Why As-a-Service Models Can Help in Challenging Times Like COVID-19

We are all facing unprecedented disruptions, risks, and uncertainty in our personal and professional lives as the COVID-19 crisis evolves. Unfortunately, a large number of businesses will either not survive or will see their market share significantly eroded. Those that do survive will be ones that embrace agility and become more customer focused. One very effective way to do this is to adopt the on-demand and off-premise model of As-a-Service. As-a-Service models enable customers to “self-serve” their digital applications and allow developers to build new solutions in the cloud to offer new products to their customers.

In an Accenture industry survey of 933 senior executives across manufacturing and production industries, 64 percent of executives agree that failure to leverage ‘digital value components’ will cause them to struggle for survival.[1]

For companies who have successfully implemented As-a-Service models, here are some of the advantages, which have helped them navigate through these challenging times:

1.    Culture that embraces speed, change and experimentation. Whether it be time to introduce new products, pace at which they convert sales, or speed to value for customers, As-a-service companies like to move fast, adjusting operations in hours vs months. They are open to experimenting, testing and scaling the best ideas with the principle of “failing fast” as acceptable and necessary.

2.   Superior user experience; The on-demand nature of the model enables a dynamic yet consistent user experience which creates product stickiness and barriers to switching.

3.   Telemetry for a data-driven experience. Building user telemetry directly into products provides a seamless way to monitor usage, performance and uptime, as well as analytics to offer services to fix problems before they occur. For example, many organizations are seeing benefits in tracking usage and uptime of virtual collaboration tools like Teams and Zoom to monitor effectiveness of their now virtual organizations.

4.   Long-term customer relationships with predictable, recurring revenue. Sales and marketing are geared toward customer success activities and is often supported by robust customer support teams for post-sale. The subscription model requires a lower upfront payment and recurring fee, benefiting both parties. The monthly nature of fees will make many of these services “sticky” during a crisis compared to asking for a renewal.

5.   Purpose-built infrastructure. The underlying business and transactional infrastructure enables new types of sales activities, monetization strategies and a more frictionless customer experience, with ease of integration of new software, security, compliance and a robust disaster recovery capability.

6.   Agile platform. With agile platforms, organizations can scale exponentially without increasing operating cost, which is critical when organizations need to dramatically ramp up their virtual collaboration tools.

7.   Fewer silos, more holistic collaboration. In a subscription-based model, everything is interconnected, and problems are addressed holistically, saving time and creating efficiencies. Critical-path activities across functional areas help ensure the company is investing wisely.[2]

In summary, organizations who have adopted As-a-Service models have an agile mindset, infrastructure and processes to navigate through uncertainties and challenges, all while staying focused on delivering the best customer experience possible. This will enable them to better survive and thrive in today’s challenging markets.

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[1] https://www.accenture.com/_acnmedia/PDF-119/Accenture-As-a-Service-Business-Acceleration.pdf#zoom=40

[2] https://www.accenture.com/_acnmedia/PDF-119/Accenture-As-a-Service-Business-Acceleration.pdf#zoom=40