Why Can't One App Do Everything for Everyone?

Every enterprise platform eventually tries to become the everything app. Google Workspace. Microsoft 365. Salesforce. They all promise that if you just commit fully to their ecosystem, you'll never need anything else.

It never works out that way. Here's why.

The Elephant(s) in the Room

Let's talk about the obvious examples.

Google Workspace

Google offers docs, sheets, slides, email, calendar, chat, meet, drive, and more. It's impressive breadth. But ask your design team if Google Slides replaces Figma. Ask your developers if Google Docs is where they want to write technical specifications. Ask your finance team if Google Sheets can replace their accounting software.

The answer is always no.

Microsoft 365

Microsoft has been at this longer than anyone. Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Teams, SharePoint, OneDrive, Planner, Power BI—the list goes on. They've spent billions acquiring and building tools. Yet every Microsoft shop still runs Slack alongside Teams, still uses Notion or Confluence for documentation, still needs Salesforce or HubSpot for CRM.

Salesforce

Salesforce started as a CRM and has evolved into a platform that wants to run your entire business. Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, Marketing Cloud, Commerce Cloud, Analytics, and hundreds of AppExchange add-ons. But even the most committed Salesforce customers don't do their accounting in Salesforce, don't design in Salesforce, don't write code in Salesforce.

The Uncomfortable Truth About Platform Strategy

Here's what these platforms won't tell you: their business model depends on you NOT using other tools.

The Licensing Game

When Google or Microsoft sells you a Workspace or 365 license, they're incentivized to keep you inside their ecosystem. Every integration with an outside tool is a potential off-ramp to a competitor. So they make integrations difficult, limit API access, or simply don't prioritize building connections to tools that compete with their own offerings.

This isn't conspiracy—it's business logic. If Microsoft Teams integrates seamlessly with Slack, why would you pay for Teams?

General Purpose by Design

These platforms are designed to serve everyone, which means they're optimized for no one.

No specialized job functions: Where's the design tool for designers? The IDE for developers? The DAW for audio engineers? These platforms cover general business functions—documents, spreadsheets, email—but completely ignore specialized work.
Jack of all trades, master of none: Google Sheets is fine. It's not Excel. Excel is fine. It's not a real financial modeling tool. When your tool has to serve accountants, marketers, HR, and operations all at once, it can't be best-in-breed for any of them.
Innovation at the pace of the slowest common denominator: Specialized tools like Figma, Linear, or Notion can ship features weekly because they're focused. Platform suites move slowly because every change affects hundreds of millions of users across thousands of use cases.

What Actually Happens in Practice

Organizations try consolidation. They mandate a single platform. Then reality sets in:

Shadow IT Explodes

Designers install Figma anyway. Developers spin up their own project management in Linear or GitHub Projects. Marketing brings in HubSpot because the native tools don't cut it. Now you have the worst of both worlds—you're paying for the consolidated platform AND the specialized tools, with no integration between them.

The 80% Problem

These platforms deliver about 80% of what each team needs. That missing 20% is usually the most important part—the features that make someone actually good at their job.

Integration Gaps Stay Gaps

When you find a capability gap, the all-in-one platform won't help you fill it. Need to connect Salesforce to a niche industry tool? Microsoft won't build that integration. Google won't prioritize it. You're left building custom solutions or accepting the gap.

The Best-of-Breed Alternative

Smart organizations have stopped fighting this battle. Instead of forcing everyone onto one platform, they embrace specialized tools AND solve the integration problem.

What This Looks Like

Design: Figma (because it's the best design tool)
Development: GitHub (because it's where developers live)
Sales: Salesforce or HubSpot (because they're purpose-built)
Finance: QuickBooks or NetSuite (because accounting matters)
Communication: Slack (because it won)
Project Management: Whatever each team prefers

The Challenge

The obvious problem: now your data is everywhere. Information is siloed. People are context-switching constantly. The cure seems as bad as the disease.

This is exactly the problem ACinch solves.

Enter the Integration Layer

ACinch doesn't try to replace your tools. We don't want to be your everything app—we've just explained why that doesn't work.

Instead, we connect your best-of-breed tools into a coherent system. Activity from all your tools flows into unified boards. Information surfaces based on context, not which app it happens to live in. Your teams keep using the tools they're most productive in, while the organization gets visibility and coordination.

Before ACinch

Sales closes deal in Salesforce
Manually notifies operations in Slack
Operations creates project in Monday
Finance sets up billing in QuickBooks
Each handoff is a potential failure point
No one has the complete picture

With ACinch

Sales closes deal in Salesforce
ACinch surfaces the relevant activity to everyone who needs it
Operations sees the update in their ACinch board, takes action in their preferred tool
Finance gets notified, context attached
Everyone has the complete picture without changing how they work

The Future is Connected, Not Consolidated

The winning strategy isn't finding the perfect all-in-one app—it doesn't exist. It's embracing best-of-breed tools for each function and connecting them with an intelligent integration layer.

Stop fighting your team's tool preferences. Start connecting them.

Ready to see how? Request a demo and discover a better way to work.