The Fast Fashion of Software Has Arrived — But Fast Tailoring Is Coming

"Software should enable a process, not define it." I've been saying this for years, but for most SMEs it's been wishful thinking—until now.

Every SME leader knows the dance: you map your process, find software that does 70% of it, then spend months reshaping how you work to fit the remaining 30%. You train staff on workarounds. You keep spreadsheet bridges alive. You accept that "best practice" means "whatever Salesforce decided."

But something fundamental just shifted. When you can describe a workflow and have working software in days, not months—when customization costs approach zero—you stop bending your process to fit software. The software bends instead.

Why This Changes Everything for Business Excellence

All work runs through processes. How we improve those processes is about to change.

We used to buy software like wardrobes: a big system every few years and a handful of add-ons in between. Companies would implement an ERP, reshape operations to match, and call it "digital transformation." But that meant vendors—not you—defined how your business should run.

Today, customer signals move faster than quarterly roadmaps. The winners will be those who reshape tools as quickly as their processes evolve. And, surprisingly, SMEs have the edge.

SMEs Have Permission to Move Fast

Enterprises aren't just manpower-constrained; they're inertia-constrained—legacy stacks, compliance, change windows, steering committees. Many SMEs are the opposite: manpower-constrained but permission-rich. They can pivot in days, not quarters.

Gen-AI collapses the distance between idea and working code. Call it vibe coding: describe the behavior, scaffold the service, stitch it to your data and identity. It doesn't need 100,000-customer polish; it needs to fit your workflow and pay off this quarter.

This is already visible where engineering is abundant. In China, with plentiful developers and fewer SaaS giants, companies routinely build tailored internal tools rather than buying off-the-shelf. They compose workflows inside WeChat Work or DingTalk, wire mini-apps to their processes, and iterate weekly rather than waiting for vendor roadmaps.

What made that possible there—abundant engineers—is now broadly accessible via Gen-AI that makes engineering capacity feel effectively abundant.

Two Ways to Go Fast: Disposable and Durable

Not all fast software is throwaway. Smart SMEs operate in two modes:

Pop-up assemblies (disposable). You have an event in six weeks and need bookings with allocations, waitlists, and reminders. Assemble forms + payments + email + light automation, run the event, export the data, retire it. A capsule built for the season, not forever.

Tailored automations (durable). A slim stack that matches exactly how your team reconciles invoices or plans logistics. Fewer bells and whistles than enterprise SaaS, but it fits, so you keep it and evolve it. Your core wardrobe—built to last, tailored to fit.

Both modes matter. Capsules teach you what works; tailoring keeps what works. The trick is knowing which is which—and measuring outcomes so the decision is obvious.

The New Economics: Measuring the Fit

Tailored tools demand tailored metrics.

When software enables a process (rather than defining it), the only question that matters is: is the process healthier? Not adoption rates. Not feature utilization. Not NPS. Those are vendor metrics for generic software.

For a tailored invoice-matching tool, process health means: match rate, exception rate, time-to-pay. For a logistics optimizer: vehicle efficiency, routing efficiency, exception frequency. The software exists to serve the process—so you measure process outcomes, not software usage.

This flips how you evaluate the investment. You're not asking "Are we getting value from our seats?" You're asking "Is this process producing better outcomes?" When the answer is measurable—and attributable—the decision to keep, evolve, or retire becomes obvious.

The same logic is shifting how some vendors price. Outcome-based models are emerging: pay per invoice matched, per shipment routed, per qualified meeting booked. But whether you build or buy, the principle is the same: align your success metrics to process outcomes. That's how you know if the fit is good.

Learning to Use This New Electricity

Think of the stack like electricity:

Generation → Distribution → Appliances. Frontier models are the generators, APIs/connectors the grid, and your SaaS/automations/agents the appliances that do jobs.
Wiring matters. Identity, clean schema and data, and event buses are the house wiring. Without them, nothing plugs in safely.
Meters, not seats. We don't pay for sockets; we pay for kilowatt-hours. Likewise, price verified outcomes, not logins.
Safety codes. Circuit breakers map to guardrails: RBAC, audit trails, quality bands, and human-in-the-loop.
Local + grid. Some work will run locally; some on the cloud grid. Pick the mix that fits cost, latency, and privacy.

What's Next: Bundling Returns, Agents Emerge

Once teams can assemble services quickly, they stop over-collecting point tools and bundle the workflow they actually run. Finance links to logistics links to service—not because a vendor sold you a suite, but because that's how your process flows.

Soon, these tailored systems evolve again. The UI becomes a conversation. You brief a named agent ("Match these invoices," "Optimize today's routes"), it executes across your stack, and you approve exceptions. The guardrails you built in the tailoring phase—events, outcome definitions, audit trails—make this safe and auditable.

What SME Leaders Can Do This Quarter

Pick one process that hurts—where the software gap costs hours each week.
Build a two-week capsule to solve it—set a sunset date if it misses the mark.
Measure the outcome—time saved, errors reduced, value created.
Keep what works, retire what doesn't—let successful capsules evolve into tailored systems.
Document the pattern—codify how you build software that fits.

Why This Time Really Is Different

In our previous article, we argued this AI wave is different because it makes intelligence cheap and scalable. Here's the practical outcome: the end of one-size-fits-all software for SMEs.

The businesses that thrive won't be those with the biggest software budgets. They'll be the ones that learn fastest to shape tools to fit their processes—continuously, cheaply, and on demand.

Fast fashion shortened the cycle from design to store. Fast software will do the same for operations. But the real prize isn't disposable software—it's fast tailoring: software that fits perfectly, evolves with you, and finally enables your process instead of defining it.

For SMEs, that wishful thinking just became practical reality.

I'm documenting these patterns in The Intelligence Shift. Join me as we figure out what works—experiments, failures, and all.

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