Church Management Software as a Service
Fellowship One is an on-demand, hosted, Church Management Software solution, often referred to as Software as a Service or SaaS.
We chose to build Fellowship One as a hosted solution because it allows us to provide better service to our customers. Even the largest churches in America could not afford the physical and technical architectures we have implemented. Even if they could, why would they try? Churches are spending God's tithes and must be good stewards of those resources. Offloading Information Technology (IT) costs to a third-party helps to reduce both cost and risk.
SaaS Defined
Software as a Service is a model of software delivery where a company provides their customers access to software, alleviating that customer from the maintenance and daily technical operation and support of business and/or consumer software.
The SaaS provider manages and hosts major enterprise software (such as Church Management Software) for customers who pay a monthly fee for the service. Organizations access the SaaS provider's software via the Internet. This model can save the customer, in this case the Church, substantially on capital expenditures - they do not have to devote resources to hardware on which to run the church management software nor personnel to operate and maintain either the hardware or the software. It allows the church to focus on its core competency - Ministering to People.
If you are still unsure about the "true" definition of SaaS, we encourage you to read our blog on the topic titled Evaluating the various Church Software SaaS Offerings.
What are some of the advantages of the SaaS model for Church Management Software?
- "On-Demand" Accessibility - The system is available anytime, anywhere with just a web browser and an Internet Connection
- Easy to Learn and Use - If you can order a book from Amazon.com, then you can use Fellowship One
- Reduced Risk - Fellowship Technologies provides a professionally managed environment with multiple levels of security, redundancy and backups to ensure your data is safe and secure
- No touch, No Cost Upgrades - Fellowship Technologies regularly upgrades Fellowship One with new features and enhancements; the upgrades are free and require no action on the part of the church to install them
- Lower Total Cost of Ownership - The overall cost of a hosted solution is actually lower due to the reduced costs of maintenance and internal IT support
A leading research firm, Gartner, made their Top 10 IT predictions for 2008 and beyond. They predict that “Software-as-a-service will account for at least one-third of business application spending by 2012. Click here to read an article from Business Week that exposes the myths about SaaS.
Fellowship One - Saas Architecture
