Cloud computing has proven to be not only critically phenomenal to large businesses, but also to small businesses and startups. Programs which had to be installed in personal computers can now be accessed over the web, translating to millions of dollars in savings for small, medium and large corporations. You can now easily leverage online […]
Cloud computing has proven to be not only critically phenomenal to large businesses, but also to small businesses and startups. Programs which had to be installed in personal computers can now be accessed over the web, translating to millions of dollars in savings for small, medium and large corporations. You can now easily leverage online software solutions in the form of SaaS without investing in an extensive infrastructural framework to support underlying applications.
The resultant excitement sparked a widespread migration over the years, pushing the SaaS market value to $10 billion by 2010. The next couple of years experienced tremendous exponential growth, which doubled this value by 2015. Currently, about 54% of IT professionals have adopted SaaS applications in their organizations, and 14% are planning to join the bandwagon in the next 6 months or so.
Enterprises have adopted cloud applications due to increased efficiency, better efficacy and consequently improved overall productivity. Such applications, in fact, have fueled migration particularly within small and mid-sized companies, which always have limited IT budgets. Here are the top ones which are currently increasingly growing in popularity and creating ripples in the SaaS industry:
Office 365
This is an application which is gradually eliminating traditional on premise windows server administrators. At a monthly fee of $6 to $24 per user, you're granted full office features including Word Processing, PowerPoint, Access and Excel. For improved user experience, it's also integrated with existing active directory environments, a feature which is particularly critical for enterprises that are Windows centric.
Sage One
Built for micro and small businesses, Sage One offers a wide range of business administration features including expense management, project tracking and invoicing. Although it's not entirely customizable, its intuitive workflow and solid interface have proven to be significantly helpful to enterprises, going by its growing popularity. All these features come at a cost of $24.99 MSRP.
MailChimp
Although it's been around for a couple of years, MailChimp is still making news in 2015. It's an application that has greatly revolutionized email marketing by granting enterprises a wide range of mass emailing tools. It allows business not only to design and create effective email campaigns, but to also send and track them. The measuring and tracking is facilitated by Google Analytics integration.
QuickBooks
Being one of the principle business elements, enterprises cannot resist an application built to optimize their accounting- and that's exactly what comes with Quickbooks. It's an accounting service which comes with integrated features including creating business reports, setting budgets, creating VAT returns and monitoring cash flow- all of which can be done remotely. It's particularly helpful to micro and small businesses which cannot afford to hire a dedicated team of accountants to create and maintain proper financial records.
Trello
Trello is changing how enterprises manage their projects through optimized tools. The free software allows its users to arrange tasks in cards according to their respective organizational workflows. The cards and their contents, including attached documents, are visible to all parties in an enterprise and can be edited on accounts with administrative privileges.
Salesforce Professional Edition
CRM experienced a major breakthrough with the introduction of Salesforce, an app built to effectively optimize and manage the entire process. It comes with a robust series of features including real-time data sharing, granular permissions, sales forecasts, email marketing, custom dashboards, reporting, analytics and other effectual customer service tools. It can therefore be leveraged by all types of businesses- small, medium and large corporations.
Toggl
As a time management application, Toggl allows you to arrange your tasks accordingly and schedule your time depending on the projected task completion periods. You can also track the time spent on respective tasks by logging on as you execute each task. Overall, this app makes it easy for executive teams to track the time spent on individual tasks in their enterprises.
Since 2015 is regarded as a prime year for cloud providers and vendor startups, there are many other pivotal applications which are yet to be mentioned. The best way to determine their suitability is to comprehensively assess your enterprise's needs and subsequently use the findings to discern the most relevant applications from the rest.
Author: Davis Porter
Image Courtesy: KROMKRATHOG, freedigitalphotos.net
