Enterprise Software: Why ‘out of the box’ features will become obsolete with GenAI
A new era is coming. Enterprise software procurement hasn't really changed for 25 years. Many enterprise solutions available today were architected long before the iPhone was released in 2007. So to show 'innovation,' the focus has been on rolling out new features. Lots of them.
In the days when all software was basically built the same way, features were the differentiator. Customisation was expensive. Businesses didn't want to limit what they could do in the future, so they wanted to buy as many features 'out of the box' as possible. Even if there was no plan to use them in the short term, the theory was, if you buy lots of 'features' up front, it would give you more options in the future. But with Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI), that's changing. And fast.
Solutions architected for GenAI will de-risk 'customisation'
GenAI can write code. It's fast. It's pretty good. And getting better every day. Which means the time and cost to create new features is going to drop too. Imagine that each block of code is a Lego brick. Some of those bricks represent User Interface (UI) components. Some of them represent steps in a business process. The beauty of Lego is, you can take those bricks and build whatever you want. But creating new bricks was traditionally expensive. You had to design them. Create a mold. Cast the piece. Test the fit. It took time and money. Enter GenAI.
Now imagine if you could ask a Large Language Model (LLM) to create a new Lego brick for you. Based on a simple prompt. Lots of bricks. Then, automatically deploy them to your software environment. New UI components. New business rules. New workflows. How would that change your business? How would that change the way you view software?
Don't be limited by a vendor's feature list
Suddenly, you're not limited by a vendor's feature list. Nor their roadmap. In fact, it's irrelevant, because you can create new 'features' to fit your business in very little time. Which means you're also not limited in how you can differentiate your business. You don't have to settle for the same basic capabilities as your competitors. You can add new ones. You can adapt to changing customer and business needs faster. This will be the future of enterprise software. However, not all enterprise software will be able to take full advantage of GenAI.
Traditional enterprise software (originally built in the pre-iPhone era) is made up of large files filled with thousands of lines of code. You can't just swap out a piece of it. Or add new blocks in different places easily. It simply wasn't designed to work that way. Whereas modern enterprise software has been built in a fundamentally different way.
It's modular and made up of smaller code blocks that all work together. What this means is you can use GenAI to create new ones and use them anywhere. Want to add or remove steps in your fulfillment process? No problem. Create new dashboard tiles for your operations people? Sure. While in the past, the phrases 'enterprise software' and 'digital agility' may have seemed worlds apart, that's changing, which means procurement processes need to change too.
How to update your procurement processes
If you want to be ready to take full advantage of this shift, your criteria and process needs to change. Long 'out of the box' feature lists won't help. Instead, ask each vendor to demo how they'd support some unique use cases. Ask how they did it, and how long it took to create anything that wasn't 'out of the box'.
Ask about how they're thinking about GenAI and its role in extending their product. Their product vision. How will they enable you to create new UI components and business logic using GenAI in the future? How do they plan to host and automate the deployment of new code blocks generated by AI? Does their architecture support it today? If not, how long will it take to re-architect their platform?
A new enterprise software era is coming. One where fears about the cost and risk of 'customisation' will be replaced by the risk of being too 'locked in' by a vendor's features and not being able to extend a solution quickly. Because you can just add new bricks, and not have to rip apart thousands of lines of code. GenAI will enable digital agility at a whole new level. The market is changing fast. So are customer expectations. Are you ready to keep up?
