Driving Efficiency in Enterprise Software

Cloud and SaaS migration is in the rear-view mirror – SaaS adoption is at 25% and growing steadily. Now that we have embraced both technologies, what’s the next frontier of innovation in enterprise software?

I believe productivity and efficiency improvements will be the next major inflection point in enterprise software adoption. Specifically, automating remedial and repetitive tasks to free-up cycles for more complicated tasks. This re-allocated time will give workers opportunities to use their skills and abilities more effectively, promoting overall job satisfaction

Streamlining the Sales Experience

I recently invested in Tact.ai, the world’s first conversational AI platform that creates a single pane of glass for sales teams. Tact.ai aggregates disparate incumbent sales tools such as CRM, email, ticketing, and LinkedIn into an easy-to-use interface that supports multi-modal input, simplifying the lives of sales executives. The platform includes an AI-powered personal assistant for reps and an Intelligent Workspace for sales teams. Creating a new way to work in the era of edge computing, Tact.ai unifies all the tools that sellers use, on a day-to-day basis, into a system of workflow. The magic of Tact.ai is that it isn’t attempting to replace incumbent databases, but instead, provide a way that they may optimally operate in tandem, using natural text, touch, and voice conversational experiences.

Tact.ai is an intelligent digital sales assistant that helps reps save time. According to InsideSales research, “only 37% of sales reps’ time is spent on revenue-generating activities.” Much of sales rep time instead goes to menial, manual tasks that Tact.ai systemizes: data entry, managing multiple different applications, and navigating a difficult-to-operate CRM. In fact, Business Wire identifies CRM as one of the largest sales rep pain points—and Tact.ai’s interface consolidates these tools beautifully, freeing sales reps from being tethered to arduous CRM data entry.

A Focus on Giving Time Back

Tact.ai gives sales executives their time back, but enterprise software has reached and can continue to reach an even broader audience. While my investment focus is enterprise technology, broadly, I’ve made investments in technology solutions that specifically focus on efficiency, making it easier to get work done.

Slack is another great portfolio company that helps users save time and increase productivity. There's a reason Slack has become the ubiquitous communication tool of groups as diverse as community intramural sports teams to graphic designers to book clubs. Slack optimizes all of the existing features of a chat group, but additionally offers individual channels and full integration with a diverse suite of tools, giving users more choices related to how they want to work. The software design also gives users flexibility by offering choices around which tools they want to integrate. Slack is an integrated platform, not a point solution. Integration with third party solutions is almost limitless with Slack – from bots that automate expenses management to ordering an Uber. This makes Slack especially useful for tech companies.

In some cases, Slack has even become useful to the point where it has replaced the utility of technologies that preceded it. Both The Verge and The New York Times have written about Slack replacing email.

Enterprise software continues to visibly improve upon legacy systems. Our 2012 investment in DocuSign is another notable example. DocuSign has gone from offering a niche signature feature to becoming an irreplaceable digital transaction management solution that stores signatures in a fully integrated, highly secure and reliable environment. It has been adopted by more than 400,000 customers and hundreds of millions or users in 188 countries. Sure, documents can always be signed in person—that functionality does not cease to exist—but DocuSign has become such a useful and time saving tool that even the US government has signed off on it, as of August 2017, allowing agencies to use it as their federally certified e-signature technology provider.

The Next Chapter of Enterprise Software

The future of enterprise software is providing improvements in productivity with better operational efficiency and automation of menial tasks. We’re seeing platform integration, support for multi-modal input and transaction management solutions with companies such as Tact.ai, Slack and DocuSign. The result is human-centered competitive edge, and will give time and flexibility back to workers, an empowering inflection point for the industry.