BPAAS – Much More Powerful Than a 5-Letter Acronym

I recently sat down with the Head of Customer Success for Upland’s IT Financial Management product line, ComSci – Robert “Bob” Bracco. They say a picture is worth a thousand words, well, a front line to customers must be worth a million. Bob and his team are entrusted with empowering some of today’s leading organizations to make intelligent IT spend decisions. In addition to empowering customers, Bob and team get vital information on a daily basis in terms of what our current customers struggle with and what makes their lives (and jobs) easier. With all the hype of ITFM lately, I thought I’d sit down with Bob to find out more about what makes ComSci stand out from the rest. Some ITFM vendors claim they’re the best, but why not hear why we think we’re the best directly from the team who sees it all every day?

Molly: Bob, thanks for sitting down with me. I often hear you use the term BPaaS – what is that? How would you simplify it for someone outside of IT?

Bob: Hi Molly, excited to be here! If you want a simple answer for BPaaS, why don’t we pull the definition from the ole trusty internet? 🙂 According to them, “Business Process as a Service (BPaaS) is any type of horizontal or vertical business process that’s delivered based on the cloud services model. These cloud services — which include Software as a Service (SaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) — are therefore dependent on related services.”

In short, that’s what ComSci is all about and the team at ComSci delivers this model to our customer base every single day.  We value our customers and consider each one a business partner. The ComSci team becomes an extension of your organization and is integral to your goals and success. We handle the tough jobs – whenever they need done. Other ITFM providers simply do not support the monthly business process like we do.

Take a quick look at how we stack up against other software vendors (a lot of green on our side):

Molly: What happens if an organization doesn’t have BPaaS?

Bob: Without the ComSci BPaaS model, customers are required to run and maintain the IT Financial Management process which as you know, can be extremely time-consuming, resource intensive and costly. In many cases, these organizations lack the fundamental production “rigor” and experience needed to fully support an IT Financial Management process. Without this critical business process support, customers are required to either hire staff to support these functions or use already existing, over-burdened resources to execute the ITFM program. All too often, customers forget about these “hidden costs” until it’s too late which inflates the overall cost to support the ITFM Program.

Molly: How do your customers normally react once they realize the value of the BPaaS service?

Bob: This is a topic which is near and dear to me.  Why?  All too often, prospective customers have a difficult time fully appreciating the service we offer and it is not until they join with us, do they fully realize the value of the service. I could go on for hours about the subject but instead will let one of our customers speak to the offering. A great quote from one of our large financial services customers sums it up nicely, “ComSci was and is still willing to consume whatever we send its way. Had we selected a vendor that just sold us the software and did not provide the continued service as an ‘included cost,’ we would not have renewed beyond the one year agreement. We would have created the data files to the best of our ability and cut our losses. I assume the relationship would have gotten contentious and it would have been a lose-lose for everyone involved. ComSci provides more of a personal touch.”

Why had this customer responded as they did?  That’s because WE perform all the heavy lifting for our customers and deliver business outcomes (not just software), which allows their team to focus on key strategic efforts in running the business, NOT on being “data jockeys” and supporting an ITFM offering that they may not be experienced with.

At the end of the day, hearing great feedback like that from one of our fantastic customers is what makes me get up and out of bed every day. I know what the ComSci product team is doing makes a difference every day for our customers. My team’s work goes well beyond just getting the purchase order and moving on – we’ll be there for you whenever you need us. Your success is our success.