Legacy Is not enough: Why enterprises need AI-native SaaS

Enterprise SaaS is now entering a next phase where AI is an explicit starting point instead of just an add-on – where AI is creating real business outcomes. Platforms like Phenom are helping globally-embedded employers to cut their interview scheduling time by up to 70% to unlock hundreds of thousands of underutilized skills of their employees, and enable recruiters to save thousands of hours through automation.

In this exclusive conversation with Dataquest, Kiran Menon, Senior Director of Product and India Business at Phenom speaks about applied AI use cases, intelligent agents and human-centered design, and how these are remaking the talent experience and transforming enterprise SaaS. 

Can an AI-first platform like Phenom really supplant traditional HCM workflows, or is it merely an add-on to systems such as SAP or Workday? 

The purpose of systems platforms like Phenom’s is not to supplant existing systems, but to augment them, with relevant AI and automation to enable productive teams and better, personalized experience for the benefits of candidates and employees.

In today’s rapidly changing digital enterprises, agility and innovation are more important than ever. Legacy workflows were once the trusted systems of business transformation, now, the transformations are taking place in the AI-enabled, where the talent experience is the mission critical component, and organizations will need more than mere system.

Organizations will need contemporary systems augmented with advanced AI to deliver the automated and personalized solutions to enhance the entire talent experience lifecycle from the sourcing and hiring, through to their development and retention.

AI-first platforms like Phenom are designed to meet this demand by aligning seamlessly with candidates, employees, recruiters, and HR teams to create a unified, intelligent experience that works in combination with a traditional system to create future-proof technology.

What are the real business outcomes that justify the premium pricing of platforms like Phenom?

Enterprises trust Phenom to transform talent experience with AI to hire faster, develop better and retain longer. We deliver a purpose-built, AI-powered approach that is begetting a paradigm shift to create measurable impact for global employers.

For instance, a large, internationally known science and technology company in Germany leaned heavily into Phenom’s interview scheduling technology, which resulted in a 70% reduction in the average time to get an interview on the calendar. On the talent management side, the German company used our internal mobility tool to boost incredible levels of employee engagement.

Meanwhile, a major pharmaceutical company discovered more than 200,000 employee skills they didn’t know were available while a large and growing health care system saved its recruiters more than a thousand hours via one-way interviews.

With AI in the loop, who’s accountable when the model makes a wrong hiring recommendation—or reinforces bias?

AI complements and accelerates the talent experience process while people make decisions. At Phenom, we believe that the future of talent experience will place the human element at the center, making it the axis around which AI evolution advances with purpose and precision.

AI platforms are designed not just to automate tasks but to enhance decision making, mitigate & eliminate bias, and bring a layer of personalization that humanizes every conversation.

Phenom’s AI is designed to illuminate bias, not reinforce it. We’re also providing an objective way to compare candidates or recommend jobs based on requirements. By analyzing patterns across candidate data and recruiter behavior, the platform can flag inconsistencies or blind spots that might otherwise go unnoticed, giving teams a chance to address them proactively. When implemented ethically and thoughtfully, it becomes more than just a tool, it becomes an instrument of transformation in your talent strategy.

Does the surge in AI-powered vertical SaaS platforms signal the beginning of SaaS fragmentation—or are we heading toward another consolidation wave?

It’s a misconception that you need to sacrifice an integrated platform just because you’re looking at a verticalized solution. The right technology can still satisfy a broad range of use cases but do it in a specific way for a specific industry. What makes Phenom stand out is our ability to deliver tailored technologies for different industries across a spectrum of applications.

The convergence of AI and SaaS is giving organizations a competitive edge through faster decision-making, deeper personalization, and seamless integration across functions. Enterprises are demanding more purpose-built, agile, contextual and intelligent platforms – areas where horizontal SaaS offerings often fall short. Phenom is strategically positioned to navigate and shapethe crux of the talent experience solutions.

Through our connected ecosystem and innovations like Phenom X+, Phenom integrates core HR functions like recruiting, onboarding, internal mobility, and analytics, into a single, intelligent platform. This isn’t just integration but an orchestration, where AI and automation deliver to personalize experiences and eliminate friction without sacrificing industry specificity.

What makes Phenom’s AI truly differentiated—and not just an overlay of LLMs like everyone else?

Phenom's purpose is to help a billion people find the right work. Its AI-powered intelligent talent experience platform helps enterprises hire faster, develop better, and retain talent more effectively. What truly differentiates Phenom is its Applied AI architecture, which is built on 14 years of proprietary data, domain-specific ontologies, and X+ Agents that are intelligent collaborators designed for specific industries, job roles, and workflows.

While a number of companies are churning out AI agents and giving people toolboxes to build their own agents, Phenom is being intentional about where agents will fit into workflows and enable organizations to use those agents. We’re actually showing enterprises how to get to agent excellence.

These agents don’t just suggest; they execute, navigate complex processes, make decisions, and know when to escalate to humans. At Phenom, we are reimagining human-machine collaboration, where AI augments HR with precision, speed, and empathy.