Idle SaaS: what ASML teaches about demand

Every month you pay for a system nobody on your team opens. It might be a CRM, a scheduling tool or that project management SaaS that promised to organize everything. The bill hits your card right on time. The usage, not so much.

Hold on to that picture. I'm going to tell you a story that seems to have nothing to do with it.

The company that makes the most expensive machine in the world and can't sell at home

ASML is Dutch. It builds the lithography machines that print the most advanced chips on the planet. At the top of that market, it has no real competitor. If you want to make cutting-edge chips, you buy from ASML. Each machine costs hundreds of millions of euros and is the size of a bus.

In 2026, the company said something curious: it had sold "absolutely nothing" in Europe. And it asked the European Union for help creating demand on its own continent.

Think about that for a second. The best tool in the industry lives next door, and the neighbors don't buy it.

Price and quality don't explain it. Europe simply doesn't have enough advanced chip factories to use these machines. The big customers are in Taiwan, South Korea and the United States. Without a factory, the machine is useless. Nobody buys a printer without something to print.

What this has to do with your company's SaaS

Everything. Just in reverse.

Europe has the tool right next door and doesn't buy it because the factory is missing. Many Brazilian companies do the opposite: they buy the tool and forget they also need the factory.

In your case, the "factory" is the process. Who feeds the system, when, with what information, and what happens next. Without that, your SaaS becomes an ASML machine sitting in a warehouse: beautiful, expensive and useless.

Tools don't create demand. Processes do.

I've seen this up close more often than I'd like. A common example: a clinic subscribes to an online scheduling system for R$ 300 a month. Six months later, 90% of appointments still come through the receptionist's WhatsApp. She writes everything down in a paper planner "because it's faster". The system is there. The demand for it isn't.

Nobody there is lazy. The problem is that nobody designed the path. Patients don't know there's a link. The receptionist was never trained. And WhatsApp doesn't talk to the system.

Why so many SaaS subscriptions sit idle

It's almost always one of these reasons:

• Impulse buying. You saw an ad, liked the demo, subscribed. There was no clear problem to solve.
• Nobody owns it. The system belongs to "the company", which means to no one. Without an owner, nobody checks whether it's used.
• It doesn't talk to anything else. The information already lives in three places, and feeding a fourth becomes extra work.
• A 20-minute training. Someone showed the screen once in a meeting. That was it.

Notice that none of these is the software's fault. The SaaS usually works. What's missing is everything around it.

And there's the silent cost. Add up your subscriptions. If your company pays for five tools at R$ 200 each and only uses two well, that's R$ 600 a month going out the door. That's R$ 7,200 a year. With that money you can pay for a project that makes the other three actually work, or cancel them guilt-free.

How to create demand for a tool you already pay for

ASML asked Brussels for help. You don't need any government. You need one afternoon and some honesty.

1. List what you subscribe to. Open your credit card statements from the last three months. Write down every SaaS, what it costs and who should be using it. Many people get a scare at this step. It's normal to find a subscription nobody remembers signing up for.

2. Ask what problem each one solves. In one sentence. "The CRM solves the fact that we forget to follow up on quotes." If you can't write that sentence, the tool is a candidate for cancellation.

3. Give it an owner. One person, by name. They check the system every week and answer for whether it's being used.

4. Design the trigger. Every use starts with an event. New lead? It goes into the CRM. Patient asked for an appointment? They get the link. If the trigger depends on someone remembering, it will fail on a Friday afternoon.

5. Automate the bridge. This is where things change. When your website form creates the contact in the CRM on its own, the team doesn't need to "remember to use it". The system is already full when they open it. A simple automation often solves half of the abandonment. You can do it with tools like Make or n8n, or with the SaaS's own native integration.

6. Measure for 30 days. Just one number. How many quotes went through the CRM? How many appointments came through the link? If the number doesn't go up, cut it.

When canceling is the right call

I have an opinion that may sound odd coming from someone who makes a living from technology: most small businesses have too much SaaS, not too little.

Every new tool brings one more password, one more open tab and one more place where information can be out of date. Sometimes the best automation of the year is a cancellation.

Cancel when:

• Nobody can say, in one sentence, what it's for.
• The same work is already done in another tool you use.
• After 30 days with an owner and a trigger, usage is still close to zero.

Keep it when usage only depends on a bridge that doesn't exist yet. In that case, the problem isn't the software. It's the plumbing.

ASML's real lesson

ASML's story is about Europe, chips and geopolitics. But the message works for any business: having the best tool within reach is pointless if there's no place for it to work.

Your case is much simpler than theirs. You don't need to build a semiconductor factory. You need a clear process, a person in charge and, sometimes, an automation that connects one point to another.

If you looked at your list of subscriptions and felt that slight discomfort, that's a good sign. There's money and time to recover there. Fitting together tools, processes and automation is what I do every day. If you want to see how this would work in your business, take a look at my work.

ASML makes the most expensive machine in the world and sold "absolutely nothing" in Europe.

The problem isn't price or quality. The factories are missing. Nobody buys a printer without something to print.

Many companies do the opposite: they subscribe to a SaaS and forget that their "factory" is the process.

I've seen a clinic pay R$ 300 a month for a scheduling system and still book 90% of appointments through WhatsApp, written down in a paper planner.

Tools don't create demand. Processes do. One owner, a clear trigger and an automation connecting the dots solve more than any new subscription.

Sometimes the best automation of the year is a cancellation.

Ever opened your credit card bill and found a SaaS nobody remembers signing up for? Tell me in the comments.

#SaaS #Automation #BusinessManagement #SmallBusiness #Productivity