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Platform compatibility is a big item for an on-premise SPM deployment. Which operating system will be used? And which database? How about the business intelligence package? And many more questions… With an on-demand solution, all of these questions are already answered for you, and you don’t even need to know. There is nothing to worry about… or is there?
With an on-demand deployment, the only thing that really matters is that the solution can run on the computer of your administrators, and on the computer of your sales reps. Considering that the application is usually accessed via a web browser, that’s typically not an issue.
But there are a few things to watch out for…
The main issue I have encountered is the web browser used. Maybe I was a bit slow to adopt it, but I became a Firefox guy. Well… not all SaaS solutions will run on Firefox. And even if they do, they are not necessarily tested on it, so some strange bugs could happen. I’ve never tried to use another browser like Netscape or Opera for an SPM solution, but I wouldn’t recommend it. Even when sticking to Internet Explorer, the version of the browser matters.
If the browser version is too new, there will [probably] be unexpected errors. On the other hand, every solution will also require a minimum version of a browser to support its technology. Is it a neat Adobe Flex application, or maybe it was built with AJAX? No matter, the case, make sure your browser is “new enough”.
Other applications require to have Java installed on your computer. For my non-techie readers, Java is a programming language that needs a small application running in the background of the computer to interpret (understand) the code. This is not usually a big deal either since most computers have this already, and if not it can be downloaded for free… But again, sometimes a specific version of Java is required… So if your IT department like to keep a consistent version across the organization, make sure they don’t update your Java runtime environment to a version which is not supported by your sales performance management solution!
Maybe a specific Flash version is required too? I’m sure the list of required plugin versions can go on and on… The bottom line is: make sure you get this list from the vendor, and make sure you can comply with the list.
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