Saas Adoption: Critical Factors for CRM Application

Software as a service (SaaS) is a demand-driven application that provides network-based access to an integrated portfolio of applications across the virtual value chain of an enterprise. This paper investigates the organizational, technological, and economic factors that influence the adoption of SaaS for customer relationship management applications, using a theoretical framework based on transaction cost theory and the resource-based view. With a case study methodology, this investigation analyses four large companies that have adopted a SaaS approach for at least three years. The results confirm the importance of specific organizational factors, such as optimizations of marketing processes, but other factors such as costs appear more strongly connected to reduced financial risks than to cost controls in a strict sense.