How AI agents are able to extract full value from SaaS platforms

There’s something really exciting going on with SaaS companies right now, something that has put to sleep fears that AI would undercut the SaaS sector in a so-called ‘SaaSpocalypse.’

SaaS companies have discovered that AI agents can be used to uncover and access knowledge about their services that previously had been hard to find and difficult to extract.

And they and their customers have begun using that knowledge to vastly boost their efficiency and their creativity.

This new insight – using AI agents to extract and make use of difficult-to-access knowledge – is a great way for SaaS companies to stay ahead of the AI game by showing customers how they can get full value from their software.

The Salesforce example

I first twigged to this new take on AI when Salesforce posted its most recent quarterly results.

Not only did Salesforce have a really good quarter, but they adjusted their guidance upward.

Coming only months after the tech world had been shaken by fears that AI would disrupt the future of SaaS companies like Salesforce and Knak, I was intrigued by this apparent turn-around.

Salesforce is an old-style SaaS company; it’s not AI-native at all.

But when I looked into it, I saw that Salesforce has made itself into a very agent-friendly platform.

Their CEO pointed out that there is a lot of ‘trapped value’ in their platform – knowledge and functions and abilities and things that Salesforce can do but that not everyone knows about.

And Salesforce’s great quarterly results were a reflection of AI agents’ ability to mine that trapped data and allow customers to use it.

It makes total sense.

Until AI, Salesforce or Knak or any SaaS platform was only as good as the person using it. And no one person knows everything about a particular platform – all of its capabilities, all of its tools, or all of its latest features. In other words there have always been plenty of people working in SaaS platforms every day who simply did not know how to use their platforms to their fullest extent.

But AI agents can and do know everything. They have knowledge of an entire platform. And what those agents are able to do is extract the absolute maximum of value out of a platform for customers.

That means agents can help humans get way more use out of their investment in software. Those agents know all the ins and outs, they know which new features have just come out and which modules have been purchased. AI agents are therefore able to unlock a software’s full potential in a heartbeat.

And that is pretty exciting!

A big boost for creativity

In my old life as a marketer, I always felt that my creativity was limited by the technical side of things.

I used to think, for example, that I was hamstrung by my inability to code – and that this hindered my ability to do amazing things in marketing.

And of course one of the reasons we created Knak was to free marketers from the need to code so they could more easily be creative.

But as I look at how AI is able to extract knowledge about software platforms, I have come to realize that coding wasn’t the only thing holding me back. Even if I no longer need to code, I am (or was, until AI agents!) hamstrung by my inability to get full value out of whatever software platforms I was using.

I always thought the limits on my creativity were solely technical. They weren’t. My inability to use something to its fullest extent was also a problem.

The limits on knowledge have now been removed.

That means marketers can be much more creative by using AI to push a software platform’s creative capabilities to its maximum.

As a marketer, that’s great news!

The way forward for SaaS companies

I think the Salesforce story is a microcosm of what’s happening in the SaaS sector right now.

The market for SaaS companies is really back. We’re out of the trough of disillusionment, we’ve moved beyond the fear that AI was going to replace everything. We’ve now realized that AI is going to make existing things better and SaaS and AI should work in concert.

I for one have realized that there’s no point in me working in a SaaS platform on my own. That would actually be silly. Not because AI can do something for me, but because AI can help me achieve a better result than I could ever hope to get acting alone. Anything I do in software is going to be much better if I work with an agent on it.

That’s the way of the future: Humans and agents working together in every platform.

It makes me excited! It makes me want to partner with an agent right now!

To take full advantage of this new insight, what SaaS companies need to do now is make sure their platforms are extremely agent-friendly.

We certainly are doing so.

If you’re running a SaaS business right now, you had better be making sure you have the most agent-friendly technology in your space.

Otherwise, you risk losing out on great opportunities.