Betty Blocks Blog

Why your AI strategy needs a BOAT

amitabh.sharan@bettyblocks.com (Amitabh Sharan) — Thu, 26 Mar 2026 08:34:22 GMT

We have spent a decade investing in the most advanced AI models and the strongest SaaS tools, but we have left our people to be the manual bridge between them. This is why 95% of organizations are still hunting for their ROI. They haven't built a strategy; instead, they have built a collection of disconnected islands.

Lock-In Is Dead. This Is What Organizations Actually Want Nowadays

douglas.vanoijen@bettyblocks.com (Douglas van Oijen) — Thu, 22 Jan 2026 17:00:50 GMT

We just closed another deal, and here’s the truth most SaaS companies don’t want to admit: We didn’t win because our product is objectively the best. We didn’t win because our UI is prettier than everyone else’s. And we definitely didn’t win because our rep is criminally handsome (though he insists that helped). We won because of a promise that hits a nerve every company secretly feels.

But let’s start where the customer’s pain really lives.

How Vendor Lock-in Becomes Your Biggest Business Risk

dennis.stoelwinder@holder.nl (Dennis Stoelwinder) — Wed, 21 Jan 2026 15:09:22 GMT

Q4 last year, our Revenue department came to a complete halt, not once but twice, in a matter of a few weeks. It wasn’t an internal error, a lack of planning, or a team failure. It was simply because a couple of Cloudflare outages cut us off from our own data, leaving our CRM, HubSpot, practically useless. In an instant, our marketing machine stopped, our customer insights vanished, and we were essentially paralyzed. Luckily, bot instances were fixed within a day or so.

Your Most Important Excel Spreadsheet Is an App in Disguise

douglas.vanoijen@bettyblocks.com (Douglas van Oijen) — Wed, 14 Jan 2026 13:09:42 GMT

Years ago, I worked at a manufacturer selling both directly and through partners, not just in the Netherlands, but across Europe. On paper, we were well set up, we had an ERP, Microsoft Dynamics, processes, and scale. In reality, our entire pricing logic lived in one massive Excel file built by a single colleague. If I would ask myself honestly at that time, if that spreadsheet disappears tomorrow, does your pricing process survive? The answer… NO.

The Sunk Cost Falacy: Why Your "System of Record" is Actually a System of Debt

dennis.stoelwinder@holder.nl (Dennis Stoelwinder) — Wed, 14 Jan 2026 12:56:33 GMT

The longer I work in IT, the clearer it becomes: Vendor lock-in is not so much about the recurring annual pricing tag, but much more about being so heavily invested in a system that walking away feels like robbery. Sure, you’ll save a ton of money by replacing your system and even by optimizing systems, but what about the millions of dollars you spent on making the system work? The years of effort, the optimization consultants, and the manual work around customization. Poof, gone.

Connecting Your Business Data With AI Conversations Through MCP and Low-code

lisanne@bettyblocks.com (Lisanne Steenis) — Tue, 13 Jan 2026 12:48:14 GMT

What if your AI assistant didn’t just give smart answers, but truly understood your business, your data, your processes, and the way your organization works? What if the AI you already use every day could provide insights that are meaningful, relevant, and tailored to your reality?

Isn’t It Time We Stop Using Big SaaS And Standard Software As It Stands Today?

chris.obdam@bettyblocks.com (Chris Obdam) — Thu, 08 Jan 2026 14:08:30 GMT

A blunt observation: most SaaS and Standard Software are polished compromises. It’s built for the average customer, so every organization ends up bending its processes, language, and user experience to fit someone else’s idea of “best practice.” Shouldn’t we flip that model by combining AI driven app generation with low-code, so companies can build flexible, role based applications on top of the data sources they already trust in their existing SaaS or standard platforms.

Tech Stack Rationalization From a VP Revenue Perspective, Surviving CFO Scrutiny

douglas.vanoijen@bettyblocks.com (Douglas van Oijen) — Thu, 08 Jan 2026 09:28:51 GMT

Nothing exposes bad tech decisions faster than a CFO-led tech stack rationalization. As a VP Revenue, I’ve seen it happen more than once. Suddenly, every tool needs an owner, a real use case, and provable ROI. “We’ve always used it” dies instantly, and that’s usually when you realize the issue isn’t tooling, it’s that nobody ever designed the system properly.

The SaaS Tax: Why I’m Firing My Tech Stack and Building My Own

dennis.stoelwinder@holder.nl (Dennis Stoelwinder) — Wed, 07 Jan 2026 15:48:15 GMT

I spent my Monday morning the same way most VPs of Marketing do: staring at fourteen open browser tabs, three different single sources of truth that tell a different story, and a notification that one of our API keys had expired, breaking a critical lead-flow automation.

Betty Blocks Breaks Low-Code with Open Standards and Cloud Sovereignty

amitabh.sharan@bettyblocks.com (Amitabh Sharan) — Wed, 10 Dec 2025 13:42:03 GMT

Betty Blocks announced a platform restructuring designed to challenge what CEO Chris Obdam calls "the broken economics of low-code development." In a direct challenge to industry giants, the company declares it's not fixing low-code but replacing it with a model where, as Obdam states, "success doesn't come with penalties."