A year ago, building custom software was a signal. It meant you had capital, technical leadership, and patience. Most firms defaulted to SaaS because the alternative was too slow and too expensive. That calculus is gone. AI tools have made it possible for anyone to ship working software in a weekend. And that changes everything, not just for builders, but for buyers too.
The Floor Has Risen
When building gets easier, the baseline rises. A Retool report from early 2026 found that 35% of enterprises have already replaced SaaS tools with custom-built software. 78% plan to build more internally this year. Non-engineers are now shipping 48% of production software.
This is not a story about developers losing jobs. It is a story about the market getting flooded.
When anyone can ship, the question stops being 'can we build this?' and starts being 'is this worth building, and is it genuinely good?'
The firms that commissioned mediocre software to tick a box, they are the ones at risk now. Their systems look worse every month as the alternatives improve.
What This Means for Kenyan Professional Services
Professional services firms in Nairobi (accounting, law, consulting) have historically made a sensible choice: use whatever SaaS tool handles the job well enough, and focus on billable work. That logic held when custom software was expensive and risky.
It does not hold anymore.
- KRA compliance workflows are still largely manual in most 10-50 person firms
- Client onboarding is handled in spreadsheets at firms that bill KES 50M a year
- Reporting is copy-pasted across tools that do not talk to each other
The cost of fixing this has dropped dramatically. The cost of not fixing it, in lost time, errors, and staff frustration, has not.
The firms that automate well now build a compounding advantage. The ones that wait will find the gap harder to close every quarter.
World-Class Is Now the Minimum
Here is the uncomfortable version of this argument: average software is not neutral anymore. It is a liability.
If your CRM is clunky, your team works around it. That workaround costs you somewhere, usually in data quality, or in staff hours, or in the client experience. If your compliance reporting takes three people two days every month, that is a structural problem that compounds.
The new standard is simple: does this software actually fit the way we work, or are we fitting ourselves to the software?
The best systems we have built, Petrus at Waweru and Associates, the Safari Epic booking engine, share a common trait. They are not generic. They are built around the specific logic of how that business operates. That specificity is what makes them defensible. Generic tools can be copied. A system that is deeply embedded in your workflows cannot.
The Question Worth Asking
Before your next renewal of any SaaS subscription, or the next time you consider building something new, run this test: is this tool world-class for our specific context? Not in general. Not for the average firm in our industry. For us, with our clients, our compliance requirements, our team's actual habits.
If the answer is yes, keep it. If the answer is 'it's fine,' start asking what 'fine' is costing you.
We work with professional services firms across Kenya on exactly this question. If you want to map out where your systems are costing you more than they should, start at kaara.works.
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