Abstract
It may be suggested that the Software as a Service (SaaS) revolution is now well underway. An increasing number of organisations are now moving to fully hosted and supported ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) software SaaS applications to potentially help reduce software costs. These platforms offer considerable advantages to organisations through improved upgrade and version management, reliability and reduced inhouse management costs and the potential to customise if required. However, the deployment of these platforms often invokes a major shift in organisational technical and commercial management capability. The results of an interpretive semi-structured qualitative analysis study suggests that a key organisational training, technical and commercial skill is in the management and execution of user acceptance testing (UAT) of these applications. This study reveals that many organisations have failed to grasp the contractual, technical and employee skillset risks needed to both accept and continually support third party SaaS software applications into operational use. Lack of precise testing, regression testing and validation of changes or customisation into the application may often induce errors, rework, project delays and cost overruns. This study concludes that organisational commercial SaaS application management requires User Acceptance Testing as a key skill that is now the interface point to vendor software product acceptance and contract compliance.