It's no secret that SaaS apps are quickly becoming a mainstay in the modern business portfolio - and the rising crest of cloud-based platforms is quickly ushering in a new age of analytics. When the sprawl of your business is tied together via a shared architecture, aggregate data can begin to show some interesting trends. It's not that the older on-premise ERP software can't consolidate and share data - but for software like that, the ability to analyze data from a wide range of projects is a time-consuming and fragmented process at best. It simply isn't a core competency.
Modern cloud-based SaaS apps offer integrated connectivity at a fundamental level, allowing for data streams from all corners of your business to be accessed and analyzed in real-time. The resulting score of information can create some serious value for your company. Not only does the cloud allow for cohesive data throughout your entire business, but the data can also be linked to other applications in real-time. Users are also able to easily control their own access permissions for sharing data with other apps, eliminating costly bottlenecks that can hobble daily operations.
The benefits of having next-level aggregate data are many. Wide-scale software implementation used to mean headaches, having to deal with individual licenses and an enormous cost. When you've upgraded your business with cloud architecture, a wider implementation only increases the value of your analytics - a phenomenon dubbed "the network effect". On the vertical axis, everything from supply chain management to retail can be optimized with using a readily-available hoard of shared information. Being able to "zoom out", seeing the quantitative data of your operations in such a holistic way - it doesn't take long before cross-division patterns start to emerge and allow you to make time-sensitive decisions in a more informed way.
