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whether this is a hardware-based technology or, in this case, a software service-based technology, there is always a reason (or number of reasons) exactly why a business is implementing this new technology. There are a number of reasons why businesses would want to implement SaaS. Some business might want to improve the efciency of their business related process by being able to concentrate more on business related processes rather than on software management processes, while other businesses may want to improve the collaboration of a number of diferent business sites of theirs, which are geographically separated.

No matter what reason a business has for wanting to implement SaaS, they should be clear about exactly what this reason is. A business should also have a very good understanding about how their existing processes and infrastructure work. This information is required so that SaaS software services can be integrated into their existing infrastructure at a later stage but with an absolute minimum of problems.

2. Note down exactly what you need in order to help you achieve the reason why you are implementing SaaS in the rst place

This directly follows on from the frst consideration. Once a business knows why they are implementing SaaS, they can then go about fnding exactly what they need in order to accomplish this. There are a number of questions that a business should be able to answer, which will help them fnd out exactly what they need in order to accomplish what they initially set out to achieve. Firstly, a business should be able to answer exactly what their SaaS software services need to be able to do. Secondly, a business should be able to answer exactly what kind of features these software services will need to have, in order to meet the answer to their previous question.

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be accessed by many users. However, if a business wanted a highly efcient software solution, similar in performance to traditional on-premises software solutions, then they would probably want a SaaS software service that could only be accessed by a few users at a time (making it more efcient than software solutions are ofered by many diferent users at the same time).

3. Request a Service Level Agreement before signing any contracts

The Service Level Agreement is an important

agreement document because it clearly defnes what a SaaS service provider is ofering and also what consequences they will face if they fail to deliver these services to the agreed standard. To avoid problems at a later time and to ensure that they are getting exactly what they paid for, a business should request a Service Level Agreement before actually signing any contracts. Only when a business is happy with the terms in their Service Level Agreement, should they continue with the implementation process of SaaS.

4. Make sure that agreement clauses meet your needs and not just the software vendors needs

Because of the fact that SaaS software vendors can be located anywhere in the world, their customs and agreements may difer from what a business (located elsewhere) actually thinks that these terms mean. For example, if a business was located in the US and their SaaS service provider was located in the UK (or any other part of the world other than the US), then there will be a time diference (among other diferences) between the two organizations.

This has a number of consequences when dealing with availability agreements or any other types of agreement clauses for that matter. For example, a SaaS service provider may have a clause stating that

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