The channel’s evolving relationship with SaaS
Since the term was first coined in the 1990s, software as a service (SaaS) has helped evolve the way channel partners differentiate their service offerings to deliver more value to their clients. SaaS has an overwhelming modern-day presence, with a market value of $197 billion (£155 billion) in 2023, projected to grow to $247 billion (£195 billion) this year.
SaaS products have enabled channel partners to more easily deliver scalable, flexible solutions that fit the diverse needs of their clients. Despite this, signs are emerging that out-of-the-box SaaS platforms are starting to struggle to meet the unique and continually evolving needs of the ‘modern’ organization. As the channel industry continues to innovate alongside technology and strives to keep abreast of changing market needs, it’s important that channel leaders make sure the SaaS solutions they offer do too.
An imminent evolution
As businesses push to differentiate themselves and personalize their services based on these changing needs, a gap has emerged between the promise of fast transformation and the constraints of off-the-shelf SaaS. Businesses are often overwhelmed by the high costs, inflexibility, and complexity of traditional SaaS applications. They are slow to implement and over-engineered with features that don’t align with the real needs of a business, and so are cumbersome to navigate, resulting in low adoption rates and wasted resources.
No-code platforms bridge the gap between off-the-shelf solutions and unique business requirements by empowering organizations to create custom applications tailored to their specific needs, without any extensive coding knowledge required.
Then, as no-code has matured, the integration of AI – particularly generative AI – has further transformed its capabilities. AI-powered no-code platforms take the software development process one step further by enabling businesses to build composable applications using modular components, which can be adapted easily based on shifting goals or requirements.
Taken together AI and no-code have set a modern market standard – with unprecedented speed, agility, autonomy, and an incredible rise in productivity. This provides an unprecedented level of freedom to scale automation across your business combined with the ability to do it so much faster than with traditional SaaS software.
Automation – but make it personal
How does the channel reap the benefits of the evolution of AI and no-code in turn? As previously stated, organizations are looking to identify the productivity gains that can be derived from SaaS and automation, but are also looking for products which more closely align with their specific business challenges and requirements.
Channel partners, therefore, have had to personalize their service in turn, working with customers to find solutions that really work for them. In the last few years, this has meant solutions which incorporate AI and no-code capabilities.
The democratization of no-code application and workflow development has allowed channel leaders to more easily offer core digital transformation benefits such as accelerated time-to-market to a range of different sectors through one customizable solution.
In other words, AI-powered no-code products are providing channel leaders with the benefits of selling a SaaS solution while simultaneously demonstrating how the solution can be tailored to a specific industry, business, and even department. This helps them to demonstrate consideration and understanding of an organization’s unique needs and to build trust and loyalty with each client.
More specifically, the evolution of SaaS towards no-code helps the channel to build:
- A wider client pool: since no-code platforms can adapt to the business rather than forcing the business to fit the platform, partners can personalize their offerings and engage with a more diverse range of businesses, expanding their client base beyond conventional boundaries. For example, bankers may prioritize no-code to improve customer retention with automated loyalty bonus programmes. In telecoms, a priority for no-code AI might be to manage forecasts, streamline network planning, and optimize complex workflows across teams and territories.
- Client-centric culture: these platforms promote a strong partner-centric culture that reflects and aligns with client strategies, ensuring that offerings resonate on a deeper level, even within niche markets, since more can be done with less through no-code.
- Engaging experiences: these platforms provide a modern alternative when compared to traditional SaaS which requires significant amounts of data entry and step-by-step workflows. In contrast, by embedding AI directly into workflows, businesses can reimagine how they operate, making processes more streamlined and innovative. Embedding AI directly into your processes allows you to delight users with productive, slick and engaging user experiences, and replaces data input with conversational prompts – this delivers so much value that user adoption is no longer a question.
- Just right’ fit: the ability to rapidly compose no-code applications from pre-built components and templates results in an experience built from the ground up that is uncluttered, lightweight, and most importantly… personalized. Instead of being bloated with unnecessary features or monolithic apps, you simply take the components that you need, so you’re left with a solution that is tailored, without excess complexity.
- Scalability with personalisation: even when addressing bulk requests, AI no-code allows for the same solution to be both personalized and scalable, ensuring that clients receive the attention they need without compromising on quality, accelerating time to market in a fast-paced business environment.
The future of the SaaS channel relationship
The introduction of SaaS to the channel has had a lasting impact, reshaping how partners deliver value to their clients. But as the channel continues to evolve, so do the demands on SaaS platforms, and out-the-box solutions are no longer sufficient.
This is where AI-driven, no-code platforms come into play. Because they allow for intelligent, modular assembly of software components, channel partners can offer one solution that can be tailored to customers’ and sectors’ specific needs – all without employees at the end-user organization needing extensive technical experience.
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