What is Excess Capacity?

-Barb Agnihotri, Operations Manager, Focus (Casitron)

What do Ride Share, Airbnb, and eBay have in common? Their business models are all based on a concept of shared excess capacity. The concept of it is simply that if a single person owns an asset, the chances are that there is going to be a time when that person is not using that asset, and it could be used by someone else. Take for instance, a car. When you are an average car owner, most of the time your car sits  in your driveway,  parking spot, or the parking lot of your place of work. What if someone else could use your car at those times and pay you for it?

The concept of sharing excess capacity is deeply embedded into Constellation Financial Software’s business model. Many of our applications are offered on a Software as a Service or Hosted model. But how does that really save a user-company money?

According to Glassdoor, in the Greater Toronto Area, an Information Systems Manager makes about $109,000, a Senior Database Administrator makes a median wage of $104,000 and an Application Developer makes approximately $77,000.  This means that a company setting up their own IT department has spent $290,000 in the first year, before they have even purchased any hardware or software. Additionally, depending on the organization, for at least some part of the time, these people will have nothing to do, which only adds to wasted resources.

At Constellation Financial Software, we hire people for these roles and then share them across customers, and sometimes even products. This means that you are getting a wide range of expertise for the fees that you pay us, without spending a fortune. Ultimately, this leads to stronger products with excellent support. Moreover, because we have a variety of products, our expertise is that much broader, which equips our customers with access to a broad base of skills with deep industry experience.