A Business Case for SaaS
The health and human services world is in an accelerated state of transformation. While the pandemic may have been the catalyst for this change, it does not seem to be stopping anytime soon. Savvy public sector leaders have recognized that solutions can be implemented quickly and that they need to be responsive to the changing needs of their clients. They need prompt implementation and immediate return on their investments. This can happen with Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solutions.
What’s the Problem?
There are major challenges in building monolithic health and human services systems. The scale, complexity, and time that it takes to build them have been a frustration for years. As technology has evolved, it has become evident that the systems do not have to be constructed that way. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) and the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) have both published regulations requiring modularity and other design approaches to break down the application architecture into manageable chunks. The challenge remains in the decommissioning of highly integrated legacy systems.
Further, there is a consideration for the experience and empowerment of the residents being served. The federal government has published an Executive Order that is intended to change the approach to service, based upon the life events of the resident. There has been recognition that these programs are serviced and operated with a diverse set of stakeholders and organizations, not within the silo of a federal and/or state-run program. This transformation will require changes in policy, process, and technology.
Why SaaS?
States and localities are no longer confined to a single solution or a single provider to deliver necessary business functionality. They are free to choose the best solutions to meet their business needs. Many SaaS solutions are purpose built, with significant investment in research and development, human-centered design, and incorporation of lived-experience. SaaS providers know your business. These are not generic solutions. Further, they understand what it means to be a product company. They maintain and support the product, so that you do not have to, and everyone gets the benefit of changes to the product. This is a more economical approach, nationally. Something that should appeal to federal and state funders.
SaaS is not really new, but it is certainly a bit of a disruption to the status quo in the public sector space where custom solutions are the norm. Because of this, it can be at times challenging to convince leaders and other stakeholders that this is a better option to owning custom built code. Building a business case to socialize the approach, is a great first step to gaining buy-in and ultimately the funding needed.
The Business Case
Creating a business case not only demonstrates that research has been done. It builds the case to secure funding, identify procurement vehicles, and move forward with the project. It is essential to gaining stakeholder buy-in and proving the value of the investment. Given the newness of SaaS, it may take some convincing to gain support for the initiative.
Here are some SaaS specific elements to include in a business case to address inherent concerns with embarking on a journey of a different nature.
The Purpose of the Project: The purpose of the project should always be primarily related to improving a business or program problem. Some examples might be improving resident engagement, gaining efficiencies, improving data quality, or workforce satisfaction. What is the business problem you are trying to solve?
Anticipated Benefits: The benefits must tie back to the purpose of the project. What will you get out the investment? From a SaaS perspective, elements may include ability to make changes to forms more quickly, reduced impact on IT resources to maintain the system, improved security, and reduced capital costs. One of the biggest benefits of SaaS is that it has the flexibility to support a remote workforce and distributed stakeholders.
Risks: Typical risks to consider include integration with legacy systems. Do not forget to include the risks of NOT selecting the SaaS, as well. This might include longer time to implement or inability to implement the same level of capabilities.
Cost: Benefits include reduced hardware costs and predictability over time.
Alternatives: The common alternative to SaaS is custom-built solutions. The trending approach currently is to use a “platform,” which requires (sometimes significant) configuration and customization to provide the same functionality that is instantly available with some SaaS solutions.
Timelines: Many SaaS solutions, like Diona, can be up and running in six months or less. When representing the timeline, it should be correlated with the benefits to demonstrate incremental return on the investment.
Operational Impacts: In a world where workforce challenges have crippled the public sector, that is not a concern with SaaS. These solutions come with IT support and upgrades as needed to stay current with other software dependencies.
Building a business case for SaaS can be done by addressing the most common concerns. Many SaaS solutions are faster, more cost effective, and functionally superior to other options. At a time when organizations are trying to solve big problems, SaaS is a no-brainer.