A new era is upon us. Enterprise software procurement has remained largely unchanged for 25 years. Many of the enterprise solutions available today were designed long before the iPhone was released in 2007. As a result, to demonstrate “innovation,” there has been a strong focus on introducing new features – and there are a lot of them.
Back when all software was built basically the same way, features were the differentiator. Customization was expensive. Companies didn’t want to limit themselves in what they could do in the future, so they wanted to buy as many features “out of the box” as possible. The theory was that buying lots of “features” up front would give you more options in the future, even if you didn’t plan on using them in the short term. But generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) is changing that. And fast.
Solutions designed for GenAI reduce the risk of “customization”
GenAI can write code. It’s fast, and it’s pretty good. And it’s getting better every day. That means the time and cost to create new features goes down. Imagine each block of code as a Lego block. Some blocks represent user interface (UI) components, others represent steps in a business process. The great thing about Lego is that you can use these blocks to build anything you want. But making new blocks has traditionally been costly. You had to design the blocks, make molds, cast the parts, and test them for fit. It took time and money. That’s where GenAI comes in.
Now, what if you could ask a Large Language Model (LLM) to build new Lego blocks? Create lots of them, based on simple prompts. Then automatically deploy them into your software environment. New UI components. New business rules. New workflows. How would this change your business? How would it change the way you look at your software?
Not limited by vendor feature list
Suddenly, you’re no longer limited by your vendor’s feature list or roadmap. In fact, it’s irrelevant, because you can create new “features” that work for your business in a very short time. That means there are no limitations to how you can differentiate your business. You don’t have to settle for the same base features as your competitors. You can add new capabilities. You can respond quickly to changing customer and business needs. This is the future of enterprise software. However, not all enterprise software is capable of taking full advantage of GenAI.
Traditional enterprise software (originally built in the pre-iPhone era) consists of large files filled with thousands of lines of code. You can’t simply swap out parts of it, and you can’t easily add new blocks in different places either — it simply wasn’t designed to work that way. Modern enterprise software, on the other hand, is built in a fundamentally different way.
It’s modular and made up of small blocks of code that all work together. That means you can write new code blocks with GenAI and use them anywhere. Want to add or remove a step in your fulfillment process? No problem. Want to create a new dashboard tile for your operations people? Absolutely. In the past, the phrases “enterprise software” and “digital agility” might have seemed like very different things, but things are changing, and your procurement processes need to change too.
How to update procurement processes
To be ready to take full advantage of this change, your standards and processes need to change. A long list of “out of the box” features won’t help. Instead, ask each vendor to demonstrate how they support your unique use case. Ask them how they did it and how long it took them to create something that wasn’t “out of the box.”
Ask about their product vision: how they think about GenAI and its role in extending the product. How will you be able to use GenAI to create new UI components and business logic in the future? How do you plan to host and automate the deployment of new AI-generated code blocks? Does your architecture currently support that? If not, how long would it take to redesign your platform?
A new era of enterprise software is upon us. One where concerns about the cost and risk of customization are replaced by the risk of being too “locked in” to vendor features and not being able to scale your solution quickly. You can just add new blocks, not break out thousands of lines of code. GenAI enables a whole new level of digital agility. The market is changing rapidly. So are your customer expectations. Are you ready to keep up?
