Here’s a Web application that claims to offer multiple enterprise management tools on a single platform. We take a close look at the product and explore the technology that drives it!
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As the market talks about ‘recession proofing’, here is a tool that offers an integrated, customised and hassle-free IT environment to enterprises, and that too on a subscription basis. A2zapps.com—a software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform—lets businesses automate their operations across the board or for select departments. It offers business software (CRM, ERP and other IT enterprise solutions) on a subscription basis. The service is offered in much the same way telecom vendors provide telephony services to their subscribers – users just need to pay a monthly subscription fee. The service is entirely available on the Web and does not require any server installation or front-end programming at the customer’s end.
It’s different, and how!
Pointing out the difference between A2zapps.com and other SaaS offerings, Kantanu Kundu, CEO and chairman, A2zapps.com, says, “Most of the SaaS products available in India either focus on a specific application or vertical; or are hosted models (single-tenancy), with limited customisation. The rest are headquartered outside Asia and require major technical skills to customise as per customer needs. But to get started with A2zapps.com, at the most, one needs to know Java Script and HTML (no Java/C++ programming is required), even if the customer needs heavy customisation.”
Kundu says that the majority of the IT enterprise solution providers have tweaked their existing on-premises models to fit into the hosted/SaaS model. In some cases, they lack true multi-tenancy. While in others, the software has been built to work on a LAN (local area network) and, therefore, is too bulky to be able to provide fast access on a WAN (wide area network) link. But A2zapps.com has been built on the SaaS (multi-tenant) platform (any apps) architecture from Day One. The extensibility of the platform provides customers the flexibility to add new applications as they grow. So users can start with minimum functionality, improve usage and then start adding other modules without any extra cost. In fact, the pricing for subscriptions and for customisation has been done keeping the Indian SME (small and medium enterprise) segment in mind and is not a global dollar pricing like that of most MNC software providers in India.
High on usability
A2zapps.com provides a comprehensive set of applications that are interlinked and can help organisations to use it for their group companies, as well as every single department within each group company like HR, sales, support and operations. The highlight of A2zapps.com is its simple screens and tabs, and its ease of use, says Kundu. “The product is ideally suited for the Indian emerging enterprise space that often lacks IT skills…and needs systems that are easy to use, and are completely hassle-free,” he adds.
The application offers the ability to import and export data, and reports in the most commonly used formats like spreadsheets. In addition to all these, labels for menus, fields, and reports can be named according to the organisation’s naming conventions, thereby making it user-friendly. The product currently supports various verticals like education, healthcare, professional services, logistics services, real estate and construction, hotels, manufacturing, and non-profit organisations. One of the early users of the application, Capt R K Mittal, MD, MAHAN Institute, says: “The platform has allowed us to integrate many activities at our centres in the Delhi/NCR region, thereby providing the best collaborative environment at an affordable cost.”.
