CRM becomes the underlying pipeline, with the scheduling layer becoming the new battleground, SaaS vendors need to find new moats.

AIMPACT reports that a16z partners predict the record-keeping system dominated by Salesforce and HubSpot will disintegrate, and the value of enterprise software will shift toward intelligent scheduling layers, with CRM retreating to serve as the underlying interface for AI Agents. AI will fetch data and make decisions across calendars, email, Slack, and other platforms, turning the moat into scheduling capabilities. Two counterintuitive points: AI does not reduce human involvement; instead, it enhances sales achievement rates; CRM usage increases due to AI automatically generating notes. In the future, pure scheduling capabilities may be overshadowed by large models, and SaaS could transform into a central hub and execution platform for Agent operations.