Well, first you are aware that 'ssh host command' runs command on host, aren't you. If certificates have been set up you will not be prompted for a passwd. So this would be suitable for cron. Note that command will be executed by the system shell, so you can actually use perl on the local side to build a (shell) script. You could also scp the command (or script) and then execute it remotely.

Now if the remote sshd asks for a passwd, you'll need to pass the passwd using expect for example (Perl module or command), or tweak pssh the client that comes with Net::Ssh::Perl so that it can read the passwd from a file o env_var o whatever.

Finally there are security implications doing the latter.

As an example I'll show you a remote uname -a using expect and ssh:

#!/bin/expect -f
spawn "ssh -l my_user remote_host uname -a\r"
expect -re "[Pp]assword: "
send "my_passwd\r"
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