For small and medium size organisations, Web based applications like Workbooks.com provide a much more cost effective way to deliver effective I.T. to your business. Here are five reasons why:
Simplicity
With applications delivered on-line, all the complexity of the underlying IT is no longer your problem. At Workbooks.com our customers don’t worry about upgrading hardware, or which operating system version supports which database, or which VPN will work. We take care of the IT complexity so you don’t have to. You just need a computer with a web browser and you can access your business applications from anywhere.
Guaranteed Levels of Service
At Workbooks.com we guarantee your applications will be available 99.5% of the time. In the event we don’t deliver (which has not happened to date) there are penalties to be paid by us. Typically with most traditional software you get no guarantee on how well it will perform.
Cost Effective Pricing
There are a number of reasons why we are able to deliver ‘enterprise class’ applications to our customers at a much more cost effective price than traditional software. Including the fact our infrastructure is shared across multiple customers, so there isn’t the cost of unused I.T.. Because we don’t ship traditional software and have a controlled environment we don’t have to test our software with different versions of operating systems and databases, or write installations manuals or write upgrade guides for our customers. All these reasons allow us to produce solutions at a much more cost effective price.
Security
For the majority of our customers their key business information is more secure in Workbooks than it was in their previous I.T. systems. At Workbooks.com we run two geographically separate datacenters which contain the I.T. infrastructure to deliver our applications. Both datacenters have virtually identical equipment and your data is automatically replicated between the two. So in the unfortunate event that a disaster occurs such as a bomb or a fire in one of the centers, the second datacenter can continue delivering the Workbooks service. In addition to this highly available infrastructure we maintain a rolling backup of your data. All our customers benefit from this common infrastructure, although we do keep each customer’s data in a separate database to ensure your data remains confidential.
Compare this infrastructure to what you have in place today: What would happen if there was a fire at your building? How quickly could you get new servers, reinstall all the relevant software? and How current are your backups? Would you be down for just a few days or would it be weeks? What impact would the downtime and potential loss of data have on your business?
Long Term Customer Relationship
We believe that this last point to be the most significant. At Workbooks.com we charge you an annual fee for the service. The truth is by the time we take into account the sales and marketing costs of acquiring a new customers and the money we have already spent on the infrastructure we don’t make any profit in the first year of the relationship. So it’s important that you stay with us for several years. This means we are very focused on ensuring you remain happy customers over the long term. You can contrast this with traditional software vendors who make the majority of their profit on the initial software license sale and have a relatively small ongoing support fee. Their focus is on getting you to buy the license and not necessarily the longer term view.