The End of SaaS: When Curiosity Becomes the Platform

Ray may be right about new CRM entrants like DX1 and Noetics are on the same path as Forza - but he, and the rest of the world, are missing the really BIG point.

By Celeste Dame 

A quiet experiment inside OpenAi just made every CRM, ERP, and SaaS platform, and those who argue for or against one or another, 

irrelevant. 

The next revolution belongs to the questions we ask, not the software we buy.

Prolog:

In every industry, the same story plays out. Vendors promise the next platform will fix what the last one broke. But a quiet revolution inside OpenAi has already rendered that cycle meaningless. What began as a tool to study customer tickets has become the clearest proof yet that the age of SaaS is ending. The Research Assistant, developed by OpenAi, shows what happens when every business owner can speak directly to their data. It doesn’t need reports or analysts. It listens, reasons, and answers in real time. All that is required is curiosity. 

And it exists today, right now.

The business owner who once waited on consultants and dashboards now simply asks a question and receives insight, instantly. The Research Assistant demonstrates a future where curiosity replaces code and reasoning replaces reporting. 

This article was inspired by Ray’s latest podcast, which raises fair concerns about the latest ERPs but misses the larger point. The world no longer needs CRMs, companies like CEO Juice, or the cottage industry of pundits and consultants decoding data that has been machinated by legacy SaaS. The debate over which platform will save us is meaningless. The system itself no longer matters, only the intelligence behind it.

The copier and office technology world keeps trying to buy its way into the future. Every few years, a new platform appears promising to finally connect every invoice, service call, and lease schedule in one neat interface. DX1 and Noetics are only the latest. Ray’s concerns about them are justified, but his snark misses the real story. He is still arguing about the safety of the ship while the sea itself is draining away. The issue isn’t whether these ERPs will fail. It’s that every ERP and CRM is already obsolete.

OpenAi’s Research Assistant makes that point crystal clear. As the company explained, “With SQL or another dashboarding tool, you have to have a very specific idea of what you want to look for. So the tools are extremely static. The difference here is that we can define the questions or any user can define the questions in real time that they care about.” That sentence should make every software executive in the world stop breathing for a moment.

CRMs like Salesforce and HubSpot are built on the assumption that users must adapt to the tool. They capture data, organize it into fields, and display it through static dashboards. These systems require armies of admins and consultants to interpret the numbers they generate. OpenAi’s Research Assistant destroys that premise. It allows direct, conversational access to data. No SQL. No dashboard. No interface. The user defines the question and the system answers. Insight becomes fluid and personal. The database itself fades into the background.

So when someone says, “Your CRM is doomed,” it isn’t hyperbole. Salesforce? Gone. HubSpot? Adios. The same logic erases MS Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and even the operating system underneath them. Who needs an OS when your own reasoning model can generate and execute every function in context? Why open a spreadsheet when you can ask, “What are my top five expenses this quarter?” and receive the analysis instantly?

The future is not SaaS. It’s not another multi million dollar IT project. It’s you, your data, and the curiosity to ask better questions. Decision makers won’t need a central platform or a consultant to translate results. They’ll have personal, embodied Ai systems that walk, roll, and respond to natural language while operating on private, contextual knowledge.

This shift ends more than software categories. It ends the cottage industry built around decoding complexity. No more specialists paid to interpret dashboards. No more subscription licenses keeping companies tethered to the past. When every question can be asked directly and answered in real time, the premise of SaaS collapses.

Ray is right that DX1 and Noetics are risky. But the deeper truth is that even if they worked perfectly, they would still be relics. The era of static tools and centralized systems is closing. 

All that remains is curiosity, and the realization that the smartest system your business will ever own is the one you teach to think with you, not for everyone else.

Sources:

1. OpenAi for Business: Research Assistant demonstration and transcript (2025)

2. Public statements from PowerMPS and Acumatica on DX1 partnership (The Imaging Channel, ENX Magazine, 2023–2025)

3. Publicly available company data from Noetics and Odoo platform documentation (2024–2025)

4. Analysis of CRM and ERP market transitions (Mordor Intelligence, DevRev, 2025)