also has to be able to keep up and stay
ahead, which means time-to-market must shrink, whether
you’re marketing a product or a service. You need business
intelligence, powerful analytics, collaborative tools, and other
digital wizardry to keep ahead of your competitors. In fact,
you also need to shrink the time it takes to implement those
digital tools that are your secret to success.



That’s where the cloud becomes so enticing. Cloud solutions
address the customer experience and the employee experience. They offer new and sometimes remarkable abilities for
managing your talent and your finances. They equip members
of your sales team with seemingly magical powers, and connect
them at the hip with their counterparts on the marketing team,
who enjoy pretty remarkable capabilities of their own. They
make service team members seem like wizards in the eyes of
customers.
And cloud solutions are doing these things at lightning speed.
As customer and employee requirements evolve and business
conditions change dramatically, cloud customers are finding
that they can acquire, install, and be up-to-speed with new cloud
apps in a matter of weeks, rather than months or even longer.
Icing on this tasty cake is the bottom-line advantage. Cloud
solutions can free up big chunks of the IT budget from being
mired in complex in-house environments that seem to deliver
nothing but headaches, so that those funds can be invested in
more customer-facing growth opportunities.
It’s likely that your company is spending plenty on IT — the
question is, are you spending it in the best places? Many firms
spend up to 80 per cent of their IT budgets on low-value work,
when they’d benefit tremendously by directing more of those
funds toward innovation.

What Can The Cloud Do
For Your Business?


Perhaps the most fundamental truth about the best cloud
solutions is that they’re technology at its most powerful and
amazing, yet they hardly feel like technology. They can be so,

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well, un-frustrating. The most powerful solutions also tend
to be the most intuitive to use, and compared to the legacy
systems they often replace, their care and feeding is a relative
breeze.



Suffice it to say that technology almost takes the back seat in the
world of the cloud. Oh yes, the technology is there, but it’s not
intrusive, not distracting you from what really matters: understanding how and where the cloud can make your business more
successful. That means businesses can make the most practical
decisions about what activities should and should not be put
into the cloud, instead of being bogged down by questions about
technology limitations
The answer, of course, is highly individual, very different from
one organization to the next. Some small businesses could
not even exist in their present configuration without cloud
technology, because they’ve set up shop virtually, leaving the
bricks and mortar and vital equipment to someone else.
A small cloud-based business may employ a team spread
across different cities, working from their own offices (or even
their cars), perhaps maintaining their own flexible schedules.
The cloud can bring collaboration and a feeling of proximity
rivaling what these coworkers would have if they were all in
the same physical place, sharing ideas and responsibilities
and even water-cooler chatter.
These team members share access to the same project management systems, the same sales management applications,
and perhaps most important, powerful customer experience
solutions that allow them to deliver the kind of customer service one might expect more from a larger operation with a lot
more invested in bricks and mortar.



In that regard, the cloud is an exceptional tool for leveling
the playing field, allowing smaller businesses to compete
successfully with larger global enterprises and enabling large
enterprises to be more agile. One recent study found that
69 per cent of companies with fewer than 20 employees are
capitalizing on cloud technologies, compared with 55 per cent
reported by companies with between 250 and 999 employees.

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Chapter 2: Your Challenge: “The Digital Agenda”

21

But what about those larger companies? Their embrace of
the cloud is also on the upswing. What they’re choosing
to migrate to the cloud may be a bit different, and the way
they’re using it varies.


Larger enterprises also recognize the benefits of moving their
enterprise business applications to cloud solutions. They’re
finding incredible benefit in cloud-based project portfolio
management, for example, establishing a single source of project truth for improved insight, more effective oversight, and
more informed decision-making.
They’re also realizing the benefit of accessing financial applications and data through the cloud, with real-time access to
financials, streamlined data entry and transactions, and the
ability to comply with global accounting standards as well
as local requirements. Cloud-based sourcing, meanwhile, is
useful for uncovering previously unrecognized savings opportunities, with standardized and centralized processes.
Indeed, the cloud has really made the leap from a tech phenomenon to a mainstream business strategy. Beyond financials and
ERP, forward-thinking businesses are rapidly adopting cloudbased HR, sales, marketing, and a wide range of customer
experience opportunities. They’re finding that their demands
for new features, security, and reliability are being met more
effectively than they might have imagined a short time ago.
Are businesses finding the cloud to be right for absolutely
everything? Not necessarily, or at least, not without the right
accessibility and arrangements to meet their business objectives. Security and compliance are two factors that businesses
consider with great care.



Clearly, data security is a high priority, and breaches of security are in the headlines every day. Moving data to the cloud
doesn’t necessarily make it more vulnerable than storing it on
onsite servers,



Compliance considerations may require highly specific security arrangements, and in some cases, they may dictate where
cloud servers are located.

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SaaS For Dummies, Oracle Edition



It’s important to remember that cloud services are all about
increasing flexibility — not losing it. Some skeptics are afraid
they’ll lose control of data by moving to the cloud, but the
fact is you can have many options and more resources available to you.



The key is to examine your needs carefully as you determine
what to float to the cloud and what to hang on to.

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Chapter 3

Newfound Power of the
Business Manager
In This Chapter
▶ Taking on more responsibilities
▶ Selling more effectively
▶ Marketing with intelligence
▶ Keeping the customer happy
▶ Managing good people
▶ Moving past traditional finance

L

ife may have been simpler when everyone wore just one
hat, but it’s a whole lot more colorful when you have
more hats to wear. There’s a lot more on the plate of those
people managing lines of business, but there are a whole lot
more answers, too.
This chapter explores how cloud-based solutions can help
department heads and business line leaders excel at their
exciting new responsibilities. It spells out some of the key
cloud opportunities for those involved in human resources,
finance, sales, marketing, and customer service.

New Responsibilities of the LOB


Once upon a time — say, in the not-too-distant past — every
department and business line had information technology
needs, and every manager called up the IT department to
get those needs met. Here’s one more revolution in a sea of

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change: Those calls to IT aren’t always being made anymore.
Business managers are increasingly making decisions and
taking action on their own, thanks to cloud-based offerings.
Take marketing as an example. That’s a hotbed of cloud activity
that’s clearly the way of the future, and those in charge of marketing are increasingly responsible for the technology decisionmaking. One study predicts that by 2017, marketing leaders will
be buying more technology than will IT departments.



As many as four-fifths of marketers now have their own budgets
to spend, and there are a lot of great places to spend that money.
Customer-relationship management is just one marketing-related
area where there’s a lot of cloud activity. It has already become a
$20 billion business, and more growth is on the way.
The same shift of influence toward business lines and away
from IT is happening elsewhere in the organization. That
change is happening in large part due to the proliferation of
cloud solutions, which don’t require installation and maintenance by the IT staff. Business units gain the ability to shop
and buy for themselves, basing their decisions on cost and the
capabilities of the solution. That doesn’t mean IT is out of the
picture. In fact, the advance of cloud solutions can free up IT
specialists to become more engaged in innovation and strategy.



Just as important is the ever-increasing focus on the customer
experience. These days that’s at least as important as the product itself, oftentimes even more so from a marketing perspective. Customers have more influences than ever as they make
decisions, from social media and digital forums to review sites
on the web.
The benefits of this evolution work both ways. Customers
can gain new insights into the purchase and ownership experience, while marketers have entirely new and incredibly
powerful sources of information about how customers make
decisions. Cloud solutions are ideal for gathering, sharing, and
analyzing this treasure trove of information.
It’s all about best practices and innovations, and the newfound opportunities that business managers and business line
leaders have to make exceptional things happen. The cloud is
one of the technologies enabling this evolution, along with a

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Chapter 3: Newfound Power of the Business Manager

25

mobile-first strategy that brings to everyone’s fingertips the
kinds of analytical tools and real-time information needed to
act quickly and smartly.


What would you do with better access to business intelligence? How could the ability to aggregate, access, and analyze
big data help you innovate and succeed? How would you take
advantage of the collaborative work opportunities brought
about by social technologies? These are just a few of the questions you can answer with the help of cloud-based solutions.

Sold on the Cloud
You could argue that few professionals need the mobility and
interconnectivity of the cloud more than those in sales. They
tend to be on the go all the time, away from desks, in airports,
on trains, at coffee shops, in prospects’ lobbies. There’s a
whole lot of stuff they need to access, and they need access
on their laptops, their tablets, their phones, perhaps the computer in the hotel business center.


Even so, robust sales cloud solutions are so much more than
contact lists, schedules, and sources of prospects. They really
get to the heart of the challenges facing those in sales leadership roles — how do you put your perfect sales plan into
action and make it really fly?
On that level, the challenges revolve around getting the most
out of your sales force. As a vice president of sales, for example, it’s critical that you identify who your top performers
are, recognize them and keep them happy, while helping the
B team develop into top players, too. You need to provide the
best training at the outset, and be aware of coaching opportunities when there’s still time to turn problems around.



In fact, with regard to coaching, imagine what would happen
if you could magically show up to coach a salesperson while
an issue is still top-of-mind, perhaps even still occurring? That
would be a whole lot more effective than discerning a problem
while reading an after-the-fact report, wouldn’t it?

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A cloud-based sales solution, such as Oracle Sales Cloud, provides answers to a lot of sales challenges. For example:



✓ Maximize your talent: Give members of your sales team
access to every morsel of information they need to succeed while in the field, and make sure they can access
sales force automation tools on any device. Keep tabs on
how they’re doing, while they’re out in the field.



✓ Improve the selling and buying experience: Give your
sales reps more time to engage face-to-face with customers, while also providing them with the right information
at the right moment.



✓ Close the gap: Start with a reality-based forecast that
draws upon the most solid information, then track the
trends in real time, making changes quickly if needed.
Gain credibility with accurate forecasting and planning
for the sales vice president.



✓ Make a plan: Move past gut decisions and build a sales
plan that your team can take out and pursue for a big
win. Set the right goals and incentives, and use cloudbased intelligence for territory management.



✓ Predict your customers’ behavior: Perform white-space
analysis and determine the most likely opportunities for
cross-selling and up-selling. Spend the most time on the
most high-probability deals. Use predictive analytics to
provide insights that help you identify the next likely
purchase a customer will make, based on what similar
customers have purchased in previous encounters.

Powerful Marketing Advantages


As tailored marketing becomes more of a reality, customers
seem to be increasingly expecting a more personalized marketing experience. They’re losing patience with marketing that
doesn’t speak to them. Companies that meet the challenge of
making personal connections are creating more impactful and
satisfying customer experiences — and increasing their sales.
Of course, it takes some big data to pull it off, and that data
must be managed in seriously sophisticated ways. There’s no
better solution than the marketing cloud.

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Chapter 3: Newfound Power of the Business Manager


27

The goal is to create a consistent marketing experience across
multiple channels: web, social, mobile, email, and any other
digital channel. You need marketing content that matches
where the viewer is in the customer lifecycle, in order to
achieve better engagement, improve retention, and make it
more likely that a potential customer will become an actual
buyer — and on top of that, a loyal one who becomes a brand
advocate.
Social marketing is, of course, an incredibly powerful way to
have customers amplify your marketing voice, but there’s
also incredible value in listening and analyzing what’s being
said out there. Do all that and you’ll end up with a boatload of
data, which means you need a way to aggregate and analyze
that data.



How can the cloud help? Consider what a comprehensive
solution such as Oracle Marketing Cloud can help you
accomplish:



✓ Make it personal: Create data-driven customer experiences that are tailored to every visitor and viewer, yet
are unified across the various channels. Capture and display the online behavior and social interactions of customers and prospects. Ensure that your content strategy
speaks directly to the target, across the sales process.



✓ See what works: Track how each campaign and program
contributes to revenue, and do so with enough speed
and nimbleness that you can adjust course as needed.
Measure the impact of specific content at each point in
the sales funnel, and analyze the “digital body language”
of each customer and prospect.



✓ Track revenue performance: Take smart action to optimize top-line growth by identifying revenue drivers and
monitoring performance.



✓ Connect marketing and sales: When it comes to B2B
marketing, ensure that the sales and marketing teams are
on the same page and a single platform, so that everyone’s onboard with the same goals, strategies, and metrics. Do a more effective job of identifying, engaging, and
qualifying potential buyers before passing them along to
sales as leads.

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SaaS For Dummies, Oracle Edition



✓ Create a strategy for paid, owned, and earned:
Leverage the platforms that’ll help you create and distribute content for your paid and owned assets, such
as your website and social media channels. At the same
time, activate your marketing data to discern how to proceed with paid advertising.



✓ Build a better database: Use targeting and segmentation,
data, profiles, and preferences to generate better-quality
leads. Get better leads for business buyers, while creating more relevant experiences for consumers.

Service Before and
After the Sale


As noted in Chapter 1, the customer experience has become
at least as important as the product itself, according to recent
research. One of the many make-or-break components of
the customer experience is service. Create a great product,
deliver a stellar shopping and buying experience, but then
drop the ball on service, and your loyal customer advocate
may transform into a social media nightmare.
Important as it is, this is an area where even the best companies have sometimes stumbled. And it’s not hard to see
why. For one thing, different areas of support have often been
siloed, and it appears to customers that one hand has no clue
what the other hand is doing.
Also, for some companies the contact center has had a tough
time keeping up with call volumes, because too many people
are calling to ask questions that didn’t really even need to
be answered by a human being. On top of that, some of the
tougher questions may stump the contact center employee.



All of these are challenges that a cloud-based customer
service solution can address well. Here are just a few of the
answers that can come along with a cloud solution such as
Oracle Service Cloud:

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Chapter 3: Newfound Power of the Business Manager

29



✓ Help customers help themselves: Free up your call
center representatives for the tougher calls with selfservice sites that offer guided answers. Supplement that
with online chat, click-to-call, co-browsing, and virtual
assistance. Make it all happen regardless of the device
the customer is using. And get customers’ service questions answered at the point where those answers are
needed, regardless of where they are in their customer
journey, which will satisfy them and free up your staff.



✓ Get it together: Unify all of your customer service touch
points in order to better understand customer needs.
Bring contact center, field service, web, mobile, and
social onto the same cloud-based solution so that service agents have a 360-degree view of the customer, in
a single, unified desktop integrated with other critical
systems.



✓ Keep an ear to the ground: Monitor social media channels for service-related comments and potential issues,
so that you can respond and engage customers proactively. Make sure social customer service is a key part of
your social media strategy.



✓ Share the knowledge: Underpin all service channels with
a single knowledgebase, so it’s easy for customers and
agents to find the right information that’s consistent and
accurate. Make it easy for agents to author and publish
to the knowledgebase so it becomes a living, growing
repository that is constantly updated.



✓ Improve the contact center: Give your contact center
agents the tools and technologies they need to deliver
the caliber of service customers will rave about on social
media, no matter what channel or device your customers are using to reach you. Help your team answer complicated questions and resolve complex issues quickly.
Build upon virtual assistant web self-help with live-agent
assistance and guided interactions, and give agents the
power to co-browse — viewing a customer’s screen to
walk through online tasks.



✓ Foster customer advocacy: View service as the nursery
for establishing and building customer advocacy. An
exceptional and personalized service experience, delivered through preferred channels, can have more impact
than anything else on getting customers to recommend
your company and refer others in your direction.

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✓ Build loyalty: Generate repeat business, increase order
size, and keep customers loyal with the right engagement through the contact center or during the online
experience.



✓ Convert shoppers to buyers: Build up your online service options to increase conversions to sales. Make
effective use of online chat, click-to-call, co-browsing and
virtual assistance to reduce shopping cart abandonment
and enhance opportunities to cross-sell and up-sell.



✓ Anticipate the needs of customers: Don’t just react to
customer demands, but rather anticipate their needs,
intentions, and behaviors so you can behave proactively.
Offer more robust and personal self-service options to
head off inbound contacts and improve customer satisfaction along the way. Connect with customers using the
platform they prefer.

Find and Keep Talent
Are you a human resources leader or a miracle worker?
Odds are you’re expected to be both. Executives want you to
increase operational efficiency while also cutting costs. They
want you to streamline core HR functions and eliminate waste.
At the same time, you also need to find, hire, reward, and retain
the best talent. Social recruiting is a trend you must understand
and deliver. You must support a working environment that’s
collaborative and productive. You’re expected to make an evergreater contribution to the organization’s strategic vision.
There’s also an expectation that you invest in whatever technology is required to ensure global agility. That’s a challenge
for a lot of HR professionals, who have been using the same
kind of legacy human resources management system for a
long time. Thank goodness for the cloud!


Not that the cloud can, in and of itself, work miracles. It takes
the right cloud solution to be able to handle both local HR
needs and the challenges that go along with a global organization. Like any other kind of cloud solution, one focused on
HR has to be an effective mix of social, mobile, and analytical
capabilities.

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Chapter 3: Newfound Power of the Business Manager


31

So, what can a world-class HR cloud solution such as Oracle
Human Capital Management do for your company? Here are
some thoughts:



✓ Find the best and brightest: Acquire talent through
effective recruiting and socially sourced referrals, and
develop existing talent. Make the recruiting and onboarding process simpler, with intuitive applications and
mobile connections.



✓ Track the talent: Gain a better understanding of internal
and external sources of talent, and anticipate the talent
you’ll need. The need for the right employee can arise
without warning, so you must be able to respond quickly.



✓ Get everyone collaborating: Maximize knowledge sharing and collaboration among employees by giving them
access to such capabilities as social sourcing, social performance, social goal and career management, and social
learning.



✓ Answer workforce questions: Combine big data with
predictive and embedded analytics, allowing HR staff to
respond to complex questions, forecast performance and
risk, and make better decisions.



✓ Make information easy to access: Serve up HR applications and information wherever your staff might be, no
matter what kind of electronic device they might have in
their hands.



✓ Streamline global processes: Handle local compliance
needs regardless of the country, and stay up-to-date with
changes in your organization as well as in the regulatory
environment.



✓ Make payday happen efficiently: Get paychecks out
accurately and on-time, in locations around the world,
complying with the many different local compensation
rules.



✓ Pay for performance: Be sure to retain top talent with
attractive and competitive compensation packages, while
keeping the overall labor spend in line.



✓ Optimize workforce management: Keep tabs on
absenteeism and productivity easily, even from mobile
platforms.

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✓ Encourage diversity: Use the cloud to build recruitment
programs that encourage diversity. Manage compliance,
facilitate social networking among employees, and create
training programs.



✓ Teach your employees well: Build a collaborative learning environment that delivers a combination of in-person
and online training tailored to the audience.



✓ Create a high-performance culture: Align personal
goals with the corporate strategies and targets, and give
employees social tools for networking, collaborating, and
encouraging one another.



✓ Spot the leaders of the future: Use talent intelligence
and review to identify high-potential employees.

Fuel Financial Excellence


The job of chief financial officer these days isn’t much like the
finance roles of old. Sure, CFOs are still all about maximizing
profits and keeping costs in line, but they’ve added a strong
focus on creating value and investing in innovation.
Today, CFOs serve as a source for new insights driven by
data and analysis of operations. They’re working closely with
business line leaders to solve old challenges and identify new
opportunities. CFOs have always looked to technology as a
way to automate, but today they are increasingly fans of technology as a means for driving value across the organization.
They have, in fact, found a lot to love about the cloud. They
appreciate its ability to reduce IT costs and increase predictability. But far beyond that, they recognize that digital
technologies and cloud-based solutions bring greater analytical capabilities and operational knowledge, they make such
advances more accessible through mobile platforms, and they
encourage collaboration through social channels.
Finance executives are embracing cloud technologies in large
numbers. One survey found that two-thirds have adopted
a cloud-based system for core financials or are working on
doing so. Even more are turning to the cloud for budgeting
and planning. They relish the opportunity to bring what was
a paper-based world into the digital future, with much greater
automation and web access.

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Chapter 3: Newfound Power of the Business Manager

33



Here’s a rundown of some of the reasons CFOs, controllers,
and other finance leaders are opting for Tier 1 cloud technologies, including Oracle’s Enterprise Resource Planning:



✓ Uncover growth and profits: Turn traditional finance
activities into more automated processes, allowing more
time for data analysis that addresses operational challenges and opens the door to higher profits and new
growth opportunities.



✓ Squeeze blood from a turnip: Keep operating margins
alive and healthy despite sluggish economies, by uncovering new efficiencies.



✓ Put risks in their place: Spend less time reacting to unanticipated risks and direct more of your efforts toward
effectively mitigating them. Use cloud-based solutions
to gain a consolidated view of enterprise risks, spread
best practices, and strengthen the internal controls
framework.



✓ Turn technology upside-down: Don’t fear disruptive
change, embrace it and turn it into an asset. Replace traditional finance tools with cloud solutions to modernize
the organization and enable it to respond more nimbly to
change.



✓ Close those books quickly: Use the cloud to gain visibility into sub-ledgers across the organization, and leverage
collaboration tools to get through the close activities as
promptly as possible.



✓ Find new efficiencies: Get rid of that separate data
warehouse that handles transactional reporting, and use
the cloud for integrated invoice scanning and mobile
expenses. Link transactions with employee collaboration.



✓ Make reports a snap: Stop spending so much time preparing financial reports, by using self-service reporting
capabilities. The benefit: more opportunity to analyze the
numbers using analytics built into cloud applications.



✓ Leverage data: Use cloud technology to partner across
the business and drive data-based decisions.



✓ Keep a closer eye on process complexity: Use the cloud
to more intelligently monitor processes, reduce errors,
streamline inefficiencies, stamp out rogue behavior, and
as a result, improve the bottom line.

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✓ Leverage the cash on the balance sheet: Track cash
movements more effectively so that you can make better
investment decisions. Gain visibility into enterprise-wide
cash requirements and currency exposures in order to
ensure liquidity. Stop relying on assumed settlements
and next-day statements by using improved balance
information.



✓ Collaborate with suppliers: Get your suppliers onto the
team by giving them instant access to agreements, POs,
invoices, and advance shipment notifications.



✓ Get contracts in line: Ensure greater compliance by
using the cloud to produce standardized agreements and
shorten cycle times.



✓ Perfect your procurement: Use collaboration, process
automation, and business intelligence to build a better
procurement process. Access cloud solutions to manage
your off-contract spend, and you’ll find that employees
will be happier. Integrate all sources of demand into your
sourcing solution so you can negotiate better deals.



✓ Get a handle on projects: Load project data into the
cloud so that all decisions are based on a single set of
facts. Get project team members onto the same collaborative page with mobile and social tools. Line up project resources and schedules in the cloud to maximize
productivity.



✓ Learn to love ERP projects: Enjoy the benefits of SaaS to
ease implementation, tame maintenance, streamline integration, and speed up ERP solutions.

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Chapter 4

The Path to SaaS
In This Chapter
▶ Considering functionality
▶ Personalizing the experience
▶ Getting fully interconnected
▶ Keeping everything secure
▶ Making the business case for the cloud

I

f you’ve made it this far in the book (assuming you’ve been
reading front-to-back, that is), there’s a good chance you’re
persuaded that the cloud has something special to offer you
and your organization. The question is, where to go from
here?
This chapter explores the questions you’ll need to ponder as
you develop your cloud strategy. How can you be confident
that what’s right for you today will still be right tomorrow?
Should you start small and build up, or go all in, all at once?
Can the cloud really give you the ability to find or create the
solution that truly matches your own unique needs? How can
you sell leaders on making a cloud investment?

Think Before You Leap
One of the biggest positives about cloud solutions is also one
of the biggest potential problems. And this is it: You can be
up-and-running in practically no time!

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Isn’t that a great thing? How could that possibly be a problem?
Think about it this way. There are all kinds of cloud vendors out
there, offering solutions to seemingly everything. If there’s an
answer out there to a situation that’s been nagging you today,
and you can fix it by tomorrow for a reasonable price, it’s a
tempting course of action.



But it’s best to take a step back first, and give some serious
thought to the kind of functionality that you’ll want — not
just for this particular need, but for other needs that might be
related in one way or another. Determining what functionality
is required is the first step in deciding which platform is right
for your organization.

Get Personal
You may think of cloud solutions as being somewhat inflexible.
After all, aren’t you signing on for some software application
that’s being hosted elsewhere and used by multiple different
clients? Isn’t that part of the reason cloud solutions are so
cost-effective? Well, that’s the way it was, and not all that long
ago, but it doesn’t have to be that way.


In reality, your organization can sign up for cloud solutions
that are highly individualized to your needs and the way that
your business operates. Pick the right application and you’ll
find it can be tailored to your branding, to your local requirements, to your corporation’s specific protocols, to any department’s unique needs.
That means the power to come up with configurations that make
sense for you, dashboards that show just what you need them to
show, reports that provide exactly the insights you require, and
workflows that fit in nicely with the processes that are working
for you. Cloud solutions don’t have to feel like putting on a shoe
that doesn’t quite fit — as long as you shop wisely.



Your ability to individualize the experience becomes all the
more powerful when you add in the power of PaaS, or platform as a service. Better yet, if you use the same tools for
building custom applications that were used to create the
original applications, you’ll end up with applications that
work flawlessly in the cloud environment but are just what
you need them to be. Your IT department will love it.

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Chapter 4: The Path to SaaS

37

One more thing the IT folks (and everyone else) will love
is having control over upgrades and software updates. A
complaint that some have had about the cloud experience is
that software updates happen whenever the provider wants
them, and you as a user have to take them when they happen.
Upgrades might occur at inopportune times from a business
perspective, and they might mess up configurations that you
had gotten just right.


Today’s cloud can offer you the power to decide when or
if you want to update. Changes can happen on your terms,
which can be quite comforting. Again, this power is something you’ll get with some cloud solutions, but not others, so
it’s important to check it out carefully before you sign on the
dotted line.

Connect With the Suite Spot
Think about the cloud applications you’ve heard about,
through conversations with colleagues, articles you’ve read,
or your own experience up to this point. There may be a particular application that comes to mind first when you’re thinking of sales, for example. There’s probably one that pertains
to marketing that pops into your mind, too.
Consider the needs of the HR department, and you might
come up with one familiar name for recruitment and hiring
needs, and another for everyday HR functions. You may think
of a cloud app for service functions, one for order-taking. You
can probably rattle off the name of a great app for procurement, and one that’s really useful for accounting.
Come to think of it, you could put all of those names and products together and build yourself quite a great cloud, couldn’t
you? You’d have access to some powerful functions and excellent tools, along with the scalability that is part of the appeal
of the cloud.


You also might wind up with quite a cloud bill. Any one of
these products is likely to offer a seemingly cost-efficient
solution to the problem it tackles, but add them all up and
the grand total might cause you some pain. When you write
checks to a bunch of different places, your ledger might not
be happy.

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SaaS For Dummies, Oracle Edition
That’s just the beginning of the potential pain that comes
from a piecemeal and random approach to cloud-building. For
example, on one hand, sales and marketing are two separate
functions, but they also can be seen as two sides of the same
coin. If you have one vendor’s fantastic sales app and another’s great marketing app, but they don’t share data, you’re
potentially missing some powerful opportunities.
The same situation holds true with the potential synergy you
lose by getting your HR-related cloud apps from different providers, or customer-service cloud solutions from different companies. Data can often be transferred from one app to another,
but the process isn’t always pretty or easy.
The alternative is to explore cloud solutions by the suite.
What if your various cloud applications could be connected to
one another?
What if you had one data record in one place for each customer, and that record was accessible to whatever cloud
app needed it — sales, ordering, service, or something else?
Wouldn’t that be a whole lot more powerful, less confusing,
and more cost effective than having multiple records floating
in different cloud apps that don’t quite talk to one another?



Pick a suite of related cloud apps from a single provider and
you can make that happen. No pain of transferring and translating data between apps. No agony of doing that over and
over again as one or another app goes through an upgrade.
No frustration of learning multiple different interfaces. And as
a side benefit, just one provider relationship to manage, along
with just one bill to pay that’s likely to be lower than the sum
of several different bills.
That means lower cost of ownership, greater functionality,
happier employees, more satisfied customers. What’s not to
like about that?



As you explore your options, keep in mind that you may need
your cloud solutions to connect not only with one another, but
with on-premises applications, too. For various reasons, there
may be something important that you choose not to send to
the cloud, but that doesn’t mean you don’t want it invited to
the party. For example, perhaps you have accounting on premises, but prefer to handle procurement in the cloud for better

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Chapter 4: The Path to SaaS

39

information sharing and visibility across the business. You’ll
still need to reconcile purchase order and receipt data from procurement with the supplier invoice in accounts payable. That’s
why interconnectivity is so important. Whatever solution you
choose needs to be able to maintain strong interconnectivity
with on-premises apps and data, as well as any third-party apps
that you wish to continue using.

Be Secure
No one has to tell you just how important security is. Just
pick up the paper — today’s, yesterday’s, tomorrow’s — and
you’re likely to find a headline about some company that suffered a data breach. Your cloud solution absolutely, positively
must be secure.


One important thing to consider is that your solution is not
inherently risky just because it’s in the cloud. The cloud can
be and is secure, as long as you choose a strong, stable provider with plenty of experience and a proven track record of
securing customer data in the cloud (as opposed to a startup company that just moved out of the garage yesterday).
What’s more, just because your current app is on-premises
doesn’t mean it’s not prone to breaches. When it comes to
security, where your application and data reside is not the
issue — what matters is that the security protocols are what
they need to be.
That said, it may matter where your data resides for other reasons. From a regulatory perspective, it might not be acceptable for your cloud solution to be housed just anywhere.
Depending on the local requirements, for example, all data
pertaining to business in one country might need to stay in
that country. Some industry requirements also dictate the
location where data must be hosted.
That would mean you need a cloud solution provider with
multiple data centers around the world. It is, indeed, possible
to build a global cloud solution that works seamlessly and
securely for your organization, while still complying with the
local requirements of the various parts of the world in which
you do business. That’s doable, but it takes a provider with
sufficient expertise, viability, and reliability.

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SaaS For Dummies, Oracle Edition
Security is one of the many places that can benefit from a
more unified solutions provider that covers your needs across
multiple areas. You can establish unified security access controls across multiple applications, and that will please your
users and your IT security team alike.



Many businesses benefit from the ability to achieve isolated
data tenancy and security at multiple levels. That means keeping one set of data separate and secure from another, which is
vital for protecting your corporate data. Makes sense, but it’s
not something that all cloud providers can make happen for
you. Be sure to ask around.
While no one likes to think about disasters, when it comes to
your data, it pays to think the unthinkable. As you compare
cloud providers, be sure to consider the strategy by which
your data is backed up, as well as how much redundancy is
built into the infrastructure. If there is a disaster or some technical issue in one location, you need redundancy to ensure
high levels of system availability. Your cloud provider may
offer access to other advanced data security tools, including
full data encryption and virtual private networking services.

The Business Case for the Cloud
There are plenty of compelling reasons to explore cloud
solutions — reasons that make IT people happy, reasons that
please business managers, and reasons that satisfy customers. Ultimately, if you’re going before an executive leadership committee making the case for the cloud, you’ll need to
make a strong business case.


That goes beyond the notion of operational expenses versus
capital expenses. It’s certainly possible that a move to the
cloud will reduce capital expenditures, since hardware costs
are shifted toward the provider, replaced by the operational
expense of paying the provider’s periodic invoice. But for
some companies, avoiding capital expenses is an overrated
rationale.
The better story to tell is how a move to the cloud can help
the company measure up to customer expectations, innovate
faster, and maximize value. The cloud can help the company

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Chapter 4: The Path to SaaS

41

keep up with the demands of the market, and can open the
doors to new markets.
In today’s fast-paced competitive environment, being nimble
and scalable is absolutely essential. Being able to be what the
customer expects and requires is critical. Dazzling your prospects with capabilities they didn’t even know they wanted
can be a game-changer. For most businesses, that’s a far more
compelling argument than simply saving some money on
hardware.


That said, don’t hesitate to point out the financial perspectives, because CFOs like that, too. Does your potential cloud
vendor offer financial incentives that can ease your way into
the cloud, making it more affordable than you thought to build
a truly integrated cloud package? It’s worth asking, and you
just might end up with an answer that’ll sell the CFO.

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Chapter 5

Ten Things To Know About
the Cloud
In This Chapter
▶ Solving challenges
▶ Individualizing the solution
▶ Going beyond software
▶ Saving some money
▶ Planning your exit

N
“

obody understands the cloud — it’s a mystery!” At
least that’s what one Hollywood movie asserted. But if
you’ve read some of the preceding chapters, it shouldn’t be
quite as much of a mystery as it was before. Here are 10 more
bits of information to help clear up the cloud.

The Cloud is the Answer
So what’s the question? There are many, many business challenges for which the cloud provides solutions. The cloud is
a channel connecting business needs with the solutions that
address them best.

The Cloud is Not One Thing
It’s a lot of things, really. The cloud is a collection of
services available to you as a business or an individual
customer — services that are super-powerful, incredibly

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SaaS For Dummies, Oracle Edition
convenient and accessible, and quite cost-effective. A lot
of people think of the cloud as a place, and in a way, it is,
though the exact location of that place is not always known
to the user. It’s somewhere other than here, and yet it’s
always just a click away.

The Cloud is Personal
Every company has a different set of circumstances that dictate what cloud solutions make sense. Just because you have
moved some functions and data to the cloud doesn’t mean
you have to move them all. On the other hand, it can make a
tremendous amount of sense to sign up for one cloud vendor
that can handle everything from HR to sales to marketing to
service to finance. Just depends on your specific needs.

The Cloud Isn’t Just
for Software
The software as a service model is, perhaps, the best known
cloud solution, but savvy businesses know that SaaS is just
the beginning. Data as a service, for example, is a powerful
means for connecting users with your data sets in the ways
most suited for particular needs. With DaaS, data becomes the
fuel igniting a wide range of productivity and power.

The Cloud is for Line of
Business Managers
Because cloud solutions live somewhere outside a company’s
regular IT infrastructure, in many cases the decisions about
what services to engage and how to use them are being made
by the people who actually use those services — those managing or working in particular lines of business. The cloud can
give business managers more power to share information and
innovate all while making their lives easier.

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Chapter 5: Ten Things To Know About the Cloud

45

The Cloud is Flexible
One of the greatest benefits of the cloud is the amount of scalability and flexibility your business will gain. You can scale up
or down as your business needs change and also access information from any device. It is important to evaluate your goals
and the functionality you desire before you move to the cloud.
Not all cloud vendors offer their customers the same amount
of flexibility.

The Cloud Should
Make Life Easier
If it’s not doing so, you might be doing something wrong.
Before you make the big jump, you need to really examine
how employees and customers do what they’re trying to do.
Check out workflows and existing inefficiencies to be sure that
the cloud will meet your business needs.

The Cloud Can Help
Your Cash Flow
Cloud pricing models are often like utilities, in that you typically
pay for what you use, as you use it. That means no upfront capital expense on computers and equipment . . . just a periodic fee
that’s suited for whatever budget you might have.

The Cloud Isn’t All About
Saving Money
In fact, sometimes it’s more about spending money differently.
Move certain operations to the cloud and you’ll likely move
some of your costs from capital to operational expenses.
That, in itself, can be appealing. Still, the move is also likely to
yield some operational efficiencies, so the odds of reducing
overall spending are pretty good.

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SaaS For Dummies, Oracle Edition

The Cloud Needs an Exit
As appealing a place as the cloud can be, there are times
when you need your data back. Perhaps you’re changing providers, or wrapping up a particular operation. Before you put
your data in the cloud, be sure you understand how you’ll be
able to get it back out should you desire — and find out what
it will cost, and how long it’ll take.

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Appendix 1

Evaluating a Cloud Provider
In This Chapter
▶ Checking the viability of a provider
▶ Assessing a provider’s security
▶ Getting comfortable with data integrity
▶ Answering the questions

H
idea.

ow many cloud providers are out there vying for your
business? How many clouds are in the sky? You get the

Something as promising as the cloud is going to attract a lot of
entrepreneurs, all hoping for a piece of the action. Because it’s
such a hot new field, a lot of the players are not particularly
familiar names. How do you know you’ve entrusted the right
company, if you’re already operating in the cloud? Or if you’re
moving in the direction of the cloud for the first time, how are
you supposed to figure out which provider should get your
business?
Following are some things to consider as you evaluate either
your existing cloud provider, or a company you’re considering
for your cloud business.

Is the Company a Proven,
Viable Provider?
How can you tell? Consider these clues:


✓ How long has the cloud provider been managing security
on an enterprise scale?

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• Less than a year



• Between a year and three years



• Three to five years



• Five to 10 years



• Longer than 10 years



✓ Does the cloud provider operate and manage any of its
own data centers?



• Yes



• No



✓ Has the company invested in modern infrastructure
recently?



• Not within the last year



• Not within the last three years

Does the Provider Use a Layered,
Unified Security Approach?
You may have high-level needs related to compliance, or
maybe not, but no matter what, you need to ensure that your
data is secure in the cloud you choose.


✓ What steps is the provider taking to mitigate risk?



• Compliance



• Industry regulations



• Third-party audits



• All of the above



✓ Can the provider show proof of capabilities, such as
security certifications, independent audits, and the like?



• Yes



• No

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Appendix 1: Evaluating a Cloud Provider

49

How Does the Provider Ensure
Data Integrity?
Your company’s data is its lifeblood. The cloud provider must
treat your data like a precious collection of gems, and never
forget that it’s your property.


✓ How do clients transfer data quickly and safely to get up
and running in the cloud?



✓ How do clients make changes to the data structures
(adding fields and that kind of thing) when needed?



✓ In what format can clients get their data if they decide to
leave the service?

Taking the Quiz
If you are already operating in the cloud and jotted down a
negative answer to more than half of these questions, you
can benefit from a more modern cloud solution. If you’re on a
cloud provider search and a candidate can’t offer satisfactory
answers to questions like these, keep looking.
As for the questions that can only be answered by open-ended
comments, check for answers that suggest room for improvement. You’ll want to proceed carefully if these answers point
to serious room to improve. If you’re already with a cloud
provider but the answers leave you jittery, give some thought
about how your organization might be impacted by modernizing your technology choices.

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