SaaS solutions and white label products may make sense in some areas - but they rarely lead to innovation. For this reason, decision-makers urgently need to give their software investments closer consideration. After all, they are the success factors that ensure that companies are also able to play a sustainable role in the virtual world.

“Having no clue about the Internet is not cool." This elegant sentence was once uttered by the highly esteemed Christoph Bornschein, founder and CEO of the digital agency TLGG. Although he said several years ago now, movement is slowly taking place for the first time in the executive suite. 

The world continues to go around however: In the past it wasn't cool to not have a clue about the Internet. Today it's not very smart to not have a clue about software and its development. “Software is eating the world” Marc Andreessen said descriptively, co-founder of the venture capital company Andreessen Horowitz. Or to put it more simply as I've heard it from my circle of friends: “Everything becomes code.”

Our future is not where it was to be found in post-war Germany - neither in physical mechanical engineering, nor in the steel industry, but quite evidently in software. 

So much for that old chestnut. 

The future cannot be bought in the form of a finished piece of software

And although this knowledge has been around for a while, an understanding of it among executives is still rather patchy. Many decision-makers believe that they can buy the future in the form of a finished piece of software. That the solution to all of your problems can be found on a supermarket shelf called "Software as a Service (SaaS)" and comes from one of the next startup unicorns. And even that is not surprising when we see reputable media outlets also taking Andreessen's quote out of context by propagating that services are now swallowing the software. 

But - sorry - that is all digital humbug!

The magic doesn't come from the sum of all the parts, especially with software - it comes from the individuality. And this is where the know-how that the decision-makers need begins: they need to realize that a smidgen of SAP Hana and a pinch of Contentful does not create a digital prodigy. The results of these processes are always mediocre - how can standard solutions be transformed into excellence?

White label solutions promote mediocrity and blandness

In the world of analog consulting, USP or comparative competitive advantages are fought over for weeks and months on end. To then ironically assume in the digital world that you can differentiate your offering from the competition by networking a few standard components.

It goes without saying that some areas exist where best-of-breed SaaS solutions make sense, but these are outside the processes that the consumer can perceive. Services and differences in performance that customers can see are not created by the same interface as the one the competition uses, but just in a different color. They are created by using individual (software) solutions tailored to the requirements of the customer. 

Therefore, we ask you dear decision makers: please stop looking for the solution to the digital challenges you face in your customer service in a few plugins. Address your software needs as intensively as you do your other investment decisions. Optimal software is a real factor of success in ensuring that you also get to play a sustainable role in the virtual world.