One of the long-standing hesitations around adopting SaaS-based ERP apps concerns storing critical corporate data offsite. This actually wasn't an issue for Singh, since his data centers are already outsourced. Next up was whether Workday had the capabilities to support Chiquita's global operations. "The established players had solutions that had existed for many years and had built out various localization modules," Singh says. "Would Workday have a development path that would meet our own internal time table for deployment?"

Then, there were the important "viability of the vendor" risk-management discussions, Singh says. "Going with a startup is always a little bit of a risk." First, what if Workday's growth exploded and Chiquita "was no longer a big fish in a small pond," Singh says. "Would we continue to get the attention and the resources?" On the flip side, of course, was what if Workday went belly up: What would be the implication for Chiquita's internal processes that were now tied to a solution that didn't exist anymore? In addition, would Chiquita be able to get its HR data back and make it usable again?

Workday's Duffield and Bhusri went to work in the latter half of 2007 to prove their product's mettle to Chiquita. Says Duffield: "Aneel and I personally spent a lot of time working with the Chiquita team to build that relationship."

ERP + SaaS = Successful Enterprise Strategy or Bad Plan?

When CIO magazine surveyed 400 IT leaders about their ERP systems in late 2007, CIOs said they remained committed to on-premise, traditional ERP systems--despite aggravating integration and high-cost headaches.