LiveRoute, the Middle East’s first local company dedicated to providing Software as a Service (SaaS) to businesses in the region, today launched its operations.
Gartner Group expects global SaaS spending to hit US$14 billion by 2013, but as of yet most businesses in the region have yet to take advantage of SaaS model, which can dramatically reduce the corporate investment needed to acquire, deploy and manage ERP & CRM systems. LiveRoute launched its SaaS portfolio in the Middle East in partnership with Aplicor Inc., a global software provider of web-based CRM, ERP and Accounting software applications, making it easy and affordable for businesses in the region to implement ERP & CRM systems.
“In light of the past two years of global economic uncertainties, Middle East businesses are eagerly looking for new ways to cut their cost, while increasing efficiencies and their focus on the upturn, on the horizon for growth.” said Jawwad Rehman, Managing Director of LiveRoute. “The Middle East is now fairly well served with hardware, traditional software and consulting services, however, key business solutions like ERP and CRM remain relatively complex, high cost and very high in maintenance for mid & large size organizations. LiveRoute is established to address those needs as its core competency to make things simple, straightforward and affordable for such business solutions through Software as a Service model.”
LiveRoute has teamed up with Aplicor as a “Master Partner” across the Middle East to market, sell and provide professional services for the US vendor’s state of the art, easy to deploy and cost effective SaaS based CRM, ERP and integrated BI solutions for mid to large businesses.
“Aplicor is very excited about the potential of the Middle East market and helping to promote benefits of the SaaS model into the region via a strong partner like LiveRoute,” said Chuck Schaeffer, CEO of Aplicor. “We expect to see a huge growth in the adoption of SaaS in the Middle East market, as we have seen in the US & European markets. Businesses in other markets have been able to dramatically reduce costs and complexities by adopting SaaS and there’s a clear opportunity for businesses in the region to capitalise on the operational cost-saving benefits offered by SaaS.”
According to existing market data, LiveRoute expects that the average enterprise can save up to 70% of initial costs if it opts for Aplicor’s SaaS EPR & CRM application over the old way of on-site model. Over 5 year period business will still save up to 46% in costs by going with Aplicor’s Applications. “Middle East businesses now have the option to save money on their IT infrastructure, today and over a long haul for their ERP & CRM investment,” said Ghazi Atallah, Chairman and Co-fouder, LiveRoute. “The budget that can be saved by simply adopting a newer, more flexible technology can be redirected towards much needed core competency investments, while local business can focus on their growth, instead of worrying about high cost, and complicated traditional on-site systems. In fact, by reducing corporate resources dedicated to ERP & CRM systems by going with SaaS model, and making budget and resources available to other critical projects, local companies can help raise the bar for IT innovation in the Middle East.”
LiveRoute professional services configure, customize, and integrate the SaaS solutions it offers with customers’ current systems to deliver immediate business value and competitiveness. Its services can help businesses reduce IT budgets, requiring no upfront investment, nor traditional army of in-house resources for maintenance. The company’s SaaS offering simplifies work by taking concerns of system management, security, integration and system uptime away from its customers who are then able to focus more resources on their core-competencies. LiveRoute also offers professional training for its customers on the solutions it sells in collaboration with various software publishers.
“LiveRoute is proud to be the first company from the region to venture into the cloud computing space as its core competency and we strongly believe that Middle East’s holds a tremendous opportunities for SaaS,” added Jawwad.
