How SaaS Matches to VUCA World

We are now in VUCA world

Recently, we call the world VUCA. VUCA stands for Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, and Ambiguity. Basically, it means the world has become unpredictable. Indeed, I believe nobody could imagine the world of COVID-19. And, I believe nobody could imagine the situation under COVID-19 to last for 2 years. In fact, since there is always a new variant, we don't know whether the situation will become really better next year. I strongly hope it will be better next year. Because of COVID-19, many people were forced to work remotely. And, Taiwan is not an exception.

In 2019, remote work was only an option of a new work style so that managers of companies were discussing whether letting people work remotely is appropriate or not. But today, especially in the US, those managers are now discussing how to let people come back to their office to work. By only looking back at these two years, we can see that there were a number of unexpected incidents.

Be agile is the key to survive in VUCA world

But, no matter what happens around the world, a company needs to survive. Or else, the company will be forced to terminate. Then, how should a company survive in the VUCA world? The answer is simple. Since the future is unpredictable, rather than planning everything ahead, being able to react fast to the environment changes will become important. In another word, to be agile to the situation is crucial.

If an organization is agile and ready to react to any changes, even if there is something which is unpredictable, the organization can change dynamically to suit those changes. One of the famous examples of the fall of a company is Blockbuster Video. They stuck to the rental DVD business model even though the world of streaming is coming. A company can not survive without adjusting to the environment change.

Characteristics of SaaS

Software as a Service (SaaS) is a form of software application which is provided as a service. Usually, those are web or mobile applications. Since those services are on the cloud, it can be used from anywhere at any time with any device. In addition to those benefits of cloud, SaaS can be deployed instantly so that users can start to use the application right away without preparing any hardware environment or software. Plus, SaaS can be started with a small number of users and can expand the user number as users increase. And, it is possible that if the solution did not match to the work process, the user also can change to different SaaS solutions easily.

Use of SaaS matches to VUCA world

SaaS is the solution which can start instantly and easily. Plus it can start small. Therefore, without using any human resources to develop applications, we can try different kinds of applications and can explore which software application can match to our business process.

Another good part about SaaS is that SaaS itself evolves dynamically according to the needs of other users. Therefore, even without any additional cost, there will be more useful features added. As we continue using SaaS, we will start to wish for the application to have a certain feature. Since there will never be a perfect solution, there is always room for improvement. Since SaaS vendors don't want to lose users, usually, they try hard to keep users staying using their service by proactively asking for usage satisfaction and adding new features. However, sometimes the feature that we want is not in the SaaS application and the SaaS vendor is not planning to add that feature. And at that time, if there is the feature we want in the other similar application, it will be the time to consider switching.