AI’s Role in the Future of SaaS and UX

Satya Nadella’s recent pitch about the potential decline of SaaS caught my attention. While I’ve long noticed the landscape shifting with AI, his words felt like yet another signal of change. That said, I don’t fully agree with his claim that SaaS will die out entirely. AI agents can handle a lot, but this transformation won’t happen overnight. Moreover, interfaces will always be necessary—after all, humans process 85% of information visually.

Working in the design and software development field for over 10 years, I’ve seen many trends come and go. While I was wrong about AR/VR taking over the world (we were not prepared for it technically), I’m hopeful that AI will drive change faster. It’s more affordable, more user-friendly, and far better suited to the current technological landscape. Here’s my perspective on how AI is poised to reshape UX and SaaS.

To illustrate, let’s take HubSpot as an example—one of the most prominent SaaS platforms. We can break down its user journey into three main stages:

1. HubSpot Setup
2. Campaign Management
3. Results and Improvements

These steps are enough to give us a clear picture of how AI can redefine the SaaS experience. Let’s go through the steps

1. HubSpot Setup

One of the primary reasons companies hesitate to switch from one SaaS platform to another is the complexity of integrations—and rightly so. HubSpot offers thousands of integrations and has streamlined the process significantly. However, fully setting up the platform (excluding custom integrations) still takes an average of a full three months.

AI could completely transform this process. Imagine a scenario where integrations are handled autonomously. Users would simply provide a command, input their credentials, and let AI take care of the rest. For example, you could list required integrations in a single command, separated by commas, and receive step-by-step guidance (e.g., “Input credentials” or “Choose the required integration parts”).

This AI-driven approach could reduce setup time to just a couple of weeks if not days, even accounting for strategy sessions. By eliminating tedious manual configurations, businesses could redirect their focus to strategic goals rather than operational hurdles.

2. Campaign Preparations

Campaign preparation is another area ripe for AI innovation. While creating campaigns still benefits from human creativity and insight, many aspects can be fully automated.

AI has already demonstrated its ability to generate high-quality content, design visuals, and even write code. By feeding AI your brand guidelines and allowing it to access your product catalog (e.g., from your e-commerce platform), it could create professional, on-brand emails and campaigns in minutes. The user’s role would shift to fine-tuning the output rather than building campaigns from scratch.

For instance, setting up an email automation flow today can take weeks of manual effort. With AI, you could dictate the entire structure to a voice-enabled assistant, brainstorm ideas in real time, and finalize the campaign with a single click.

Of course, this requires a dynamic interface capable of adapting to conversational inputs. But the benefits are clear: what once took weeks could now be done in days.

3. Results and Improvements

AI excels in analyzing results and providing actionable recommendations. After a campaign concludes, AI already can:

• Summarize key metrics in plain language.
• Suggest optimizations for future campaigns.
• Enable one-click implementation of improvements.

For example, if email open rates are low, the AI might recommend adjusting subject lines or sending times and even generate those adjustments for approval.

However, this stage will always require human oversight. Strategic decisions—such as choosing to pivot or double down on certain tactics—depend on human judgment. A dynamic, user-friendly dashboard that adapts to the AI’s insights will be essential to support these decisions.

Overall Thoughts

AI has the potential to dramatically reduce the time required for setting up products, managing campaigns, and making data-driven decisions. However, this evolution won’t render user interfaces obsolete. Instead, future SaaS solutions will require dynamic, adaptive, and constantly evolving UIs that can respond seamlessly to user interactions—whether through voice, text, or other inputs.

In my view, this is the SaaS AI agent Satya Nadella hinted at—a hybrid of AI and UX designed to empower users while maintaining intuitive interfaces. This evolution will bring about interfaces that:

• Blend voice and text inputs
• Adapt in real time based on user needs
• Make processes easier, faster, and more autonomous

These changes will not only enhance user experiences but also drive greater profitability for businesses. Just as the iPhone revolutionized UI design over the past decade, AI is now ushering in a new era of user experiences.

The era of AI-driven UX is here—offering the potential to redefine how we interact with SaaS.

What do you think? Will be happy to read the comments and discuss.