Software Will Eat the Software World
Software, about as broad a term as can be, has irrevocably changed the world we live in today. Imagine a scenario in which you need to travel to Chicago for a business trip.
First, you make itinerary arrangements with your client via a back-and-forth on some e-mail provider you pay $25/month. You then call the local airport to book a flight, giving them your credit card number over the phone, hop on the plane a few weeks later, and flag down a taxi outside the Chicago airport. You head to the hotel you booked after spending hours calling several in the area, getting quotes from each.
You check in; your receipt is printed, copied, and stowed away in an overflowing file cabinet beneath the desk. Your first meeting is the next morning, so you surf channels for an hour on the television before your spouse calls to let the kids say a quick post-dinner goodnight to you.
Except… this would never happen. Because it’s 2018, and like we said, software has already taken over. Now we have things like Google Calendar where you can easily schedule a business trip itinerary and share it with your clients. We have Expedia and TripAdvisor and any number of airline websites, where you can look at hundreds of flights all at once to determine which time, price, and service are best for you. You don’t have to wait for a taxi at arrivals, because you would have already scheduled an Uber or Lyft when your plane landed, and your five-star rated driver would have your address punched in and ready to go by the time you open the passenger door. Speaking of the address, you’d be on your way to the private home you found on Airbnb, referred and rated by previous guests, paid for online weeks prior. Finally, you would pull out your laptop and catch up on your latest Netflix favorite until your spouse FaceTimes you, kids popping in and out of view blowing kisses.
Amazing, seemingly routine stuff. And yet, it’s changed everything.
Progress here tells a story from two vastly different worlds; and Marc Andreesen narrates: “software is eating the world.”
We would like to express, as the story continues to unfold, that software will also eat the software world.
Andreesen, in that famous article, frames it like this:
Companies in every industry need to assume that a software revolution is coming. This includes even industries that are software-based today. Great incumbent software companies like Oracle and Microsoft are increasingly threatened with irrelevance by new software offerings like Salesforce.com and Android (especially in a world where Google owns a major handset maker).
It’s our belief that this revolution has come to to the ERP space. Companies no longer need to glue together modules to support their business processes, staff IT personnel to maintain complicated on-premise hardware, operating a bloated ERP system. Small businesses can actually afford to invest in themselves, streamline their processes, and create extra space for them to grow, without forking over literally hundreds of thousands of dollars for ERP. Modern software will continue to transform the ERP adoption journey, relegating legacy software and business models to obsolescence, just as Uber is doing to taxis, as Netflix is to cable, etc., etc.
Because we believe the market is moving in this direction, we want to help bring about this future. That’s why we center our entire philosophy around modern cloud SaaS technology, commodity-level pricing ($40/user/month, no overhead), and world-class, dedicated support.
In the initial stages of their ERP search, many of our customers are shocked and even doubtful at first at how differently we operate than most ERP providers. That’s intentional - we hope to radically transform the way ERP software is developed and distributed, beginning with the small and medium-sized manufacturer / distributor.
We believe the ERP market will commoditize - and we are urging the market in that direction. Software is doing to the ERP space what it has done to so many other industries: driving down cost and increasing capability. In other words, Cetec ERP offers more for less.