Advantages of Desktop Over Web-Based Applications

When we first started developing our Vehicle Fleet Manager and Tool and Asset Manager products, one of the first decisions we had to make was whether these were going to be desktop or web-based applications. With SaaS, or Software as a Service, products flooding the market, you can imagine the pull we felt toward releasing a web app.

But, as we thought about it, we realized that that wasn’t what we wanted to do. We didn’t want to release a “one size fits all” solution and force our customers to do business the way we - and our software - thought it should be done. We think that decision is best made by the experts who know the actual business. And, in terms of accessibility, we knew that a properly developed desktop application could be accessed from anywhere, just like a web application. And, since it was locally based and housed within the customer’s own environment, we knew that we could add a layer of customization that you just couldn’t get from a web-based solution.

So, with those things in mind, we decided that our products would be desktop based. There are many advantages to this kind of configuration.

No annual or monthly fee. Servers are expensive and those expenses have to be passed along to the consumer. Usually this is done in the form of a monthly or yearly fee to access the software. We believe that your data is your data and that you shouldn’t have to worry about whether you’ve paid this month’s bill in order to get it.

Once you buy our application, that’s it. You can put as much information into it as you want and because it lives on your network on your machines, you don’t have to worry about whether the bills are paid before you can access it.

No reliance on an internet connection. In many office environments, an interrupted internet connection means that work comes to a standstill. Production grinds to a halt because, in these situations, all of the company’s data and applications are housed off-site. Workers sit idle waiting for that connection to be re-established. A single outage can cost thousands of dollars in wasted productivity, not to mention the inability to access business critical data and information when it is needed.

A locally housed system is entirely self-contained. As long as you have power, you’ll have access to your data. When uninterrupted access to your information is critical, you’ll be very happy that you had a desktop-based system installed.

Much easier to customize for your needs. As we detailed in a previous post, having the information you need at your fingertips without having to sort through a bunch of screens or views that you don’t use can have major impacts on your productivity. It is far easier to customize a desktop-based application built for your environment rather than a web-based solution built with a one-size-fits-all mindset.

You get all of the benefits of a desktop solution and can still access the software from a remote computer. With a proper installation and configuration of the network edition of our software, you can access your Vehicle Fleet Manager as well as Tool and Asset Manager data from any computer that has the software installed on it. Install and configure the application at the office and access it remotely from a company laptop. Tap into your company data from a desktop at home. So long as you have the application and an internet connection, you have access to your data.

As you can see, the benefits of having a desktop-based application running your fleet management and asset management software are many. We know that once you see the kind of safety, customization, and accessibility a desktop-based application brings to your environment, that you’ll agree that desktop is the only way to go for your fleet and tool management needs.