Managing Software-as-a-Service: Pricing and Operations

forthcoming in Production and Operations Management.

36 Pages Posted: 20 Apr 2021 Last revised: 1 Apr 2022

See all articles by Bo Li

Bo Li

Ningbo China Institute for Supply Chain Innovation; Center for Transportation and Logistics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Subodha Kumar

Temple University - Fox School of Business

Date Written: March 13, 2021

Abstract

Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) applications have experienced a decade of explosive growth, eliminating barriers in reaching users and enabling real-time interchanges and intelligence. Using business analytics, SaaS applications are increasingly embedded in the day-to-day activities of businesses and consumers with competition and innovative pricing. Due to the evolution in cloud business models, new issues are surfacing to challenge practitioners and scholars. A number of issues encountered in the practice have not been properly addressed or even recognized. In this paper, we attempt to fill this important gap. Based on our understanding of this industry's development and what is happening in practice, we propose a framework of recent business research on SaaS in light of wide adoption of the SaaS business model. This framework broadly classifies SaaS research into two basic themes. For each theme, we review past work that has been instrumental in setting the direction of this line of research and discuss how emerging research opportunities can be addressed. For each research opportunity, we also propose an initial model and the applicable methodology. Further, in order to aid researchers, we identify the data sources wherever applicable, and even present some of the initial results. We conclude by describing promising directions on a roadmap for future research and explain why an integrative perspective of operations, marketing, and information systems is critical to SaaS. In this paper, we bridge the gap between research and practice by identifying the relevant industry problems that would help researchers who are interested in working in this area both to get a starting point and to address important theoretical and practical challenges.

Keywords: business analytics, pricing, strategy, service operations, Software-as-a-Service

Suggested Citation

Li, Bo and Kumar, Subodha, Managing Software-as-a-Service: Pricing and Operations (March 13, 2021). forthcoming in Production and Operations Management., Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3828904

Bo Li (Contact Author)

Ningbo China Institute for Supply Chain Innovation ( email )

Ningbo, Zhejiang
China

Center for Transportation and Logistics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology ( email )

77 Massachusetts Avenue
50 Memorial Drive
Cambridge, MA 02139-4307
United States

Subodha Kumar

Temple University - Fox School of Business ( email )

Philadelphia, PA 19122-____
United States

HOME PAGE: http://sites.temple.edu/subodha/

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