The second wave of SaaS is upon us.

The next wave of SaaS is upon us. The first wave was point solutions. This was a great thing. A company could solve it’s problems simply and easily by adding economical software that addressed the immediate need. With SaaS there was no server to buy and no complicated licensing, you could literally be using the software the same day. The problem with this approach didn’t become evident until later.

The problem you get into with on the spot problem solving is integration.

You end up with a lot of point solutions that don’t work well together. You see this in California - my home state. Cities grew quickly, and the planners didn’t keep up. Each fix made sense in isolation, but what worked for a small city didn’t work for a big one. The result is that you have to either accept that you can no longer grow or go back and start over at a much higher expense. Many companies find themselves in this situation with a raft of applications, spreadsheets, and cheat sheets. It’s not scalable and it’s not sustainable. If the one person who knows how all of these apps work together leaves, then what?

The whole SaaS industry is headed toward integrated systems in this second wave

There are numerous advantages to this approach. Different software solutions will be designed to work together in one integrated application. This leads to more efficiency and improved reporting that is housed all in one place. An opinionated system like Bizinta also brings ‘best practices’ with it. One of the worst things a small business can do is waste time reinventing the wheel on processes like billing that have been solved for a long time. Home grown solutions always end up causing a headache down the road.  Not to mention, an integrated system ends up being less expensive, as opposed to piecing together multiple software solutions. You win two ways. You get a more efficient and effective system. I like to say 4x: twice the effectiveness and twice the value.

As a business executive, it pays to take a step back and pick a system that will fix things for a long time and not for the next couple months. Your future self will thank you!