5 Ways You Can Avoid a SaaS Providers Contract Nightmare

As a business, you may be thinking of using SaaS providers to get your work accomplished. The size of the SaaS market worldwide is growing at a fast pace. As per Statista.com the revenue figure stood at 31.4 billion dollars in 2015 and is expected to grow to 99.7 billion dollars by 2020. The entire process of selecting one of the SaaS solutions is long and tiresome.

You might have to listen to multiple sales pitches before finally getting to select one SaaS service that would serve your purpose. Often in the hurry of all this, we get trapped in SaaS contracts which are difficult to breach.

Here are 5 ways in which you could understand all these sales pitches and find out what exactly these SaaS contracts must offer:

1. Ask SaaS Providers to Get an Engineer on Call

If you are sitting for a call with any of the top SaaS companies, you must make them understand that you also want to talk to the person who has a solid knowledge of the product at hand. That person may or may not be the sales engineer but he should have a sound understanding of the SaaS business and service that is being offered to you. If the company is reliable and wants to establish a long-term relationship with you they would gladly agree to your condition. This would also let you know how much effort the SaaS providers are willing to take to win your attention and even maintain it.

As per Better cloud’s state of the SaaS powered workplace survey 2017 86% of the users surveyed say SaaS applications help them succeed more in comparison to desktop apps. This shows the extent of usefulness that SaaS offers and making any mistake in signing a SaaS contract can trap you in a tricky situation.

2. Request for Several Product Demos

We often just see a PowerPoint presentation before taking our final decision about which SaaS product to choose. But this is not how things should work. PowerPoint presentations are unrealistic and can depict something which in actuality does not exist. Watching them and taking your call on choosing your outsource software as a service is like keeping your eyes closed and deciding.

Most of these presentations are actually created by the sales teams of SaaS providers and hence offer solutions which are far away from the reality. Instead, ask the SaaS platform companies to offer you a proper demo of the product. If need be you can even schedule multiple demos before finally deciding which one saas based solutions you would want to invest your money in. Ask as many questions as you want from the saas based products companies as only then would you be able to comprehend the scope of the service that you are looking at.

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3. Look at Their past Projects

It is not just important to have a look at which all clients the SaaS providers have serviced in the past. Have a look at some of their slow implementations. A SaaS start-up should be able to tell you about those clients also where the deployment of the software was slow and not as per the expected guidelines. It is not necessary that if they have cases of slow deployment their work methodology was not practical.

Everyone has their share of failures and these saas details could be one of them. But if any saas service providers are willing to tell you about it then that means they are honest and not likely to hide anything from you in the future too. This also implies that the SaaS contract details they are going to provide to you are legal and within the necessary boundaries.

4. Analyse All Technological Aspects

For your software as a service for business to work seamlessly with all your technologies is a distant dream which cannot be fulfilled. If your small business SaaS service provider is giving you solutions which are able to do so there seems to be some problem somewhere. Almost all the business trying to implement cloud-based solutions must go through this problem and it is wise if you understand the implications of the same.

Discuss with the SaaS cloud providers as to how different customized solutions would be offered to each of your technologies. Also, question them on how the integration of the same with the existing services is going to happen.

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5. Checking the References

If the cloud-based SaaS companies, you are dealing with are new in the market that means you would have to double check their past work. Even if their past clients have faced some issues with the saas cloud services in the past they would have probably forgotten about it by now. They would be able to give a clear picture of whether the saas pricing is worth the return you are going to get from the service.

Even affordable saas services have had their share of good projects and bad hence go through all the information carefully. If possible also discuss with them whether software as a service contract provided by them falls under all the right parameters. Consult all their past references to find whether the software as a service cost they will charge is affordable and even worth the extent of work being provided to you.

Conclusion

Trying to understand if the exaggerated sales pitch being made to you is reliable is a herculean task. However, if you follow the above five ways chances are you might save yourself from being trapped into saas cloud solutions which are below par and misleading. Once you get into any contract it would be very difficult for you to escape from the same.

Do your bit of research before consulting the best SaaS companies available in your field. SaaS in cloud computing has gained a lot of mileage in the last few years and you should not underestimate its importance. Making the right choice of the SaaS provider, however, requires you to be a little more practical in your approach to deal with them.

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