Maxwell Veyhe: What makes B2B software truly advanced
Why depth – not features – decides what lasts
Why depth – not features – decides what lasts
Advanced B2B software is not defined by sophistication at the surface. It is defined by where the software sits in the customer’s operating model, data landscape, and how decisions are made.
In complex B2B environments, buying software is not a transactional decision. It involves a transfer of operational dependency. The platform must integrate into heterogeneous system landscapes, interact with regulated or physical processes, and deliver outputs that customers rely on in daily operations. Errors are costly. Switching is disruptive.
The challenges these platforms address are often central to how industrial organizations operate, optimize assets, manage risk, or generate revenue. As a result, advanced solutions do not only become mission-critical from a technology perspective, they become business-critical. When they work well, they unlock significant operational and financial value. When they fail or disappear, operations become costly, disrupted, or revenue is directly affected.
Over time, a distinct category of B2B software businesses emerges when products move beyond standalone applications and become embedded systems of record, intelligence, and execution – platforms that sit at the center of operational data, decision-making, and process execution. These companies operate at the core of how enterprises run, supporting operational continuity, security and compliance, revenue integrity, or physical asset performance. And they do so with high reliability at scale. Their economics differ fundamentally from more generic software, with higher switching costs, longer customer lifecycles, and deeper structural defensibility.
The journey of B2B software starts at a basic application layer, business point solutions that address specific functions and features. But an application alone is increasingly insufficient as a source of durable advantage. What determines whether software becomes truly advanced is what accumulates above it.
As Maxwell Veyhe, Investment Partner at GRO, explains:
“An application can be useful and still be replaceable. What makes software advanced is when it becomes embedded in how the organization runs. When removal creates operational risk and even business value loss, you are no longer looking at a tool. You are looking at infrastructure.”
The first step beyond the basic application is deep system and workflow integration. This is where software becomes part of the operating fabric.
Tacton illustrates this clearly. Its CPQ platform is embedded across ERP, CRM, PLM, and CAD systems, linking sales, engineering, and production in complex manufacturing environments. Over time, configuration becomes shared infrastructure rather than a sales tool. The software connects commercial and technical decision-making, making replacement operationally unrealistic at scale. Integration into core systems shifts the conversation from procurement to operational continuity.
Switching costs at this level are not contractual. They are organizational and tend to increase as integrations deepen and usage broadens.
Beyond integration lies domain-specific intellectual property. Advanced B2B software encodes expert reasoning into proprietary models, algorithms, or languages. It is not generic automation. It is the systematic replication of specialist judgment built through long collaboration cycles with customers operating in complex environments. In some cases, this intellectual property also originates in academic research, where novel algorithms or mathematical approaches later become the foundation for new industry standards.
AIMMS exemplifies this layer. The company has developed a proprietary modeling language and solver engine purpose-built for advanced decision optimization. The platform embeds decades of expertise in mathematical optimization and operations research, enabling organizations to operationalize complex planning and optimization challenges across supply chains and enterprise systems. Over time, this intellectual core becomes a meaningful replication barrier.
Maxwell puts it this way:
“Domain depth is accumulated understanding. It can come from years of solving complex problems alongside customers, or from novel approaches developed in academia that redefine how those problems can be solved. When that expertise is embedded in the product, it becomes extremely difficult to replicate externally.”
As integration and domain logic deepen, proprietary data access begins to emerge. When software operates at the center of workflows, it generates unique datasets over time. In some cases, platforms also capture primary datasets directly through connected hardware or sensors, further strengthening the uniqueness of the data foundation. These datasets are not incidental. They become strategic assets tied to operational reality.
Trackunit provides a strong example. The platform accesses more than one trillion machine data points across over 750 OEMs, creating unmatched visibility into construction equipment usage and performance. This data foundation underpins predictive maintenance, fleet optimization, and new intelligence layers that would be difficult to assemble externally. Value compounds as historical depth and data quality increase.
At the highest level of depth, advanced B2B software companies shape how markets understand and solve problems. They influence standards, inform regulatory dialogue, and establish reference models others build against.
Akselos reflects this position where the company’s approach has gained global recognition. The World Economic Forum and McKinsey’s Global Lighthouse Network has spotlighted AI for structural integrity as a defining capability of the world’s most advanced industrial sites. As a category leader in digital engineering for energy and infrastructure, Akselos extends beyond software delivery. Its work shapes how structural performance management is applied to critical assets globally, reinforcing its role within the ecosystem.
AI compresses the value of functions and features where differentiation is primarily code-based. Features can be replicated faster and at lower cost. What remains durable is everything that cannot be generated generically, embedded workflows, domain-specific reasoning, proprietary data flows, and institutional trust.
As Maxwell notes:
“AI lowers the cost and accelerates the speed of building features. It does not lower the barriers built through domain expertise, or data access. The companies that set a high bar in owning context, trust, and operating with infrastructure-like reliability will benefit. The ones that do not will struggle to translate AI into real advantage.”
In practice, this raises the threshold for what it means to be embedded, to have meaningful data access, and to build true domain expertise. Many companies will articulate this shift, but far fewer will meet the bar required to capitalize on it.
Advanced B2B software is defined by accumulated depth rather than surface sophistication.
As markets mature and development becomes cheaper, competitive advantage shifts toward software embedded in systems, workflows, data, and decision-making over time. In these environments, complexity is not a liability. It is structural.
This pattern has repeated across industries and cycles. Software that is strategic and becomes institutional compounds value. Software that remains replaceable does not.
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