Government SaaS, Not Your Typical SaaS

In the mobile consumer and perhaps even the enterprise world, there is no doubt that software-as-a-service (SaaS) is here to stay. On a daily basis, there are new and wonderful SaaS products and providers popping up with the likes of the 500 pound guerrillas such as Google,Microsoft and Facebook; everyone is looking to get in on the action. The SaaS model is not only changing the way the average person integrates software into their daily lives, but has also shifted buying behaviour with the ease of setup, intuitive design and lower operating costs.

But will SaaS proliferate the government space? So much changes in the way of go-to-market strategies and the very metrics in which we benchmark client success. For example, the government may be one of the highest barriers to entry, but from a business perspective once entry is made contracts and relationships tend to be ‘stickier’ and longer lived. Because of this, inevitably government SaaS should yield lower churn rates.

The following items need to be understood and addressed in order for government to move from enterprise licensing to SaaS models:

1. Government authorized data center facilities that hit the T’s & C’s of compliance and data security. (FISMA, FedRamp, CJIS, multi-factor authentication etc.)
2. Having a frictionless pricing model that makes contracting easier with the government – annual vs. monthly subscriptions.
3. Complying with data analytics and anonymous user data polices. i.e. strict legalities around personal, health data, crime stats and overcoming these limitations with traditional user feedback (roundtables, surveys, feedback portals etc.)

At SceneDoc, we are certainly in the midst of the revolution with not only mobile adoption but cloud adoption by governments around the globe. The critical success factor becomes how the software provider addresses the concerns at government IT and procurement/contracting while providing a solution that is clear in its benefits and easy to consume.