Innovation Brief · IB-2025-04b · April 2025
CRM in a Post-SaaS World
Agentic AI turns the agent into both the interface and the API. That breaks the assumptions SaaS-era CRM was built on.
- Authors
Dave WrightChief Innovation Officer
Brian SolisHead of Global Innovation
Simon GriceSenior Director, Innovation
- Length
- 16 pages
- Themes
- Customer Experience, The Future of AI, Business Reinvention
Summary
- Traditional enterprise applications are being disrupted by advances in AI and agentic AI.
- A digital mindset applied to CRM will use AI and agentic AI to make current processes faster and better, but put enterprises at risk of getting left behind.
- Applying an AI mindset to fully harness AI and agentic AI will transform CRM as we know it today.
- AI agents will become both the User Interface (UI) and Application Programmable Interface (API) for future enterprise applications.
- This will enable enterprises to move beyond SaaS-based CRM to innovate entirely new approaches that transform their businesses, as well as user and customer experiences.
From the brief
SaaS ushered in a revolution in enterprise technology. By enabling businesses to access software in the cloud and removing the constraints of legacy IT infrastructure, it improved operational efficiencies, reduced IT overhead and accelerated collaboration.
CRM was arguably the most transformative SaaS success story. But for all this digitization, very few businesses took the larger leap. Investments went into digitizing legacy processes at scale — changing how work was done far less than it optimised it.
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