Year: 2018

We now almost take for granted certain features we need in a business process and workflow automation platform: no-code configuration, agile project management, rapid value delivery, responsive user interface, and an adaptive end user experience. But it should also be highly human-centric with certain simple capabilities such as user suites and dashboards to view all of your transactions.

The platform should centralize all data, notes, documents, conversations and email threads in one location. Business teams should have real-time visibility into the process—whether it is a contract negotiation, NDA request or sales quote approval. It should be easy to configure custom forms, fields, checklists, workflows and have process tracking capabilities with the flexibility to make changes and improvements in-stream as often as needed.

Suites and dashboards come in many flavors, but we’ve selected a few that should be at the top of your list.

Operational and User Suites

Suites should be designed to meet the specific needs of an individual or role. Suites provide the ability to group smaller processes together to form an end-to-end solution and user experience. Each suite widget should be informational, as well as a quick entry point to any given slice of data. The ability to create persona-based home pages that visualize data, action items, and trends/metrics for end-users is very important, as is being able to choose between a dozen different visualization widgets, such as pie charts, bar charts, counters, timelines and more.

Leadership Analytics Dashboard

Your platform should natively integrate with Tableau as the primary business intelligence and analytics engine. Ideally, Tableau can be pulled directly into the platform to provide a seamless user experience to interact with the underlying data contained within the platform.

User and Smart Selection Tableau Dashboard

This type of dashboard can drive a user to underlying Tableau reports, specifically addressing the user’s needs.

Other vital dashboards should include:

• Evaluation
• Comparison over time
• Business unit analysis

When it comes to human-centric, adaptive and responsive user interfaces, it’s not the time to skimp or cut corners. You need the workflow, process and collaboration platform that is the best fit for the way your teams work, and choosing a provider who offers unsurpassed suites and dashboards puts you one step ahead of the rest of the pack from the very beginning.

“Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.”  – Pablo Picasso

Fortunately for us, computing and cloud technology has evolved to benefit us much more than what Picasso had envisioned. In part I of this blog series we discussed the basic differences between the three most common models of cloud computing:

• Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)
• Platform as a Service (PaaS)
• Software as a Service (SaaS)

Now we’d like to go into a little more depth about the advantages of each model.

IaaS is for companies that want to have the most control over their service, and have the technical talent to manage everything from the O/S to the applications, and everything in between. There is no need to invest in hardware, and infrastructure scales on demand to support dynamic workloads. Other benefits include cost savings, scalability, focus on business growth, support for disaster recovery and business continuity, and faster time to market. Again, the company must have the technical expertise on hand in order to get the most out of IaaS.

PaaS provides companies with the means to conduct the building and delivering of applications, without the headaches and costs of buying and managing hardware, software, provisioning and hosting. Companies are able to develop and get applications to market faster, and deploy new applications to the cloud quickly. Other benefits include scalability, self-service/reduced administrative costs, lower up-front costs, reduced skill requirements, sharing of resources across multiple development teams and reduced lead times. While PaaS doesn’t require the tech savvy as does IaaS, it may take a little practice to get familiar with the software and start creating your own business applications. An important aspect of PaaS is that it is typically used by companies to build applications that are then sold to other customers as SaaS.

SaaS is for companies who want to quickly start using pre-built applications. This is the key difference between this model and the first two. Applications are accessible from any connected computer and since data is in the cloud, it’s still safe even if your organization’s system crashes. Dynamic scalability based on usage needs is another reason many feel SaaS is the way to go. SaaS is wildly popular as evidenced by the huge number of applications delivered by this means, including Microsoft Office 365 and Salesforce. In a nutshell, you sign up for a service and you’re up and running with the applications you need. Of course you’ll need a little practice on the system, but you get the point. Interestingly, most companies now use at least one form of SaaS, even if they rely heavily on IaaS or PaaS as their primary cloud model.

In the end, you and your team will have to weigh the advantages of each model to see which is the best fit for your business requirements. We guess that for the majority of people who landed on this website and chose to read this blog, there’s a good possibility either PaaS or SaaS would fit the bill. That means you’re seeking quick gains in productivity, efficiency and a hassle-free experience. Then again, your company may have the technical expertise and business requirements that call for IaaS. Some companies quickly seem to know which model is the best fit for them and before you know it, they’re benefitting from their new solution. Don’t feel bad if this isn’t your company – the vast majority of us need to spend more time and research before deciding which way to go.

Most of us are familiar with Software as a Service (SaaS), since it probably gets more attention and is more popular than Infrastructure as as Service (IaaS) and Platform as a Service (PaaS), for reasons we’ll get to later. Interestingly, there have been recent rallies to get rid of the term “SaaS” and simply call it software since virtually everything is done on the cloud now. It’s a fair point, but even so, we believe it’s still useful to retain the term in order to differentiate the three major models. Each of the models is a bit different than the others, based on just how much “control” the client (end user) wants over the service provider’s computing infrastructure, project budget, etc.

In a nutshell, the three most common models of cloud computing currently in use are:

• Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)
• Platform as a Service (PaaS)
• Software as a Service (SaaS)

IaaS is the pinnacle model for companies who want to rent servers, networking, storage and virtualization – these being managed by the service provider. The company itself will manage the O/S, middleware, runtime, data and ultimately, the applications. Of course, companies that choose to go this route need the technical expertise on hand to build applications themselves from scratch. Having ultimate control over the service has its advantages, but also drawbacks. Some companies have expressed concerns that their data is not as secure using IaaS as compared to other models. Amazon Web Services EC2 and Rackspace Cloud are two examples of IaaS.

PaaS is considered the mid-range model when it comes to the client’s level of control. Here, a company is renting not only networking, storage, servers and virtualization; but also an O/S, middleware and runtime – all being managed by the provider. The client company manages the data and applications. An important part of this is that PaaS provides tools the client’s developers can use to create applications. Amazon Web Services Elastic, Google App Engine and Microsoft Azure are examples.

SaaS is by far the most commonly used cloud computing model today. The service provider manages the entire ball game, so the client simply uses the applications on a pay-as-you-go basis. Pretty much everything that’s technical, including the hardware and O/S, are out of sight and mind for the end user. Many applications can be bought off-the-shelf, while others can be customized by providers per the client’s requests and particular business process problem. Some common examples of SaaS in current use are Microsoft 365, Docusign, Netflix, Google Apps and Onit.

So which model is best or your company? That’s a question only you and your team can answer, but we’ll give you more food for thought in the next part of this blog series.

In part II we’ll discuss the advantages and disadvantages of each model in more detail.