UX for Business

B2B Software: SaaS, PaaS, Etc.

What Is B2B?

B2B is simply short for business-to-business. (B2C is similarly business-to-consumer.) They are just catchy ways of saying who the customer is. And in my experience, that is sometimes the last time the makers of that software think about the customer at all.

There are also a lot of acronyms that end in “aaS” right now. It is short for “as a service,” and it is mostly a way for tech guys to feel like they are part of a cool software club. Customers (and half of the staff) often have no idea what those acronyms mean or what the differences are between platform as a service and software as a service and application as a service and data as a service, for example.

Although terminology like that is more of a marketing issue, it is always worth noticing when you’re too focused about whether you are technically a “this” or a “that,” instead of being focused on what customers actually want, need, and understand. Nobody buys software because it uses a PaaS business model. They buy it because it solves their problems. If you happen to design software that isn’t accepted by the Orthodox Church of Software Terminology but it solves the customer’s problems well, you will probably be fine.

The important part is this: B2B software solves business ...