Is SaaS the new star employee of your company?

Sammanfattning

Software-as-a-service (SaaS) has been around since the mid 2000's and is a practical option in contrast to the on-premise IT solutions where SMEs need to invest on purchasing or building their own IT infrastructures which means install the software themself, design the applications and have a whole IT division employed by the company to keep up with everything. Regardless of whether SaaS applications have been around for some time, SMEs actually have a ton of inquiries on whether these applications are a suitable choice for them. This research explores the factors that contribute to adoption of SaaS solutions in the Swedish SMEs. The factors are explored through the usage of technological, organisational, environmental framework that contribute towards adoption of SaaS in the Swedish small and medium sized companies. In order to answer the research question of this study and to understand the Swedish SMEs perspective, a qualitative study was conducted with a deductive approach. Six semi-structured in-depth interviews were conducted with respondents from six different SMEs who have already been in the process of adopting and have adopted SaaS. This thesis resulted in finding a significant process contributing to adoption of SaaS from Swedish SMEs perspective. The process is found to have a specific pattern because of the effect of the factors involved.