Despite growing customer adoption of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), many companies and conservative industry observers still believe that SaaS solutions are simply a skinnied-down version of traditional, on-premise applications that offer little value add other than quicker deployment times and lower upfront costs.

IT/business decision-makers need look no further than at how today’s SaaS solutions are addressing age-old sales and marketing challenges to see that their capabilities go well beyond yesterday’s legacy software.

For instance, LucidEra announced a new offering today, called Lead Insight, which enables companies to analyize how marketing programs impact sales productivity. The LucidEra Lead Insight on-demand service offers over 65 prebuilt templates which enable users to analyze the quality and performance of their marketing leads and how effectively the sales team is converting these leads into opportunities and closed deals.

LucidEra’s new service enables companies to measure the cost effectiveness and return on investment (ROI) of their marketing programs. It also ensures a tighter bond between sales and marketing departments by tracking how well the sales team follows up on marketing leads. And, the service includes reporting capabilities which allows all the key stakeholders within the company–executives, salespeople and marketing folks–to track their performance over time and see how various tactics and strategies can impact sales success.

LucidEra has been a pioneer in the SaaS business intelligence sector and recognizes that sales intelligence is the area of greatest concern to most companies. Although its new service touches on measuring the performance of marketing programs as well, LucidEra recognizes that there are numerous SaaS solutions aimed at managing and analyzing the effectiveness of marketing programs. Therefore, it is positioning its solution as complementary to these.

One such company is called Printable, a provider of intelligent marketing solutions. Printable’s SaaS solutions enable enterprise users and print service providers to manage their online and hardcopy collateral to permit personalized marketing campaigns. Built into Printable’s solutions are extensive analytic and reporting tools that allow users to measure the effectiveness of their campaigns.

Another example is Clickability, a leading SaaS content management company, which has built analytics into its solutions that enable corporate, sales and marketing decision-makers to more effectively measure and manage their activities.

While ease of deployment/use and lower cost of ownership are important attributes of SaaS solutions, providing powerful and practical analytics is the key differentiating quality of today’s leading SaaS companies.

Click here to find my blog about other key attributes of being ‘saasy’.