The AI Adoption Slow Lane
As AI becomes embedded within tech stacks, the key challenge is to find a workflow that allows both humans and agents to interact with apps.
Until very recently, tech firms had a growth problem. Many software vendors over-invested during the pandemic, accelerating product development to cope with increased customer demand. Businesses digitised their marketing processes practically overnight in order to cope with lockdown, accelerating a wave of digital transformation that had been building for years. The trouble is, digital transformation wave proved to be a one-time event. With the SaaS market saturated, many technology firms were struggling to find new customers. Meanwhile, businesses were struggling to adopt all the new features built into their brand new tech stack.
Revolution vs Evolution
Generative AI has been touted as the solution to both the vendor growth problem and the end user adoption challenge. AI promises to make technology easier, both to develop and to use. Vibe coding has certainly made coding quicker. From an end user perspective, chatbots have helped users to brainstorm ideas and streamline information discovery. Yet, for all the copilots and AI assistants, they haven’t really transformed the way that end users interact with business applications. Some tech firms are still coming to terms with that trend.
Late last year, Oracle announced a revolutionary new user interface for Eloqua based around generative AI. Rather than browsing through the various launchpads to create their emails, users would ask a chatbot to take them to the email editor. It was supposed to make advanced Eloqua features more discoverable to basic users. At the same time, it made those advanced Eloqua features much less discoverable to power users. As a result, the grand plan to replace the Eloqua menu system with an ‘Ask Oracle’ chatbot only lasted a few weeks. Oracle were forced to change course. The existing Eloqua menu system will still be replaced this year, but with an updated menu system instead of a chatbot.
Multiple Usage Paradigms
I didn’t cover this change to Eloqua at the time because I believed it would be cancelled prior to release. That is exactly what happened. This botched announcement does illustrate the disconnect that has arisen between AI developers and application admins in recent months. Agents are supposed to be the future of enterprise technology, allowing far more workflows to be automated than ever before. Going forward, users won’t need to use the likes of Salesforce or Eloqua. Agents will do the work for them. At least that’s the theory. The practical reality is still a decade away.
As Oracle learned with Eloqua, AI won't replace SaaS in the enterprise. It merely provides another user interface for SaaS. Agents are being configured to build emails or set up Eloqua campaigns. There are scenarios where a marketer would want to develop a basic campaign by describing it to a chatbot. I’ve developed the capability to do exactly that for CRMT Digital. Other Eloqua users have done similarly. Yet, most Eloqua emails are still being developed by dedicated campaign production teams using the same processes that enterprise marketers have been following for years. Those ‘old’ ways of working will continue for a long time yet.
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