Why SaaS Systems CAN Fail

Category: Blog

Top 10 reasons and advice for mitigating failure

SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) systems have been around as long as I’ve been working in the tech space and that’s going on nearly 20 years. When my career first started in 2005, there wasn’t a fancy name for software you could access using a web browser, like Salesforce.com, but over the years it evolved to being known as “Cloud Software” and ultimately “SaaS”.

These systems changed the way businesses operate, and I would credit SaaS vendors with also being one of the primary reasons new businesses emerge at a much faster and cheaper rate than before the internet came to be.

While SaaS has positives, it also has negatives. The reasons why businesses, looking for a fix or replacement of a SaaS system, reach out for help in the first place are predicable. SaaS system failures start with the approach people. In this article I’ll share with you 10 common failures that prompt businesses to seek out new systems and how best to mitigate the failures.

Failure #1: Choosing platforms that are "popular"

Platforms your peers are using is a great place to start evaluating new systems, but this approach can fail if you are steadfast on choosing the system someone else is using because they say it making them money. If you do not vet your operations (workflow) carefully, against any actual system use and functionality, you stand to lose time and lots of money.

One example of failure that always sticks in my mind involves an online retailer I met years ago. He had invested in a popular ERP on the notion the vendor could have it set up for that business in as little as 6 months for just $50K. It was to be the center of all business operations including the online order automation.

Fast-forward 3 years and $1M dollars of consulting fees later and the system was finally “ready to go”. It went live for just two weeks and the online retailer quickly realized they were losing thousands of dollars a day in sales and productivity. It had to be shut off and put back into development.

How to mitigate failure #1

It is well worth the money for you to invest in a thorough evaluation of a platform, independent of your day-to-day operations before selecting. Think of it as “making the business case” where you can collect solid data points that your decision making is based on facts and actual outcomes. It also allows time to build a relationship with the vendor. Good relationships take time, so make time to evaluate thoroughly before making the change.

Failure #2: Lack of focus on the user experience

Anyone rolling out systems without getting end-user input into the experience, is going to fail. I emphasize this with all my clients that the experience matters just as much as the functionality. This applies to internal and external systems.

Over the past few years, the user experience for a SaaS system has come into focus for many SaaS vendors and any businesses choosing to create hands-off experiences for customers and employees online. Today, the trend of introducing generative Ai into online systems is a contributing factor to ensuring users have a great experience interacting with these systems.

A couple of years ago, I worked with a client who needed an internal system for his team to streamline workflow and reduce errors popping up with regards to physical inventory counts. The project never saw much success and I attribute this to not putting as much emphasis, as we did on functionality, on designing the best possible interactive experience his team could have. The team struggled and ultimately the new system was a disaster.

How to mitigate failure #2

How a system functions is important. But if you want to avoid wasting time and money on change, allocate time during the design process to architect workflow and create wireframes, prototypes, and other user experience assets, that allow you to evaluate the result early on. The investment will have positive returns, guaranteed.

Failure #3: Leaving decision making to team members who lack insight

Establishing systems that are aligned to the strategic and operational plans of your business are key. They provide justification and guidance during the design and development phases. Assigning team members to drive the design of a system, and lacking insight or knowledge of those plans, is a cause for failure.

About 5 years ago, I was engaged by a business owner to design a replacement system for their internal marketing and sales operations. The initial conversations were with that owner but when it was time to digging into how things worked and discussing solutions, I was reassigned to his administrative assistant.

Sometimes this is the case when owners get busy. Unfortunately, in this case, the administrative assistant had to spend a lot of time on the phone with me and typically responded with “I’ll get back to you” or “I don’t know”. This engagement failed before it even started! It was a lost cause that couldn’t be saved except by the owner.

How to mitigate failure #3

I’ve worked with some great administrative staff over the years to implement awesome systems. The reason it was a success, is because those people were empowered with information and responsibility to work efficiently and independently.

I strongly suggest that if you are embarking on change and need your team to spearhead the effort, make sure they have the knowledge to be successful.

Failure #4: Lack of communication

This is such a common culprit of why system changes can fail. If people don’t talk to each other or share information, a system change, will fail. Humans either need to be informed or be involved, and if those two needs are not met, the effort becomes an uphill battle with lots of roadblocks.

Back in 2019, I was introduced to a client that wanted to make his internal operations efficient enough so the owner could take vacation and not be a bottleneck to his team. One of the key contributors to this effort was an employee who had been with the company for years. Typically, he was the go to person for any internal system change but this time his attention was needed elsewhere so he was simply serving as the Subject Matter Expert on the effort.

Initially things got off to a smooth start but as soon as the implementation work was to start, conversations started lacking timely response or there was a denial of access to information. I quickly realized that my attempt to roll out the new system was going to fail rapidly if I didn’t get this addressed. In the end the new system was rolled out but now without some hefty roadblock clearing along the way!

How to mitigate failure #4

Business owners and managers need to make sure they have addressed all internal concerns by team members and set the stage for how communication needs to happen including any internal concerns. Creating a safe communication channel for nervous employees is key as well as a centralized communication medium to share.

Failure # 6 Not defining goals and outcomes

Goals and outcomes being defined are critical to the success of a new system being put in place to handle key operations for running your business. Without the definition, systems can be ill-designed based on features alone that in the end are “noise” for your team and only serve to be a time-suck.

In addition, without the definition of goals and outcomes, there is no guidance in ensuring systems that are put in place will be able to supply data on demand to decision makers or performance monitors.

About 15 years ago, I was tasked with making Salesforce.com work for an organization that heavily invested in subscriptions but only 20% of the assigned users were using it. Of those 5% were logging in daily. It was a waste of money at the time and nearly replaced! But the challenge was accepted and within a year 80% of the assigned users adopted daily use. It seemed like it was a success but ultimately it was a failure because the input by the users of the system wasn’t producing metrics the leaders needed. It was back to the drawing board to make more changes.

How to mitigate failure #6

This *should* be obvious – don’t move forward on choosing a system without first defining the goals and the outcomes the system *should* provide and insist on these being a must-have feature.

Failure #5 Trying to do work without the proper resources

Companies think they are saving money when they use their “IT team” or most tech-savvy employee to implement complex software systems in a pinch. When in fact, they are overloading talent, losing money, and putting internal operations at risk that impact the revenue generation teams.

About 7 years ago, I was asked by a (prospective) client to provide a solution for their operation to help them go paperless and mobile. The solution was complex, had to be carefully executed over 1 year. They insisted on receiving the fully detailed design documents ahead of accepting my proposal and then declined the proposal on account of what it was going to cost. No biggie – it happens!

Fast forward 1 year later and I heard they went ahead with my solution but did it using their own team members thinking it would be cheaper. The project FAILED and did so because their team wasn’t technically prepared to manage and mitigate the risks and had no time to focus on completing any one task, successfully. It would have cost $30K but instead they lost time and money on a failed implementation and inability to serve clients.

How to mitigate failure #5

Hire people or assign people (if you insist on going with internal team members) with experience that understand the effort and risk involved. It can be a short-term investment that frees up your people to focus on what they do best in your business and only get pulled in when needed most.

Also, as a business leader, do the math on the returns of time invested vs hiring external expertise.

Failure #7 There is no plan. Let’s just do it!

I love the passion some leaders have for moving ahead with a new system. It’s energizing BUT it’s also scary. Without a plan, 3 terrible things happen –

Deviation from the purpose
Shifting priorities and lack of focus on completing tasks
Confusion for everyone involved

A plan of any kind is useful tool but lacking a plan of any kind, even a simple one, means your team can easily lose sight of what you are trying to accomplish. This also leads to the inability for people to justify their reasoning for carrying out costly work that provides 0 value or negative impact to your bottom line.

I personally don’t work with teams that refuse to have a proper plan of any kind (even a 1 pager) so I can’t share personal experiences but do hear stories of all kinds enough to provide a suggested approach to avoid a passion project without purpose.

How to mitigate failure #7

For those short on time, create a 1-page mission statement that defines goals (outcomes), constraints (time and money) and purpose.

Failure #8 “Every platform subscription must be free”

I use quotes because often this is a typical ask from clients. I get it and support it. That said, vendors of the ideal platforms are smart and limit the must-have features needed to make it worthwhile, from being available with their free subscription.

In the early days of consulting, I made the mistake of insisting we find free subscriptions to save money for small business. At the time I was doing everyone a disservice by not evaluating the returns and possibilities.

How to mitigate failure #8

Keep an open mind on budget and calculate the ROI potential of the cost a repeatable or time-consuming task runs you now vs being able to offset those tasks to a smart system.

Failure #9 People fearing automation

People who fear automation will take over their job, is normal. Some leaders think it’s easier to control people over systems with automation. In both cases, an experienced onlooker would suggest they were very wrong.

I engaged many prospective clients over the years with this mindset. Unless given the opportunity to provide the returns outlook, it’s a lost cause and introducing new systems is a waste of money.

How to mitigate failure #9

Shift the mindset. Educate the team. Plan to shift responsibilities away from doing manual work to monitoring quality and consistency and scaling up.

Failure #10 NOT committing to the change

Statistically speaking it takes 20 minutes to refocus your attention on a task after being distracted. If we multiple this loss in time by the amount of time you were distracted because you changed your mind from one day to the next, you have lost time and money.

A former client of mine was famous for out of the blue asks to make a change on a weekly basis that basically made most of the previous week’s work, a waste of time and resources. There would be periods of happiness from seeing change followed by periods of anger because results were not being realized immediately. Over time, the failures added up and ultimately we both had to cut our losses on the attempts made.

How to mitigate failure #10

After mitigating all potential failures, staying committed is key. If your gut is telling you something isn’t working, don’t make any quick decisions before measuring the results and comparing against previous or baseline measures.

Commit to a plan and ensure it remains relevant to your day to day now and for the foreseeable future to guide decision making of any type of change.

Why SaaS Systems CAN Fail Top 10 reasons and advice for mitigating failure SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) systems have been around as long as I’ve been working in the tech space and that’s going on nearly 20 years. When my career first started in 2005, there wasn’t a fancy name for software you could access using a… Continue reading Why SaaS Systems CAN Fail

Creating Business Apps with Microsoft SharePoint

Designing and Creating Business Apps with Microsoft SharePoint

IMPORTANT: This article was written for the tech savvy, business user creating Microsoft SharePoint sites. If you would like to learn more about how you can build a custom Microsoft SharePoint app by extending features with Power Automate and other cloud tools, get in touch with me!

Microsoft SharePoint has been used for many years to serve up content to organizational users (internal and external). It’s powerful capabilities and native integrations to apps like Microsoft Teams, Outlook and Excel have been advantageous to managers who want to focus their staff on productivity and maximize ROI.

About Microsoft SharePoint Sites

When subscribing to Microsoft SharePoint and creating sites, you can select to use to use a quick start template – communication or team. While each are great starting points, they are just that… a starting point. Before diving into the creation process, let’s review some basic tips for choosing from one of the two categories.

Communication Sites

These are great starting points when you need to create (contextual) content that is served up to staff that needs to consume it. Additionally, it’s a great set up if you want to enable a centralized library of documents and reports you need to manage access to.

Team Sites

For the more interactive teams staffed by contributors of content to #SharePoint, the Team Site is the way to go. Additionally, it allows for the generation of a connected Microsoft Teams channel to provide a unified medium for communicating in context of the site purpose and have visibility into any site changes.

SharePoint sites, regardless of type, are populated by content, just like websites filled with information and files. This content is logically organized and by default, not hidden from anyone using the system so it’s a good idea to understand the concept of a document library – the content “holder”, and how to manage access.

A document library is a top-level folder that serve the same purpose as a Windows file folder to organize files. Libraries can contain sub-folders, various document types, images, and lists.

A great benefit of libraries is giving you the ability to organize content in a hierarchy and to manage access at the library, folder, or file level. It’s a powerful CMS with great tools available in a few clicks to set up advanced uses.

Let’s move on to the first phase of designing your business app.

Design a SharePoint instance

If you have heard the expression “Measure twice, cut once”, trust me when I state it applies here too. Designing your app before you start building doesn’t have to be a lengthy or complex exercise but it’s a good idea to do it.

Step 1

Anytime you embark on creating a new system or changing one, should also include asking people questions to gather intel such as –

Who is this for and how will they interact with it? Will people be updating information, adding information or requesting information?
What does it need to do? How does it need to work? Do you need a mobile version?
Where does this bring value? To internal users? External users? Other systems?
When the information is collected, does it also need to be shared across other business systems? Does it need to be transformed?

Step 2

Once functionality, features and access are determined, mapping of how the data will flow and users will interact at various steps is key. Using visual diagrams such as a flow chart on a whiteboard make for an easy starting point. For more advanced data flow mappings, also figure out if you need to standardize content on the site in lists and library properties.

With SharePoint you can create standard fields to manage the inputs and outputs, so they comply and align to standard terms, data dictionary definitions or to values that are required in other systems you want to integrate to.

This critical step will also help you determine if you need to extend features and functionality within SharePoint during the development phase. If that is the case you may need to engage a specialist.

Step 3

To figure this out, it’s good to understand the difference between the two types of content ‘buckets’.

Libraries are great containers to house documents, images, links and more in a hierarchical way.
Lists are great for tracking tickets, tasks, project (portfolios) and any type of data you may typically track in Microsoft Excel tables. Lists can also be synchronized to Microsoft Excel to further the data use-ability in charts and summarized reporting.

When using content containers in an app, other applications such as Power Automate, you can manipulate the information within them based on rules of engagement, turning your SharePoint site into a very powerful tool for your team.

Step 4

This is critical to ensure the user experience is ideal. Know your audience and the purpose will lead to how you want to organize content. Put yourself in the users shoes and ask yourself, if you had their job, what’s the most important area of the site to them? What type of resources do they need to be available in 1 click, 2 clicks or 3 clicks?

Keep in mind you can’t set things up to meet everyone’s needs individually but SharePoint has advanced features you can check out, that allow you to present context based on individual preferences and group settings.

Developing a SharePoint instance

Pick your ideal SharePoint site template and set the name of the site

Choose a Teams or Communication site to get started. You can change this later but for now create the foundation.

Create a document library structure(s)

Create folders and lists with sample content to make sure the planned structure works before you upload all the content.

Apply security to the library(ies) and lists

By default you can set permissions based on users and the default groups – Owner, Member and Visitors or at the user level (not recommended!). If you plan to create complex security permissions, I recommend creating custom groups to manage permissions and users that they apply to. Keep in mind the most restrictive permissions will apply as a priority.

Customize pages and navigation

Created sites will come with 1 page (the home page) that you can easily edit. By default all content can be shown in web parts on the home page if well organized. For sites with large lists and large document libraries that need to be accessed online vs using OneDrive, I recommend breaking content into pages. Think of how websites are organized to share information and use the same approach if that is familiar to you.

Upload content

Once design work is done, uploading content is key to start bringing your site to life. Mass uploads are possible using the SharePoint migration tools (administrative access to M365 required) or you can authorize users to upload content by providing links and invites to do so.

Activate Features and Extend Functions

It’s recommended you learn about each feature or extended function being activated. If you are not a Global Administrator, you will need to loop in your assigned teammates to work with you on the extension to make sure you have permissions and any integrated application is compliant with your organizational policies and procedures.

When developing a SharePoint site to become an app, this step will always be present in the process.

Test and launch

Testing links, buttons, workflow, navigation and access is critical to ensure your site is received successfully once officially launched and your business app is working. I would also recommend preparing a training video or walking people through the new setup, live, so you can get feedback as you roll it out.

When developing a SharePoint site to become an app, this step will always be present in the process.

If you have been interested in creating a digital workspace but want a head start there are tools on the market. I would check out Mozzaik365 to help speed the process up or get in touch with a SharePoint specialist to help get you started. We can help you with migration and a complete setup.

If you want to tackle trying to create your own SharePoint app for business using the available Microsoft tools with your subscription, I suggest you start here – Create a team site in SharePoint and don’t hesitate to reach out if you need some guidance in moving it forward to becoming a business application that nets maximum returns.

Microsoft, Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft 365 are trademarks of the Microsoft group of companies.

Designing and Creating Business Apps with Microsoft SharePoint IMPORTANT: This article was written for the tech savvy, business user creating Microsoft SharePoint sites. If you would like to learn more about how you can build a custom Microsoft SharePoint app by extending features with Power Automate and other cloud tools, get in touch with me!… Continue reading Creating Business Apps with Microsoft SharePoint

Transforming the way we do business

Transforming the Way we do Business

Digital Solutions

Statistics Canada released a report in July of 2023 (1 ) with data collected on the use of applications related to Internet-connected smart devices or systems, for all industries, across Canada. The data collected came from a survey conducted in 2022 and includes data points from organizations of all sizes. When evaluating the information, it confirms digital solutions have become an integral part of the business landscape.

Some interesting data points –

44% of applications used by large Enterprise (>= 250 employees) organizations is to support infrastructure.
Small- (1 0 to 99 employees) and medium-sized (1 00 to 249 employees) organizations invested more heavily into customer service applications. Respectively, 48% and 40%.
All organization sizes invested the least in autonomous or driverless vehicle applications.

The applications are the digital solutions of today and offer a wide range of ways to help organizations streamline through innovation. From cloud computing and data analytics to artificial intelligence and smart infrastructure, digital solutions have the power to transform.

Future-thinking leaders are evolving their organizations to meet the demands of business strategy and reduce costs with innovative digital solutions. This approach has led to great gains for many organizations who need to run lean.

History has shown a shift in consumer behavior, such as those seen during and post-pandemic, has great influence. The transformation organizations have undergone, in such little time and how we now transact, has been necessary for survival(2).

The pandemic was a catalyst for transformations taking place across industries like healthcare, construction, finance and retail. It was the pivot for many to embrace automated workflow, Al and improve efficiency. Organizations needed to centralize and move to the cloud to support remote work efforts. Even with the latest return to office mandates, organizations still benefit deeply from the cloud systems to keep the operations running.

In this blog post, we will explore the digital solutions and how they are changing how we do business.

(1) Source: Stats Can Report published July 2023

(2) Source: FinancesOnline.com

72 Vital Digital Transformation Statistics: 2023 Spending, Adoption, Analysis & Data – Financesonline.com

Streamlining Workflow with Digital Solutions

Organizations streamline to be able to do more tasks in a given day. When streamlining using a digital solution, key elements are automation, built-in integrations, easy to use interfaces and… Al capabilities.

Streamlining provides an opportunity to introduce Artificial Intelligence (Al) programming to help with identifying trends or risks, quickly. The finance industry benefits from Al for uncovering audit issues, fraud and other risky transactions. Retailers are certainly benefitting from Al and specifically generative Al when implemented properly to handle customers.

Automation is a big game changer for many organizations who want to streamline. Popular initiatives by many are to automate sales and marketing team flows. Reworking of the flows ensures customer relationship engagement activities are personalized and timely. Other popular automations include: Automatic posting of transactions from eCommerce channels to cloud accounting systems;

Automatic transformation of data consumed from CRMs, ERPs, cloud resource monitoring systems (i.e. web analytics, AWS or Azure logs) to analytic warehouses for use in real-time organization analytics and insights; and

All this automation has a great benefit of improving productivity of teams. It certainly does not mean team members can put their feet up and just monitor the statistics on a dashboard.

Automation does allow team members to put their focus on tasks that require a more cognitive approach to problem solving. The human element is still a necessity in everyday business dealings to maintain empathetic approaches. With the introduction of automation to handle repetitive tasks, team members productivity naturally increases.

Automation relies on integrated systems which is not a new concept. It is however a much more accessible trend that organizations lean into and understand are helpful. It enables the automated workflows to easily and securely move data from system to system. Integration also enables many workforces to manage privileged access using centralized management tools from providers like Microsoft.

With the increase of automated and integrated systems, the need for good user experiences is a focal point. Ensuring applications are easy to use, means lower costs to onboard, improved employee satisfaction and minimal investment to upskill team members.

Data-Driven Decision Making

Team members are also benefitting from digital solutions powered by algorithms to handle large volumes of data. Every task results in data collected and summarized to trend activities and statistics. Being able to aggregate data in large volumes serves the healthcare and retail industry very well.

It provides insightful predictions to help manage the number of staff required or the potential for disease outbreak

The retail industry has been tapping into centralized data analytics for years. Using it to make improvements to SEO and SEM efforts and hone the spend for every conversion made.

The finance industry does not fall short of benefiting from analysis of large volumes of data. Large volumes of data provide valuable insights for day to day fraud detection.

Collecting all of this data, in any industry, allows for fact-based predictions with the ability to define the future of an organization. When aggregating data sets in large volumes, predictions become simplified and the margin for error reduced. Acknowledging the presence of anomalies, the data is the best resource. Time and time again, predications have proven correct.

This is when education comes into play. Making sure the organization as a whole has a healthy respect for insights it can gain. It provides teams and leaders with the “kick in the butt” needed to make changes fast.

Digital Solutions Enhance Customer Experiences

The data analytics help organizations who want to personalize experiences. This shift has come into focus and digital solutions only amplify the ability to make it happen. It has led to the creation of roles and the introduction of tools to help with delivering these experiences. It is a huge time saver and can, if implemented properly, be a cost savings mechanism as well.

Some believe digital solutions with Al will mean people losing jobs. However I see it as an opportunity. People usually spend hours answering customer requests but now they can help improve Al systems and do more in less time.

How Digital Solutions Transform Industries

This article has explored some high level ways digital solutions has transformed experiences, provide real-time analytics and improved efficiencies.

In this section of the article, I’m going to dive deeper into industries to highlight key transformations.

Retail organizations saw a shift during the pandemic and many had to quickly convert to an online presence. The need to meet demand and provide the consumer a way to purchase was a must do.

Retailers are now looking at ways to streamline operations by introducing digital solutions consisting of omnichannel tech and generative Al experiences.

I don’t see that as a threat to roles today as some may think. Organizations will train their teams to manage Al systems which will go a long way with maintaining authentic customer loyalty.

Customer loyalty is often built by providing great experiences and providing value for every dollar spent. Retailers using secure systems to capture customer data and personalize the shopping experience provide the customer with the benefits needed to sustain loyalty.

Vendors who make software to capture data have certainly made it very user friendly to analyze and use the data through their recommendation engines that are built right into most eCommerce platforms.

Amazon is ahead of the curve in inventory delivery systems with a digital system born out of consumer demand. They adopted a “digital-first” supply chain strategy that involved tapping into analytics for insights into what needs to be stocked. While seemingly a large scale for some, it’s a model that can be applied to a retailer of any size.

The advances of digital banking and mobile payments has been steady for a very long time. More organizations are adopting payments in traditional and non-traditional currencies. Not all of which have been regulated but in time it will happen. The increase in conversions from bricks-and-mortar to eCommerce is placing a huge demand on digital banking solutions.

With the rise of digital banking and mobile payments comes the demand for better fraud detection and better yet, fraud prevention. Digital solutions combining the best of fraud detection and prevention are quickly becoming the normal companion to most eCommerce type setups as a result of the increased ability for more exposure to persons who may circumvent controls.

The "Obvious" Challenges and Opportunities

I can’t in good conscience boast about and recommend embracing digital solutions without touching on the negative aspects. It’s to heed caution when putting solutions in place. I highly recommend careful planning and educating users when considering implementation. It will minimize occurrences of cybersecurity issues.

Security is a hot topic for the current times and likely not to let up anytime soon. Organizations adopting digital solutions to manage customers data are subject to stringent policies for protecting sensitive information. When considering a digital solution, don’t skip key activities like establishing terms of use, governing protocols and teams responsible for patching and updating systems.

Those individuals help organizations implement robust security measures and are the optimal augmentation to any team. Their focus on security ensures that at all times your losses and risk are mitigated.

In conclusion, taking responsibility for ensuring proper digital solution adoption and transformations can transform the way we do business. By enhancing efficiency, decision making, and customer experiences, companies are transforming industry practices and level-setting our future interactions. However, they also face challenges such as cybersecurity threats and the growing skills gap.

If organizations prioritize addressing these challenges, a digital solution can unleash their full potential to help grow organizations.

The applications are the digital solutions of today and offer a wide range of ways to help organizations streamline through innovation. From cloud computing and data analytics to artificial intelligence and smart infrastructure, digital solutions have the power to transform.