CRM > HCM > BCM “Behavior Change Management” is the next SaaS frontier

In 1999 Marc Benioff had a vision for a new technology that would take him from his one bedroom apartment to becoming the founder and CEO of one of the most well known names in customer service management: Salesforce. Customer service management (CRM) was already a well trodden market space when Salesforce entered the game, but their groundbreaking utilization of software-as-a-service (SaaS) would have far reaching implications.

The explosion of SaaS

Fast forward to today and CRMs are in organizations of all sizes — playing a key role in almost all scaling strategies. The success and ubiquity of these systems can be attributed to the agility and innovation SaaS technology unleashed. Since its early applications, however, SaaS has found itself invaluable to a number of industries.

For instance, the transformation SaaS provides expanded quickly into the world of human capital management (HCM) as organizations began to look inward. With the leadership of organizations like SAP, Workday, Oracle, and ADP harnessing the capabilities of SaaS, organizations are coming to redefine their processes (sparking innovation in areas like resource tracking, planning, and accountability). Because of the proven capabilities of SaaS, organizations are coming to rely on more and more applications.

Behavior change management is the next step for SaaS

A new key area that SaaS is showing promise in is behavior change management (BCM). As organizations continue leveling up to meet the challenges of today’s market, leveraging, reinforcing, and instilling key behaviors is becoming increasingly vital. As I’ve conducted hundreds of interviews with top business leaders, I’ve heard this truism recounted time and again. But I’ve also seen how traditional behavior change systems are beginning to show their limitations.

How behavior change is traditionally limited

In the current system of behavior change, organizations utilize workshops and seminars to initiate the process. These workshops are almost always focused on leaders throughout the organization as they define the culture that is lived on the ground. The behaviors they exhibit become the behaviors their teams exhibit — and thus the organization as a whole. These workshops provide a moment of behavioral elevation as an important first step, but as things return to normal so do the old behaviors. The traditional method provides no workflow and minimal reinforcement on the behaviors the organization seeks to instill.

BCM is the next stage of development for businesses

Scalable behavior change management systems are the next frontier for organizations’ people strategy — and the field is wide open for discovery. At ProHabits, our view is that daily behavioral reinforcements ( ‘little nudges’) have the greatest impact on sustainable behavior change. This is why we’ve created a system of scalable “MicroActions” in which desired behaviors are broken down from the abstract into bite sized chunks.

We have a workflow for everything, but not for what’s most important. It’s time for SaaS to catch up.