Your business has a special value to your customers, and with the New Year right around the corner, now is a good time to reflect and refocus on how to continue to drive value. In the case of construction, it’s pretty clear you want to focus on building your value, allowing you to grow the business—bringing both you and your employees the work you enjoy.

IT and software represents the requirements of managing your core business. Software is a multifaceted tool. Even for the smallest business, software manages the bills, paychecks, plans, and various forms of communication. It often gets overlooked for its supporting role, but it’s there to support your core business and make your primary work easier.

So it’s surprising that some software solutions are lumped together and misunderstood, specifically the value of Software as a Service (SaaS) v.s. traditional software. The magnitude of the difference is on par with restaurants v.s. grocery stores.

No software management

When you’re comparing any solution you should pay special attention to the costs. The real costs with most items are the time and care they require for support. Managing on-premises software is a full-time job. The SaaS model removes that concern and allows you to focus on the core parts of your business. Installing the latest database patches, watching the servers, and syncing and staging etc., all go away.

Turnkey for new users

If you’re looking for a solution to timekeeping, wouldn’t it be better to have a solution up and running that day. Why not try it out and see if it fits your needs firsthand? The alternative offered by software vendors is often a demo, followed by an lengthy IT deployment where you don’t see any of the value until all the hurdles are overcome and months have passed.

User support provided

If you hire 10 new employees you’ll want to get them in the system quickly. SaaS by its design scales quickly to meet demand. It also focuses on bringing new users into the service. Onboarding often runs more smoothly, followed by the ready availability of support provided by the SaaS vendor.

Continual improvement

Finally, SaaS provides a partnership. This is the point that is most often lost in the Software vs. SaaS solution comparisons. In software you pay and then have an implementation that requires your action to bring it forward. That is assuming you have a software vendor that is dedicated to even trying to provide upgrades. With a multi-tenant SaaS application the service provider must bring you forward. The vendor is the operator and has added responsibility, they no longer can ship a solution and let it fade off into the sunset. With SaaS the vendor needs to show up everyday and make the product better.

So while SaaS and software solutions often have the same goals, SaaS is a superior model. It will continue to dominate the growth of on-premises solutions. It allows you to focus on your core business while the SaaS vendor can provide their expertise in theirs. Keep your focus in the New Year on looking into and adopting SaaS solutions for your business.