SaaS in Industry: The Agile Revolution
2023-11-14
If you work in the industrial sector, you’re probably used to software being more of an obstacle than a help. I’m talking about user interfaces that look more like Windows 95 than 2023. Endless tables, unbearable menus. A language only understood by whoever designed the program. In short, the reality of the vast majority of today’s ERP and MES systems.
Where’s the problem?
To me, the root of this problem lies in the great importance of the industrial sector. It seems contradictory, but the problem we’re trying to solve is so critical that we’ve been trying to fix it since the early days of computing in the 1980s, with the arrival of the first ERPs with command-line interfaces.
And of course, software companies have been around ever since. They try to modernize, of course, but it’s not that simple.
Following in Silicon Valley’s footsteps
If you have no idea how software development works, let me tell you a little secret: software is like iron: over time, it rusts. We’ve seen some incredible advances in this field over the past 30 years, revolutionizing the way software is built time and time again.
The problem is that development companies can’t keep up with this pace of revolutions, because each revolution means throwing the product in the trash and starting over. With everything we’ve learned, yes, but using new technology that our team isn’t trained in. And with more and more features that we have to support for our customers. A growing cost, compounded by the pain of having to go through a massive upgrade.
Our Yankee friends realized this more than ten years ago and came up with a solution. What if we developed in a way that could scale to thousands of customers, focusing on solving their problems, keeping everyone on the latest version at all times, and allowing us to gradually replace obsolete parts without the pain?
Software as a Service (SaaS) is born
This new way of developing also means new ways of selling. Installations disappear, updates disappear, and so do different versions for each customer. Everything is in the cloud. Maintenance costs shift from the customer to the provider: one less thing to worry about.
And with it comes the subscription model we all know by now (Microsoft with Office 365, Google Suite, Slack, Salesforce...). The customer avoids a high upfront investment they may not be ready for, and in return pays a monthly fee for as long as they use the service. If they’re no longer interested, they stop paying. It’s a win-win.
This business model is the answer to the secret I mentioned, and it’s why so many startups valued at astronomical figures have emerged as a result. It’s not that investors have gone crazy; it’s that the solution is several orders of magnitude better than what came before. It scales better. It ages better. It’s cheaper.
What about Spanish industry?
Well, as usual, what happens is that we’re late, and we’re doing it badly. There’s cutting-edge software in all kinds of sectors, thoughtfully designed for people to use, while here we’re still getting by with glorified spreadsheets.
Most development companies don’t want to or can’t make such a radical cultural change. And we’re not just talking about programming everything from scratch; we’re talking about changing the way they think and the way they relate to their customers. Adopting an agile development approach, for real—not just in name.
We need a mental reset and to get our act together if we don’t want to fall behind. The United States is years ahead of us, and other sectors are also leading the way, but all is not lost. There’s still time.
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