Wan Chao science and technology: the difference between traditional ERP software and SaaS management software

Tell you the difference between traditional ERP software and SaaS management software from the aspects of products, talents and company operation.

1. First of all, the most important difference at the product level is the change of technical architecture.

Traditional ERP software is built locally, while SaaS software is built in the cloud. This technical difference leads to a series of significant differences between traditional ERP software and SaaS software.

The reason for this change is that with the development of the Internet, surfing the Internet has become more and more simple, relaxed and economical, and the market has changed. Consumers are spending more and more time online and on their mobile phones. This phenomenon is intuitively reflected in online shopping platforms such as Taobao, Tmall and JD.COM. Consumers can book, purchase and share their circle of friends through the Internet, and then continue online self-service payment and self-service membership.

Therefore, retail enterprises must adapt to the changes of the market and consumers and provide consumers with a variety of services based on the Internet. Therefore, to some extent, it is an inevitable requirement for retailers to choose SaaS management software based on the Internet to keep pace with the times and meet the needs of the times.

2. Because of the change of cloud technology based on Internet, compared with traditional software, sSaaS management software has the characteristics of continuous updating and improvement in function.

Traditional ERP software is the final version when it is given to customers, and few or no traditional ERP software can provide customers with version update and upgrade services, because for traditional ERP software, the operating cost of version upgrade is too high, and it needs to go to the site to update one store at a time, and the labor cost and time cost are high.

But for SaaS software, there is a big version of the product line upgrade every week and every month, which is the normal state of SaaS software. Therefore, the product that customers get is not the final version, but the starting point of cooperation. What are your functional requirements? Maybe the next version will be available.

At the same time, this feature of SaaS software also brings the characteristics of rapid deployment and easy maintenance.

3. Due to the cloud-based technical architecture, SaaS management software can serve a large number of retail merchants. The more merchants there are, the cheaper the software will be, and the price of the software itself will tend to zero.

However, SaaS software products not only have products, but also services, both of which are indispensable, and services cannot be free. Therefore, compared with traditional ERP software, SaaS software has a great discount on price, especially for chain retail enterprises. Previously, the quotation of traditional ERP software for chain retail enterprises was often millions or tens of millions, which was unimaginable for many small shops and large chain retail enterprises.

With the advent of SaaS era, these small shops, large chain retail enterprises, especially those that expand their business by joining chains, also have systems that can compete with the millions of functions of traditional ERP software, which is the phenomenon of universal benefit brought by scientific and technological progress.

4. There is another major difference between traditional ERP software and SaaS management software in terms of service.

The so-called service of traditional ERP software is only limited to the maintenance of the system, while the internet characteristics of SaaS software introduce the concept of operation into the service, that is, not only to ensure the normal use of the system, but also to make good use of many operational services provided by the software and the system in business mode, operation mode and management mode.

Of course, these services are not necessarily provided by SaaS software companies, but may be provided by partners on SaaS's eco-open system. Openness, connectivity and the profound changes brought about by it are also beyond the reach of traditional ERP software, and are also one of the major features of SaaS software.

5. Differences in security

Originally, the most easily questioned feature of SaaS software is security. Some people always intuitively think that SaaS software is in the cloud, and data security is not as strong as traditional software.

In fact, on the contrary, SaaS software is in the cloud and serves many retail merchants, so the consideration of data security is much higher than that of traditional retail software.

The first is the backup of physical space. Powerful SaaS software must provide disaster recovery services for data centers in different regions. For example, a data center can provide disaster backup services to each other in two different server data hosting centers in Beijing or Shanghai. At the same time, in the same data center, the backup of server data is also done in strict accordance with the financial service system. Third, in terms of data access and data transmission, there are strict encryption measures and supervision mechanisms. These strict management systems ensure that everything is implemented in accordance with financial security measures and ensure the safety of data to the maximum extent.

On the other hand, traditional ERP software often has servers stolen and forcibly confiscated, which is impossible for SaaS cloud hosting services.

6. The customer base is also changing quietly.

The customer groups of traditional ERP software are often some large-scale and powerful retail enterprises. With the structural transformation from high-end retail to mass retail in China, small convenience stores and large chain retail enterprises have gradually become the mainstream. Such mainstream market groups can't afford the high product cost of traditional software in the past, which was hundreds of thousands, millions and tens of millions.

SaaS management software meets the management needs of chain retail enterprises with less cost, which makes those small and beautiful stores, small stores with single product strategy, and even stores with booths ranging from 50- 100 square meters can bear SaaS management software. This is really because of the great changes brought about by technological progress.

7. Move towards big data and intelligence

Traditional ERP software is mostly isolated in all business links and cannot be connected. The most common phenomenon is the so-called "eight-nation alliance" phenomenon. Cashier, member, inventory, supply chain, office, finance, personnel and other systems are often independent of each other and cannot be unified, so data mining is difficult.

SaaS management software, because of its cloud-based characteristics, can not only completely open its own business system, covering all retail business links, but also share it with business systems in the retail industry ecological chain due to the development characteristics of the Internet, and form a big data system with retail management system as the core, which is the only foundation and premise for the future retail industry to become intelligent. SaaS can realize the intelligent service of retail business through search service, data analysis and mining service and prediction service.

8. From product level to company level.

First of all, traditional ERP software and SaaS software have different requirements for talents, and the talent structure has changed greatly. According to the traditional ERP software, 5-6 people and 7-8 guns can often support a company, so the traditional ERP software conservatively estimates that there will be 5,000 companies in China.

However, due to the higher requirements of cloud technology for SaaS management software, especially the requirement that massive data are concurrent at the same time and the system must be stable, the requirements for system architecture, database structure and software quality have all been raised to an unprecedented level, so the technical threshold has been greatly improved, which is actually a requirement for professionals. This is an important reason why traditional ERP software is difficult to transform into SaaS software.

9. What follows is the difference of the company's development model.

The capital demand for SaaS software has greatly increased. Thousands of traditional ERP software can survive because small companies can directly make profits by selling software. But for SaaS software, a lot of money needs to be invested in the layout of technology and talents in the early stage. For enterprises, financing ability has become one of the key abilities for survival and development, which is also a big difference between traditional ERP software and SaaS software.

In other words, traditional ERP software sells software for a living, while SaaS management software company is an Internet service provider, whose main content is to provide intelligent value-added services with big data and cloud computing as the basic characteristics for retail enterprises. Their business content and development model are fundamentally different.