Digital Transformation and XaaS
When we think of disruptive business models, a few come to mind, but none so prominently in the last five years as ‘Everything as a Service’ (XaaS). In fact, the aaS model has a compounded annual growth rate of 40% between 2016 to 2020. Experts predict this will only grow in the coming years. You can see more of Intellective’s predictions for the coming years here.
Why are so many companies leveraging XaaS?
It’s Cost Effective
Xaas is essentially a ‘pay as you go’ method, with a much smaller investment on the front end, allowing users to expand as needed. This can often free up a company’s IT team from monotonous monitoring and tracking and instead, allow them to form a more proactive approach to expanding infrastructure. This change to the bottom line can improve profitability for many companies.
It’s Agile
Say your company needs to update legacy infrastructure on a quick deadline, often times the integration or migration timeline can make that impossible. But by employing XaaS products, a company can create the perfect solution for them more easily, and on a quicker timeline. It can be as simple as scaling up and down to fit business needs or choosing an entirely new vendor with that one special feature you need for the next quarter. Additionally, since more companies offer their services in subscription fashion, they become easier to mix and match, meaning a more seamless work process for clients.
It’s Flexible
2020 took the rising trend of a remote, global workforce and pushed it to its breaking point. It is important, now more than ever, to keep everything accessible to everyone on your team. For many companies, this means keeping a vast majority of their information in the cloud, where the most updated version can be easily accessed and kept up to date. No more sacrificing work timelines based on geography.
How Can you leverage the XaaS Trend?
Use the Cloud
Many CIOs are hesitant to move to the cloud, even partially, for a number of reasons. The cost and time can initially seem overwhelming, but for many, the long term pros outweigh the near term challenges. By switching to the cloud, you not only let your entire company be more agile in its business processes, but it will allow you to expand later and constrict with new technology and storage space as you need. This can pay off in happier end users, better customer engagement, and lower operating costs depending on your current situation. If you’re looking for a quick payoff, moving your existing systems to the cloud, without employing anything else that’s new, may be for you.
Outline Bottlenecks and Switch Models
For every ‘legacy’ product out there, there is a XaaS version. Have your team leads outline where their daily bottlenecks are to highlight what could be done better. With the ability to pick and choose, you may find that a combination of solutions actually fix all of your previous issues, for little to no increase in price. Plus, including more personas from your team in the switching process helps you get a holistic view of where your company is now, their pain points, and what they consider a smooth flowing process. Happy employees can lead to improved productivity and potentially higher profits!
Offer your own solution
Feeling adventurous? It’s not too late to either shift one of your current offerings into an as a service model, or perhaps offer an entirely new one! While there is certainly money to be made in the XaaS industry, it’s important to outline how this will dovetail with your current Digital Transformation strategy. Will you be moving all of your current clients to a subscription based offering? Or will you be only offering this new method to new clients? There are many angles to look for, but you can greatly increase your company’s profits with an upfront investment of time.
No matter if you’re looking at XaaS as a whole, using a solution, or creating one, it’s clear to see that this business model is here to stay. What once started with simple ideas as music streaming has expanded into every conceivable crevice of the internet.