A few months ago Gartner published an SaaS prediction that caught my eye. They stated, “through 2010, 75 percent of complex CRM SaaS deployments will fail to meet enterprise expectations”. I did not read the detailed report, but such a bold statement got me thinking about our own experience with enterprise buyers and specifically, their Effective IT Adoption expectations of SaaS.

Effective IT Adoption may not be a familiar term. Essentially it is a proxy for business value and is characterized by the following attributes:

• Core functionality that is measurably connected to business outcomes


• A high percentage (85%+) of targeted users actively engaged with core functionality


• Sufficient levels of high quality data to provide actionable insights

In our work I’ve found that the majority of enterprise buyers believe that SaaS delivers faster, cheaper and higher rates of Effective IT Adoption than on-premise software. By logical extension they expect faster time-to-value and larger improvements in business performance. Both these expectations seem reasonable given the marketed advantages of SaaS: faster deployments, lower implementation costs, simpler functionality and ubiquitous access.

But, back to Gartner’s prediction, are these expectations grounded in reality?

In short, I don’t think so. SaaS is likely heading for an Effective IT Adoption expectation gap because of one key assumption that enterprise buyers often make - the assumption that the software by itself can deliver Effective IT Adoption in complex business environments. Clearly, this assumption is unrealistic when you consider the collective social complexity and change capacity of hundreds or thousands of users. Imagine, the myriad of competing needs and interests that are typically associated with enterprise software deployments and then factor in the volume of competing initiatives that are concurrently in play.

Even so, like any expectation gap there are insights that, if understood and acted upon, can narrow the gap without the necessity of setting our sights too low. The following three insights are critical to closing this expectation gap and will enable enterprise buyers to capitalize on the strengths of SaaS to deliver significant business value.