With the growth of self-service SaaS applications and open-source tools, we've all become used to introducing new vendors & dependencies into our stack without talking to anyone.
As anyone who has been on the receiving end of sales discovery calls will attest, there are advantages to this. It's faster to get started and try out products, default pricing is more transparent, and products are evaluated on their merits as the buyer is the user.
In 2023, the average number of SaaS apps a business uses reached 371. That's 253 for SMBs, while mid market companies use 335 on average and enterprise firms average 473.
- Source: Productiv, via Spendesk
It introduces a downside however. I've noticed that it leads people to tend to take the products they use "as is" - they forget that they can talk to their vendor to improve the service. It's something I've noticed particularly from engineers, who are accustomed to getting things done without needing to talk to anyone, but also with more junior team members in other disciplines. (It might also be shaped by our experiences as users of mega-scale consumer products, where we don't expect any help on anything other than egregious or common issues.)
Behind the curtain, each of these products are run by people you can talk to to get a better service. You can give them feedback, you can help shape their roadmaps, you can negotiate pricing, you can cancel an accidental overage bill, you can get a precise SLA, you can get access to that one undocumented feature that will save you a week of development. But you will never know if you don't ask. Startups will be especially receptive to this, but my experience has been that even Fortune 100 companies can do a fair amount to keep you happy, even when you're on a self-service plan.
Our jobs are to get things done with the tools at our disposal. Next time you find you are contorting yourself to get something done with a tool or dependency, ping them - you may find goodies behind the curtain.
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