A colleague and I recently collaborated on ideas for a customer meeting we had coming up. Special thanks to Steve Everett for the initial idea and the subsequent narrative we developed. We aimed to address why, despite many technological advancements, we find ourselves still trying to solve the fundamental challenges decades later.
Many of you will have seen the articles/podcasts on “death of SaaS” and whist I take a more balanced view I do agree that we are in the midst of some quite significant ways in which technology will solve real world problems. I also believe this is going to fundamentally benefit us all.
Those that will benefit the most and rise above the competition will be those that are ready to embrace this opportunity and take a platform approach, NOW.
The problem (we have been talking about the same problems for the last 20 years):
- Rising expectations of Customer and Employee Experience
- The quest for a Single Customer View, Customer 360, KYC
- Lack of (promised) ROI
Why? (with all the promise of technology solutions, this this arguably worse than it has ever been)
- Best of breed and siloed decision making means on average customers have 300 + Apps in their business
- Cloud. Cloud has increased the proliferation of apps, business users can buy and deploy applications with a credit card
- SaaS has promised infinite configurability and customisation. Many of these applications now are too risky or difficult or expensive to change. Not to mention the niche skills (and therefore risk) that you now need in your organisation to manage these applications
The Future (how will we solve this for the long term)
- Make cohesive decisions based on the Customer Journey and organisational wide business outcomes not decision made in departmental silos
- Invest in platform not product. A platform approach will provide scale to your business, reduce risk and enable you to build flexibility and adapt rapidly to the pace of change in the industry
- Agent & AI over Apps. The way we deliver solutions is rapidly changing. Agents and AI will enable us to not only simplify our business but provide automation across business processes at scale
You can download the above slide in PPT format here.
Thank you for reading! I hope this article is useful, please do share your thoughts.
Mark Margolis 