Revamping the AI Tide: How the Novel AI Paradigm Shakes Up the Business Application Landscape
Revamping the AI Tide: How the Novel AI Paradigm Shakes Up the Business Application Landscape
Evgeny Grigul co-founded Virto Commerce, an innovating e-commerce platform catering primarily to B2B businesses.
The user interface (UI) is a critical factor in differentiating and competing in the business software market, especially for mass-market applications aimed at small and medium-sized enterprises. Traditionally, a UI includes attractive images, fields, buttons, and scenarios enabling employees to complete tasks efficiently. Business software vendors are constantly improving their UIs and offering enriched scenarios to attract a larger customer base.
However, AI could revolutionize this landscape. Traditional graphical user interfaces (GUIs) are being supplanted by adaptive UIs, making the "user adoption effect" irrelevant. This market shift will likely cause certain types of business software to fade away in their present form.
Attempts to integrate AI assistants into our work are increasingly common. The traditional GUI, consisting of screens, fields, and buttons, is gradually evolving into a conversational format, moving away from established standards. While constraints still exist, notably around prompt-writing rules, the trajectory is clear. Leading software vendors have already started incorporating AI user interface (AIUI) elements into their applications.
Predicting the Future
A new class of vendors dedicated solely to creating AI assistants for business tasks will likely emerge. These AI assistants will act as an intermediary between users and business apps, fully controlling the user experience by receiving tasks, breaking them down, and performing necessary actions within business applications.
Established business software vendors may not have the necessary resources to create AI interfaces independently. Specialized companies focused on AI assistants will likely fill this gap.
Changes in Business Software
- Loss of Individuality: Traditional business software applications will lose their distinctiveness, becoming data processing engines behind AI assistants. This will weaken customer loyalty, as users will focus more on the efficiency of the AI assistant and less on the specific application.
- API Emphasis: Business software interfaces will change significantly. Developing and maintaining visually appealing and user-friendly GUIs will no longer be crucial. Instead, it will become mandatory for business applications to provide well-structured APIs to ensure seamless interaction with AI assistants.
- Blurred Application Boundaries: Users will no longer distinguish between different types of business applications. AI assistants will manage tasks by accessing and transferring data across systems as needed.
Impact on Software Vendors
The AIUI shift will significantly change the market for business applications. Traditional providers of CRMs and ERPs will have fewer clients, as their customer base will shrink to a small number of successful AI assistant providers. The main prerequisites for partnerships will be flexibility, scalability, and well-structured APIs.
Technology vendors investing heavily in usability and marketing at the expense of architectural excellence are unlikely to thrive in the new AIUI world. They may be acquired primarily for customer base acquisition.
While AIUI development will not occur in the next few years, the groundwork is being laid. Emerging components will eventually come together to form the necessary configuration.
AI will reshape the business software landscape, making interfaces more adaptive, personalized, and efficient. The AI user experience journey will be more natural, centering on intent-based conversations and hybrid intelligence networks. AI will also automate repetitive tasks, leading to increased productivity and cost savings.
In the future, we might see Evgeny Grigul and Virto Commerce playing a significant role in this AI-driven transformation of business software, as they continuously innovate and adapt their e-commerce platform to integrate advanced AI interfaces.
As AI assistants become more prevalent in business software, companies may need to partner with specialized AI assistant providers that offer flexibility, scalability, and well-structured APIs, such as those envisioned by Evgeny Grigul and Virto Commerce.