How to choose a SaaS provider: A checklist for Enterprise Managers

Your team started scouting for a few enterprise software providers with a group of employees to attend product demo meetings before you even know what your business "needs" versus what would be "nice-to-have".

Start-over.

In a large enterprise, a common mistake is for a team to become enchanted by demos made by SaaS providers.

In large-scale enterprises, this often results in overrun project budgets, unmanaged software costs, and lack of IT process traceability to other connected processes.

That's why we prepared a quick question checklist to help ensure that your project team is moving in the right direction.

1. What are the current pain points?

Draw down the current business process and highlight the main pain points and list the consequences and business impact.

Share it with your team. This will help to navigate your project team what you want to steer away from.

2. Who are the users?

Identify the key stakeholders and users, categorise them into groups based on how they will use the system (view/read, use, manage, admin) and develop use cases for each user type and case scenarios.

3. What are the business requirements?

This sets the vision with the project. Well-crafted business requirements captures the bigger picture of what the business is aiming for.

Before you begin collecting the functional and technical requirements, find out if another department in your company already use a SaaS that seem to align with your requirements?

4. What are the functional requirements?

Workshop together with key stakeholders what functions are expected from the SaaS. This includes how it needs to function with other systems as part of a business process.

Document it rigorously categorizing what is a "must-have" and a "nice-to-have". This will come in handy when you interact with the SaaS providers.

Make sure one person is the owner of ensuring the functional requirements have been captured and are connected with the process.

5. What are the technical requirements?

What are the requirements from an IT infrastructure and security perspective? In relations to IT governance, check in with the IT team on the SLA/SLM for enterprise software purchases in your company. For example: The underlying hosting and infrastructure services, software maintenance & data backup (DR), uptime requirements.

The business- and functional requirements sets the foundation for technical requirements. A technical requirement is broken down to a core.

Once the requirements begin to come together, you have set a solid foundation preparing to sales meetings with potential SaaS providers.

6. Do I have the supporting materials needed to select a SaaS provider?

The proof is in the pudding, or in this case, the use cases, case scenarios, lists and requirements is your ingredients to a successful selection process.

The lists will help:

1. The SaaS providers to assess what they can and cannot deliver, incl. timeline (if a specific function/added feature is in their development pipeline)
2. Your business to compare and select/deselect SaaS providers based on your requirements checklist, thus saving time and unnecessary follow-up meetings.
3. Select the right SaaS providers, based on business needs, not "a hunch".
4. Ensure you are budgeting for & buying the right functions and nr. of licenses to the right subscription cost in the pilot phase vs. roll-out phase.

Honebox Consulting offer our clients a set of predefined project templates and structured lists to guide teams through the process of selecting a B2B SaaS.

Contact us for more information.

About:

Honebox Consulting is a boutique management consulting firm specialized in helping internationally sized brands impact organisations to harness the power of people, processes and technology. With skill-building and people in focus; Our mission is to help companies iron out any process wrinkles across teams and business functions to drive digital business development initiatives to success. We work with clients operating in: Retail & Consumer Goods, Manufacturing, Automotive, IT & Telecom.

People at Honebox Consulting are digital natives, diagonal transformists, marketing experts and thought leaders with years of work experience who aim to inspire a culture of empathy and connectedness in organisations.