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Permalink Reply by Joshua Letourneau on September 5, 2008 at 12:38pm

Good stuff.

A major argument "for" Saas" is that the provider has deep expertise & focus in extending the functionality (customizing) and leveraging support of their application (or 'service suite').

The one thing nobody wants to mention is that many dedicated IT professionals are often considered 'jacks-of-all-trades', and don't have the capacity (whether it be intellectual/training or simply time constraints) to customize and extend functionality of something they didn't build. (There is a difference between a "Programmer" and a true "Software Engineer"!)

I enjoyed this discussion - good stuff. Saas is seen along with the notion of "Stick to what you do best . . . and outsource the rest!"

I wonder if the day will ever come when Talent Acquisition is entirely outsourced, just like other operations.?. I want to be on the forefront of that wave . . . !

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Permalink Reply by Tim Bauer on September 6, 2008 at 8:15am

With any technical decision the question shouldn't be 'is it cheaper' but rather 'is it more profitable'. Profit brings into focus the balance of cost and revenue.

To fully answer a balanced set of questions you have to look at your process. How much time do you spend per step, per candidate? Could that process be improved in the movement to the new platform? Then you can compare features (local vs SaaS). Are there gaps of feature sets between local solution and one in the cloud. The gaps might seem mundane at first blush but often are the difference in success and failure for some. You really have to understand how each one enables (or disables) the efficiency of a given step in your process. Keep in mind the latency of an online solution versus a local solution. That, coupled with reduced features sets, is typically the difference to local plays.

In short, don't think cost. Think value.

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