The AI Business Architect
In AI is Eating SaaS, I’ve explained how AI is quickly and inexorably changing entire verticals, breaking these “narrow commercial use case silos” into a single unified outcome-based use case.
That has massive implications, as you’ll get into different verticals that won’t be broken down by a bunch of software features that assist a user in performing a task but by a unit of borrowed intelligence, where AI handles the primary workload.
Humans act as a verification layer to refine the outcome.
And to be fair, we can argue that this is what software was supposed to be all along. Thus, this threatens many existing SaaS players operating in very narrow task-based assistance niches, and many of these will die.
Yet, it’s also an opportunity to finally make software take impactful actions, driving outcomes and actual productivity.
This change is becoming fundamental, meaning it’s shifting the core business model on top of what traditional enterprise software companies used to rely on to build a solid business.
The traditional software business model relies on key revenue mechanisms such as license/subscription fees, time-based revenue, and usage-based metrics.
Customers pay for the right-to-use software, with billing based on usage duration or specific metrics like transactions or users. While these models are effective, they focus more on the duration or frequency of use rather than the value provided.
The AI-first outcome model shifts this focus to delivering tangible, measurable outcomes.
Companies set specific, time-bound outcomes aligned with customer needs, ensuring that the focus remains on achieving business goals.
Payments are made only when predefined outcomes are achieved, creating an outcome-based payment structure that ties revenue to results rather than time or usage.
This model transforms business strategies by emphasizing value-based revenue recognition.
Companies align with customers on measurable outcomes, fostering stronger, value-driven partnerships.
Operationally, businesses shift from delivering products to ensuring that those products drive customer success, making business processes success-driven.
The AI-first model ensures customers only pay for results, improving alignment between customer needs and business objectives.
That makes the whole sales profession change, at least at an enterprise level, for those who aspire to be great at it into an AI Business Architect.
The AI Business Architect
With AI-first software, it will be critical for the sales professional to understand, map, and identify where AI can add the most outcome-based value to the organization.
In this specific case, where autonomous systems are getting developed, as we speak, the sales executive will need to focus also on opening up the market by mapping out where the organization can get the most out of it at each stage of development of the AI industry.
On that side, the sales executive becomes an AI Business Architect who must grasp the nuances of the client’s business model to understand which use case can be transformed into an outcome-based agent.
