Episode 30 – SaaS Isn’t Dead – Generic SaaS Is

by Chris Machut1 week ago

Hosted by

Chris Machut

Learn more about Chris Machut on his LinkedIn profile at https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrismachut/.

Every few weeks, the internet declares SaaS is dead. If that were true, my renewal calendar would be empty. It is not.

SaaS is not going anywhere. What is getting squeezed is generic SaaS – software that assumes the real world will politely adapt to a workflow, a dashboard, and a login screen. In the supply chain, the physical world does not care about your assumptions. Assets are dirty, lighting changes, labels vary, and operations move whether the system is ready or not.

The real story behind most “SaaS is dead” posts is simpler than the hype. Interfaces are getting cheap to build. The future is not fewer screens. The future is better truth flowing into the systems that actually run the business.

## The Supply Chain Doesn’t Run on Dashboards – It Runs on Actions

Dashboards are useful. They are also where a lot of “truth” goes to retire.

In supply chain operations, the value is not that you can see something later. The value is that what happened triggers what happens next. A gate event should update records and notify the right teams. An inventory confirmation should close an exception. Proof of pickup or proof of delivery should reduce disputes and speed up billing. Data becomes valuable when it drives action, not when it becomes another chart someone checks after the fact.

## A Founder Lesson From 2016

Back in 2016, I was building HoistCam. The lightbulb moment did not come from a roadmap session. It came from watching a crane operator work.

The operator did not need “better reporting.” The operator needed to see – right now – so they could act with precision. The supervisor cared about visibility too, but for different reasons: coordination, accountability, and improvement. Same environment, same equipment, same camera. Two different reasons the truth mattered.

That’s when it clicked for me that the product isn’t the interface. Different roles need different truth, delivered in different ways, at different times, so they can take the right action.

## Why “Generic SaaS Is Dead” Is Mostly a UI Problem

UI is getting commoditized. That’s not a complaint, it’s reality. You can stitch together forms, dashboards, and workflows faster than ever.

But the supply chain is not a web app. The hard part is capturing what actually happened in the physical world and turning it into reliable events that other systems can trust. If your platform depends on perfect inputs, it will fail the first time something shows up dirty, damaged, mis-tagged, or moving too fast. Generic SaaS struggles because it assumes the physical world behaves like a database.

## The Old Systems Still Run the World

There are TMSs and YMSs running serious organizations that are 20+ years old. They refuse to upgrade, and it’s not because they hate innovation. Change is risky and disruption is expensive.

## The Real Punchline

So yes, if you want the headline: generic SaaS is dead for the future. But it’s not because software is disappearing. It’s because the market is demanding reality-based systems. Interfaces will change. Platforms will consolidate and workflows will evolve. Trusted operational data will only become more valuable because it can drive action across whatever stack the customer is running today – including stacks that have been running for two decades.