Software as a Service is an emerging method of utilizing software. Rather than buying a license and installing it on your own servers, you, in a sense, lease it and access it via the web. ERP vendor Netsuite is one example. CRM vendor Salesforce.com is another.
The following article looks not only at how a company implemented SAAS, but did it as a complete strategy. Up until now, only a particular application has typically been run as an outsourced web tool. With the advent of Google Docs, Windows Live, and other forms of SAAS, companies may be outsourcing their entire IT software platform. The next few years should be quite interesting…
Shaklee Cleans Up with SAAS
Software as a Service
Shaklee looks to the cloud to effectively align IT with business requirements.
Shaklee was green before green was cool. Now the company is applying that forward-thinking philosophy to SAAS.
Shaklee, based in Pleasanton, Calif., has been around for more than 50 years. What started with a vitamin formulation developed by Dr. Forrest Shaklee has evolved into a broad spectrum of all-natural cleaning, nutritional and skin-care products that have recently won accolades from no less than Oprah Winfrey and nods in Time, Woman’s Day and In Style, among many other magazines.
This is something of a resurgence for the company, which was taken private almost four years ago by Roger Barnett (now the company’s chairman and CEO) and private equity organizations. In 1982, Shaklee was a Fortune 500 company, but between then and 2004, when the company was acquired, Shaklee had been shrinking, according to the company’s CIO, Ken Harris.
Shaklee’s new owners brought in a management team to turn the company around, including Harris, who was formerly CIO of companies such as Gap, Nike and PepsiCo.
One key objective for the company’s new management was to make Shaklee relevant to a new generation of consumers, as well as to a new generation of independent sales representatives—the major channel through which Shaklee products are sold. Read the rest of the article here.
Tags: SAAS, ERP, CRM, Software as a Service