The term services as software has been bandied around lately and I always thought it was a cute play on words but that in reality it was no different than SaaS. Yesterday I was talking to a sales rep and he had a very specific research need that involved a lot of go to the website, scrape this content, then go to some more websites, scrape some more content, then use that to search and find information in Google, then scrape some more sites and then get some names of people, then search and find their LinkedIn information. Through this entire process, he would end up getting 50 warms leads but it would take him hours.
I was able to prototype something very quickly using GenAI and AnyQuest and showed him what was possible. Then we got to the question of price and this is where this whole topic of Service as Software became stark for me. I was thinking of this as a services engagement and told him I could build him an agent that would do this and it would cost him $X (time and material). He came back and said that he had a fraction of the money to spend but he had 10 other people who could benefit from the same agent (and probably a lot more that we did not know about).
What became clear to me was that if I wanted to monetize this opportunity I needed to stop thinking about this as a services engagement but instead a software engagement where he (and 10 more people) would pay me a monthly subscription. I need to start thinking like a product developer and not a consultant and I could build an agent as a product that could meet the need of this 'micro-community' of users. I needed to be in the business of building a digital agent. This then got me thinking about
What underlying technology do I use to build the agent (AnyQuest.ai / Agent.ai / Clay.com / CustomGPTs) are all viable options.
How do I give people access to my agent? How do I bill them for access to the agent? Is my output a list of leads or an agent that they can run himself? How do I bill monthly? How do I host my agent on a platform that lets the builder monetize their work? I haven't come across any such platforms yet but am excited to see what AnyQuest is building in this arena.
Why do I think Service as a Software will be huge for consultants? Here are some visuals that Napkin.ai generated for me
THE OPPORTUNITY FOR SERVICES AS SOFTWARE
HOW SERVICES COMPANIES NEED TO START THINKING ABOUT THIS
Curious what folks think..