By Jag Lamba, CEO of Certa
No one is denying how impactful SaaS point solutions have
been to the enterprise in recent years. When we think about enterprise software
today, there's no getting around it-it's SaaS we think of, by default.
And until very recently,
SaaS experienced great success; the model was needed to get our businesses out
of the run-everything-on-Excel stupor it had been in for far too long. For a
tech company, there wasn't a much clearer, more effective business model than
"find a business function still running on spreadsheets and take it online."
Add in some reporting functions, some basic (or advanced!) analytics and some
workflow features, and you were off to the races.
But with the proliferation of SaaS point solutions, what we
call SaaS 1.0, we started seeing not only the limits of this model, but some
outright downsides. Portal fatigue is real, and a significant problem for
productivity. Having to log in to multiple applications to get a simple
business task done? Not ideal. So what's next? How can we move into something
more ideal, better built for the businesses of 2022 and beyond?
No-code software is the next evolution of SaaS. No-code is SaaS 2.0. With no-code software,
users can create custom applications for both web and mobile and digitize
entire complex business processes with a simple drag-and-drop function. The
solutions use dynamic data models, workflows, and in-app reporting systems to
provide flexibility that current SaaS point solutions can't compare to. And
because they're tied to broader problems that can then be customized by a user
to fit with specific use cases, the ability for no-code software to solve any
given business problem is much higher than traditional SaaS solutions.
Let's dig deeper into the biggest reasons no-code software
will be the future of SaaS:
Continuous
improvement
Businesses aren't static. They're dynamic, evolving entities
that need to change to stay relevant in the marketplace. That's in part what
made SaaS 1.0 so successful; it made it easier for product updates to roll out.
No-code is the next step of that evolution, where it's easier for software
developers to continuously update their products and push them out to users, so
those users can always have the best version of the software at hand.
Quick deployment in
phases
Again, deployment speed is another factor that SaaS improved
over on-premise software but will be improved further with the advent of
no-code software. The first phase of no-code software can be deployed within
weeks and the client can update it easily. This speed is especially evident
when deploying adjacent use cases with the same no-code solution.
Greater flexibility
Every business is unique, and solutions that can adapt to
the business (and not the other way around) is the way forward. With SaaS 1.0
point solutions, users needed to change the way they worked to accommodate the
way the software functioned. Sometimes this requires a minor change, but
sometimes changing a work process across an entire enterprise is a steep
mountain to climb. It creates major issues in deployment and implementation,
but no-code solutions are flexible enough that they can be configured to fit
the processes a business already has in place, so no one needs to change the
way they work if they don't want to.
Templates for best
practices
With no-code solutions, vendors can inform enterprises about
best practices for usage and offer templates for multiple of the best practices
out there. With SaaS 1.0, you got one best practice, and that was it-you had to
hope it was the best one for your
business's situation. We can do better. And it's cheaper for SaaS 2.0 to update
their templates than it is for SaaS 1.0 providers, which will lead to more
frequently updated (and thus, the most timely) templates.
Extensible to
adjacent use cases
As you solve one problem, it's common for another problem to
make itself known in adjacent areas. With current SaaS solutions, the only
answer was to find yet another
software option that could address this new issue. This ends up being costly
and a further contributor to portal fatigue. But no-code solutions are
extensible, and can easily be added to in order to address the newly-discovered
problem, no need to start over with a new solution.
Easier integration
In addition to worries of portal fatigue, any new SaaS 1.0
solution needs to be carefully vetted to make sure it works with the digital
environment a business has built for its employees. It's often a coin flip on
whether it'll work or not; if not, sorry, that solution is probably not an
option for your company. On the other hand, many no-code tools come with
powerful integration engines that will create a unified platform for users that
seamlessly integrates with enterprise ecosystems already in place.
Humans became the dominant species because of our propensity
for constant improvement, and our ability to share knowledge and progress as a
community. No-code is the natural evolution of SaaS. And yes, on-premise
software will still exist, as will traditional SaaS. But it will be in corner
cases that call for that specific setup; an outlier, not the dominant flavor of
enterprise software.
When we think of SaaS in the future, it will be the no-code
version we'll be talking about.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jag Lamba is the founder and CEO of Certa. Jag grew up in Bombay, India, and studied computer science before kicking off his career as a software engineer. After moving to the U.S. and transitioning into Product Management, he began pursuing his MBA from Wharton while working at McKinsey, eventually moving into its strategy consulting practice. Jag founded Certa in 2016 with help from Techstars and angels.