How do you think of being vendor agnostic when buying SaaS solutions?

[wang502]

When adopting SaaS solutions, do you think it is important to avoid being constrained to a single vendor, and make sure we have the flexibility to switch vendors?

[jasoncwarner]

Since I don't have the specifics in your case, I'll give some general thoughts.

I don't really think much about being with "one vendor" as much as I think about right tool for the job. I also think there's a difference in what one is optimizing for and what I think a company should do and what I think a company will do.

Expanded a bit more.

Tool suites are usually not great tools. The nature of most suite products is they are 'just good enough to do the job to not get eliminated from consideration'. It is hard to think about generally any company that has gone the suite route that has best of breed in any category let alone even one category. This means you are by nature picking them for pure convenience or ability to work together. That is a fine approach and most large enterprises are going to go this route. In fact, most large enterprise software vendors bank on this as part of their product and sales strategy. But no company will say they are making poor or mediocre quality software, obviously, though they are not trying to be innovative or great.

So know what you are optimizing for. Are you trying to buy from one vendor and not 5? Are you trying to have one contract or credit card statement? Are you trying to pick the best tools for the job? Are you trying to have one set of likely below average software the mostly works together?

I want to be clear, I'm not knocking this approach to build companies. Large large large companies have gone this path and it works.

But you aren't the ones building those companies, you are using their products. Makes sure they work for you. So know what you need.

When I'm looking to buy software, I'm looking for a few things.

1. what is my base platform

2. what are my needed components/tools that sit on top of that.

3. what are the nice to haves and how do they work with 1 and 2.

I don't let 3 make decisions for 1 and 2.

Let's walk through an example. I have seen some very very large organizations that anchor around ticketing. In modern software, ticketing is a tier 3, maybe tier 2 component. However because of it's prominence in how some folks, particularly back of the bell-curve adoption (aka conservative) organizations think of it, it might drive their base platform or needed tooling decisions. This is backwards.

So, literally nothing against a suite of tools but I want to know what my anchor platform is, how good the tools are that work with it and then figure out the value add. They all don't have to be the same thing fwiw.

Real world example.

Salesforce as base platform + a tool or two + many SFDC ecosystem company tools as 2 and 3.

In Salesforce case, it is a very good platform, but most Salesforce tools are actually sub-par to bad. But, the platform + ecosystem is rich and you can use Salesforce as the base platform and build out the rest of the tool chain in the ecosystem. This is a very good approach.

The challenge with Salesforce and all the tools is they typically don't work well together. They work 'well enough' though you usually have to hire a Salesforce consultant to stitch them all together (by design). This is very customer unempathetic but it's part of Salesforce strategy and it works for their business.

Other examples exist in other areas of the business though bottom line, not against a single vendor approach though if you are after best tool, it's not likely to be from that way of buying.