Enabling businesses of all sizes to build products in-house and disqualifying SaaS tools that are not AI-powered.
In a span of just two years, AI has made a name for itself as the key driver for innovation. Businesses of all sizes use AI and encourage their employees to use it to drive productivity and efficiency.
The decision to tap into AI's potential has resulted in monumental transformation, and some businesses want to build business tools themselves. Innovation aside, how will building your own products affect your customers? Before we show you "how to build a product with the help of AI," let's take a look at how far we have come in digital transformation.
BRB: Digital transformation just got a new update
Building a proper business ecosystem with SaaS tools produces smooth functionality, data sharing, and enhanced user experiences—which is why early adopters were motivated to spend time curating and assembling the desired products into an ecosystem that mapped connections between multiple solutions. These adopters had to merely steer the integrated products in the right direction. However, with the overwhelming surge in the development of SaaS tools, error handling, and middleware overhauls, this came to an end.
Following this techflation, SaaS adopters de-centered from curating and assembling products and moved on to focusing on the sustainability of SaaS tools and aligning those tools with their business goals. Here's when, SaaS diversified how you could adopt these tools for the business—including ERP systems, software bundles, and enterprise-grade software. Businesses were able to upscale and thrive.
The SaaS industry continues to expand, but is this new proposition of "thriving businesses building their software" just a full circle back to curating and assembling? Especially because "digital transformation" continues to evolve every day?
What goes into making an operable product?
Research
Determines the user base and their preferences.
Road mapping
Allocates resources and sets up a timeline for the product.
Development
Builds the software infrastructure with code.
Engineering
Makes the infrastructure sturdy and preps it for external integrations.
Testing
Ensures that the product is market-ready with beta testing.
Release
Makes the product ready for public use.
Continuous development
Collects feedback and improves the product, determining updates and tech builds.
An operable product will look like a well-rooted tree
Making the product market fit
Building your own product isn't a one-time investment; it requires continuous development and routine check-ups. With the help of AI, coding can help you make a higher-end module with contextual workflows, but this too can be achieved only if you possess diverse sets of relevant data. Building your own product may require additional hiring for R&D and engineering, adding to your business costs.
Unlike cooking a gourmet meal by following a recipe, there's no guarantee of any good coming out of making a product yourself—at least not yet. Building your own product may seem like an effective way to cut costs, but it can severely affect your customer relationships because some customers only trust their private information with businesses that have robust software in place. Some investors even demand that you have fully functional business tools before they'll adopt your business.
Initially, hardcore engineering-centric businesses overlooked design. Then, some businesses revitalized design and engineering and made something revolutionary. Now, customers are inclined to opt for a product that looks good aesthetically because of the techflation and abundant options available to them. Hence, making the product market fit requires you to pay attention to both engineering and design.
Striking the balance between overinvestment and underinvestment
You may have definitive expertise in your line of business that gives you the upper hand in how a viable product works. However making it available for public use requires regular audits and check-ups to ensure compliance to prevent potential fines or investigations.
It also requires you to scale with updates from external apps, integrations, and API changes. You'll also need to provide support to the end users. Thorough support is required for customers to accept your product, and to achieve that, you'll either have to hire support engineers or train a service-exclusive AI tool containing all of the information about your product to help the users.
For now, here are some business functions that you can already build with little to no code. Cloud software infrastructure is suited to experimenting, after all.
POS: Building a point-of-service solution is common. You can customize the solution to fit the design standards of your business and manage subscriptions with the help of your data sets.
People management: Requires advanced techniques, but it's still achievable if you just need the basic functionalities.
Support solutions: Creating the user interface and integrating secure plugins will get the job done. This can be used only as a basic chat bot or as a product wizard.
Do you still want to build your own software tools, or do you want to develop your business?
The benefits of developing your business for success far outweigh the benefits of building your own software tools.
Functionalities like sales, marketing, operations, collaboration, and analytics need to be multifaceted solutions. They cannot afford to be one-dimensional because they need to cater to a wide range of challenges. This multifaceted quality makes them enterprise-proof and user-proof. These solutions are often provided by dedicated businesses pouring enough capital into research and development. They do this to offer you the most viable product so that you can develop and reform your business.
In the long game, if you feel that paying good money for individual functionalities and licensing ERP modules isn't worth it, you can opt for an all-in-one solution like Zoho One—a powerful operating system for business. Zoho One comes with 45+ enterprise grade business tools and services, made to fit your business like a glove.
So ditch your modules, unsecured software, integration patchworks, mismanaged subscriptions, and data silos to become a unified and productive business.
One subscription for an unbeatable price, a unified interface, and an unmatched experience. 
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