Software as a Service – A Key Enabler for Digital Transformation in Organization - A Multi-disciplinary Information Systems Research Agenda

Software as a Service (SaaS) is a segment within the technology services industry that has shown continued resilience and strong growth. SaaS is software owned, delivered, and managed remotely by one or more providers. It offers value to businesses by reducing the total cost of ownership through complete outsourcing, leveraging data and analytics to understand customers better, and making data-driven solutions that enhance performance. SaaS is highly scalable and generates reliably recurring revenue, making it an attractive acquisition target for B2B SaaS players. SaaS is seen as a key enabler of business value and transformation. One of the key factors that enables organizations to extract value is the maturity of architectures and better integration of new technologies. Enterprises are looking at SaaS as an alternative to purchasing, installing, and maintaining modifiable off-the-shelf software packages, offering flexibility in pricing and modular usage of features. Although SaaS offerings have been around for more than a decade, firms are still learning to realize value from their co-existence. However, implementing SaaS solutions comes with challenges and risks. In this chapter, we look at these factors and put forward several propositions laying down the foundation for empirical and qualitative research to be conducted for validation of the hypothesis.