Computerworld — When Steven John took over as CIO at specialty chemical manufacturer H.B. Fuller Co., he inherited a North American payroll system implementation that was expensive and going nowhere.

The business units hadn't participated in the technology decision, and the project was bogged down with customization issues and other concerns. John chose to relinquish control of payroll software and switched to software as a service, or SaaS.

"I wanted to do an implementation that was simple and straightforward -- to configure but not customize -- and see the benefits of a standard, global platform," John says. "This was a way to teach, save money and outsource a noncore system." Giving up control was an easy trade-off compared with the headaches he would face trying to fix the existing software.

Indeed, SaaS has become a viable alternative to in-house enterprise software. Those who were once concerned about losing the ability to customize applications, control upgrades and execute changes are finding out that control isn't all it's cracked up to be. Here's a look at how some IT executives resolved their own software "control issues."

Customize vs. Configure

Today's SaaS offerings allow more configuration choices, frequent upgrades and more end-user collaboration than their predecessors did.

"You're getting a lot more innovation," says Ray Wang, an analyst at Forrester Research Inc. "The products are a lot more configurable than what most people have in their own applications. You can change fields, rename things, and move attributes and workflows. So there's a good level of control there."

What's more, the configuration choices are more refined and well thought-out, giving users a few good choices instead of myriad options. John found that configuration rather than customization allows H.B. Fuller to maintain its "lean core."

"I believe that more standardization leads to more agility," John says. "SaaS allows us to say, 'This is good enough ... for what we need.' So you don't end up with these horrible situations where you have these highly customized systems. We go with [configuration] option A, B or C. If one of those three doesn't meet our need, we can try to influence the next release. But in most cases, A, B or C is going to meet the need."

SaaS offerings with limited choices have also improved processes at Eden Prairie, Minn.-based 2nd Wind Exercise Equipment, which turned to SaaS for its CRM, sales and financial applications.

"We wanted to use [software] that will expand and contract with [our business]," says Chief Financial Officer Tom Kelly. "We've actually improved our processes by using these systems. Instead of looking at everything the system doesn't have, just use the tools!"

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