Our company has recently adopted this thinking where we would like to embrace SaaS; we want to eat, live, and breathe SaaS! SaaS just basically means ‘Software as a Service’. It is an idea that embraces the concept of services on demand, and in this case the service is a software application delivered via the Internet.

We use the SaaS model with our school management application, and we can proudly proclaim that we are the first fully online school management system. We believe that it is a bold statement, and it is not something we take lightly!

We have worked hard on QuickSchools.com, and we believe that we have developed a school management system that is simple, powerful and reliable. We want to eliminate precious hours spent by the teachers or school administrators on entering grades, coming up with report cards, taking attendance, creating a schedule, and navigating complicated school management systems. What we are trying to say is just this, ‘We’ll take care of it all! This includes all the complicated back-end stuff, and you can trust that your data would be safe with us.’

We are constantly working on ways to better ourselves and also stay ahead of the competition. Internally, we use all sorts of SaaS applications, so that we are constantly learning what other cutting edge SaaS vendors are doing. (You thought I was joking when I said we eat, live and breathe Saas didn’t you?) Below are a few SaaS-y applications that we are using.

If you’ve browsed to our website www.quickschools.com recently, you’ll notice that we have just deployed an application called Click-To-Call. What this does is that it allows anyone that visits our official site or uses our QuickSchools application to request that we call them, and the call is made automatically. This is a pretty nifty application, which lets us reach out to our customers in new ways. The Click-to-Call application uses a SaaS API called Twilio.

Twilio is an API interface that enables web developers to easily develop advanced and reliable voice applications. We save time and resources by using a service that is available, rather than paying for an expensive telecommunications engineer and expensive hardware to bridge the gap between our software and the phone system. Twilio is charged on a pay-as-you-go basis. It makes sense to be charged only when we use their services.

As for our internal project management, we are using the online software Basecamp. This popular project maagement software allows us to efficiently manage projects, some small and some large. It helps us get coordinated with deadlines and milestones so that we remain focused on the goal at hand and remain up-to-date with any progress on projects. The fact that the software is online allows everyone on our team to access the project management system anytime, anywhere!

It is our goal to provide a world class fully online school management system that is easy to use, affordable and most importantly, simple, powerful and reliable. SaaS will definitely help us in making this goal a reality. So, let’s breathe SaaS together!

Update July 2, 2009 – The people over at Twilio mentioned us in their blog and shared with the world on how QuickSchools.com is embracing SaaS and using Twilio.