[mrandish]

Agreed. I was going to add (but didn't) that the first evidence of an 'AI unlock' on SaaS wouldn't be internal builds but many new, much cheaper competitors appearing for leading SaaS tools. Your point about the best arguments to internally build SaaS being 1) integration savings, and 2) better fit, is spot on. But senior management has to balance those potential benefits (and the risk an internal effort fully delivers on-time & budget) against sticking with 'the devil we know' which works (imperfectly) today.

In my experience, a bigger blocker to C-level approving internal SaaS development is it diverts capital and scarce attentional bandwidth to 'buying an upside' that's capped. Capped how? Because, by definition, any 'SaaS-able' function is not THE business - it's overhead. The fundamental limit on a SaaS tool's value to shareholders is to be a net savings on some cost of doing business (eg HR, legal, finance, sales, operations, support, etc). No matter how cheap going in-house makes a SaaS-able activity, the best case is improving margins on revenue. It doesn't create new revenue. You can't "save your way" to growth.