Kelly Lynn McNair is a lead acquisition and sales professional with over 18 years of experience in various corporate structures. In the following article, Kelly McNair explains software as a service, how it has streamlined businesses, accelerating company growth.

In a mere seven years, SaaS has grown from the innovative new kid on the computer software block to the king.

SaaS, short for “software as a service,” is a juggernaut of an industry, balancing practical applications with wide-eyed scope. Consider this: Since 2015, SaaS as a whole has grown in value from $31.5 billion to nearly $172 billion.

And it’s still growing. Kelly Lynn McNair says that companies that use SaaS use a lot of it.

It’s now the norm for companies with over 1,000 employees to integrate more than 150 SaaS-based applications into daily work. Even smaller companies are on board. Those with between 50 and 99 employees average around 24 applications, doubling in size over the past few years.

Today, 70% of the total software used by companies are SaaS applications. What was once novel has become unmistakably ubiquitous explains Kelly Lynn McNair.

What SaaS is Exactly

Think of SaaS as a streamlined route for companies to take advantage of the software they need to best compete in the modern business world.

In general, Kelly Lynn McNair says SaaS simply delivers applications online — that’s the “service” — as an alternative to having to install the software. With SaaS, whatever a company needs tech-wise can be accessed at any time over the web.

Companies no longer have to download individual software and maintain and manage hardware and software. SaaS delivers centrally hosted software and is usually licensed on a monthly subscription mode.

SaaS is also known by a few other names, including hosted software, on-demand software, and web-based software. It is considered by most to be an element of cloud computing and users usually access SaaS apps through a web browser of choice.

Kelly Lynn McNair says that when someone sells SaaS, what they are selling is access to an application, along with performance, software availability, and security.

What Does SaaS Do

SaaS offers technology for businesses that can do everything from organizing sales and creating marketing initiatives to tracking seller information and scaling a burgeoning brand.

A big part of its appeal is that it is highly customizable to fit individual business needs explains Kelly Lynn McNair. Company employees can access SaaS from the web or through an app. The overarching goal is a simple one: become more successful as a business.

There are numerous SaaS products, some are highly specific such as health insurance software for agents, and others more broadly support general business environments or popular industries such as tech sales. There are three main categories, however:

• Packaged
  Kelly Lynn McNair says that these are SaaS products that are used to manage certain processes within a company. Examples include bolstering marketing returns, improving customer relations, and strengthening employee satisfaction or performance.
• Collaborative
  Collaborative SaaS helps a company’s teams work better together. Video conferencing and messaging fall into this category. So do SaaS products designed to offer avenues for employees to collaborate directly on sales pitches, strategic planning, creating presentations or editing documents.
• Technical
  Any applications that are primarily used as tools to either improve or manage technical development and procedures.You may know many SaaS products without realizing it. Packaged SaaS products include HubSpot (the company offers tools to address everything from sales to customer satisfaction).Content management and conferencing tools like Basecamp, Trello, Paper, and Zoom are collaborative SaaS. A good example of technical SaaS is Cloudsponge, which lets web developers easily include contact importer in products.

Advantages of SaaS

Kelly Lynn McNair reports there are reasons why SaaS has skyrocketed in popularity in less than a decade.

For one, and it’s a big one, SaaS applications are usually affordable, especially compared to more traditional software. Licenses are almost always low price-wise since they are being shared.

This appeals greatly to small and medium-sized businesses that are looking to avoid paying for software systems, most of which tend to be unexpectedly expensive. It doesn’t even cost much to set it up.

SaaS products are usually adaptable and intuitive. They can run on Mac and PCs (even Linux), as well as iOS and Androids. Kelly Lynn McNair says that whether someone is working from the office, at home, or checking in at work on the go, SaaS products are flexible.

Security is key, too, and it’s at an extremely high level with SaaS products since everyone using the product benefits from the highest security level set up by someone at the company.

SaaS products also take the guesswork out of when to update — that will be frequent and automatic. That’s a major thing that gives companies more time to focus on more important matters — like revenue.