How a SaaS CMS Creates Guardrails for Success

Personalization and customization are two of the most popular words in marketing. Consumers want personalized experiences and companies are doing everything they can to deliver relevance, both because of their audiences’ demand and to separate themselves from the pack.

Similarly, marketers are always ready and equipped to tell you why their company is unique from the competition, and as such, don’t (or can’t) operate like everyone else. And often this mindset is fuel for technology decisions. They want platforms that can be overhauled and customized to their specific needs.

Don’t get me wrong, this is the direction of how brands should be thinking. Consistent innovation and strides toward increased relevancy are the way to success. But from a technology standpoint, if that mindset of customization goes too far, it ends up being counterproductive. 

In my web area of focus within CX, marketers now have two options to decide between when it comes to their content management system: a platform-as-a-service (Paas) model or the newer software-as-a-service (SaaS) model. Studio Science just had to make that choice, and recently launched on Optimizely’s SaaS CMS.

We’ll get into the benefits of both of them, but one thing we’ve noticed is that SaaS is helping brands get out of their own way. Here’s what I mean.

The Difference Between SaaS and PaaS

Before getting into their impact on organizations, it’s worth calling out the differences quickly at the top.

PaaS is the traditional hosting model where the development team (whether an in-house team or third-party contractors) manages the platform’s customizations, deployments, patches, and other requirements. Hosting is often within a cloud tenant, monitored by the vendor but ultimately managed by the technical team. It’s how most people think of building and running a website.

The SaaS approach takes away the need for ongoing IT maintenance cycles because you as the organization are not managing the version upgrades, patches, etc. That’s all done by the software provider (Optimizey, Adobe, WordPress, and so on). If in-house technical resources are hard to come by or upgrades have caused prior headaches, SaaS can alleviate a lot of that stress, while also making it easier to stay on the most up-to-date version. 

Protection From Themselves

On its surface, the sheer amount of customization available with a PaaS CMS sounds great. You have full access to custom code to tailor your platform to your liking,  marketing-specific desires, and downstream data integration needs. But this is where so many companies run into trouble.

Too much customization comes at a price, and not just in dollars, because all of those customizations have to be supported and maintained down the road. And when it comes time to upgrade your code base, that job becomes much more difficult – those customizations could require a full rewrite, identifying alternatives, or flat out aren’t possible because of platform shifts. Going down a path of massive code customization also leaves a tangled web that often leads to additional scaling and upgrading problems.

Some feel that SaaS solutions put companies in too much of a box when it comes to their setup, and it’s a fair point of contention. Instead of writing native server code, you are forced into an API-only approach or not allowed to modify the authoring interface. But for the majority of brands out there, this isn’t a bad thing. The constraints faced within a SaaS platform encourage organizations to think more creatively and pick solutions to requirements and  integration approaches that are more resilient and focused.

All implementations should use some sort of integration software (MuleSoft, as an example) rather than writing lines and lines of specific, custom code. SaaS just forces the hand and removes the temptation. And while it feels more constrictive, there’s a freedom in not having to worry about dependencies with custom, point-solution integrations. Also, integration platforms are low- to no-code solutions with highly visible log insights, simplifying technical maintenance and future upgrades.

Speed and effort are two other considerations here. A PaaS cloud infrastructure still takes some time to get set up and configured (submitting tickets, waiting for buildout, getting access, etc.). SaaS will cut down the time it takes to get started from potentially days to minutes or hours. There’s also a performance aspect to note. All of that custom, server-side code can impact server stability and performance.. Because SaaS forces you down a pattern and often will leverage a headless architecture, speed and resiliency increase naturally in a SaaS environment.

Focus on the Rule, Not the Exception

You might be reading and saying, Yeah, but we have to write custom code for XYZ. And that may be true. But most of the time SaaS will work just as well. Start with a SaaS mindset and find real, specific reasons why it won’t work. Force yourself to identify any extremely customized aspects of your website for which there are no alternative approaches. If those use cases don’t exist, PaaS might not be worth the hassle.

It Still Requires Work

Both SaaS and PaaS solutions have their perks, but like any technology, just implementing one doesn't solve your problem. Sure, SaaS puts up guardrails for your benefit, but it’s not fool-proof. The platform still has to be executed correctly.
Think about it in bowling terms. Going with a SaaS approach would be like playing with bumpers on, compared to the open approach of a PaaS. It still doesn’t mean you’ll get a strike, it just limits the possibility that you roll a gutterball. By adding guardrails, you raise the potential floor of the project. And when a gutterball in this analogy could mean significant negative business impacts, having bumpers there to guide the ball toward the pins is a worthwhile approach.  

If you want the best chance to bowl a strike (sorry, had to), we're here to help. Learn more about our approach to SaaS and Optimizely’s platforms.