Last year, 2017, saw a slight slow-down in the pace of new SaaS subscriptions, but an increase in the amount being spent on SaaS. So while it may look like we are starting to see some consolidation around tools, it’s also true that organizations are not shy about shelling out for software as a service that will help them grow and manage their businesses.
It’s important to pay close attention to how software is being used in the modern business, because it’s the backbone of our economy today. Understanding SaaS trends can help businesses make good decisions about where to invest their own money. Additionally, digging deep on what’s working and what’s not can help uncover opportunities to improve.
As we’ve written about before, SaaS security has a long way to go. Additionally, there are often major opportunities for cost savings when teams pay attention to where they are investing their dollars to avoid feature overlap and optimize resources. Productivity can either be dramatically improved or hampered by technology, depending on how workflows are structured, so periodically evaluating your SaaS usage (and taking a look at the wider industry) is a good way to understand whether you are moving in the right direction.
Overall, it’s a good idea to pay attention to where SaaS momentum lies before you make any big decisions about where to invest, where to cut back, and how to better integrate and structure the technology your team already uses. Our hope is that this guide will help you do just that.
The last ten years have resulted in a penetration of SaaS across all departments. While engineering was an unsurprising early frontrunner, and still a spending leader, Business Ops has taken the crown when it comes to number of subscriptions recent years. In 2018, it’s clear that SaaS is used widely across the entire organization.
On average, we are seeing 18 SaaS subscriptions and about $136,000 in total spend at each company. However, it’s worth noting that as of Q3 2017, the run rate was closer to 20 subscriptions and $186,000 in annualized spending, so we expect these numbers to grow in 2018, just as they have in previous years.
Let’s take a look at a departmental breakdown in SaaS usage and trends.
Engineering teams are naturally powered by technology, and since they are of course the pioneers of SaaS, it makes sense that they were the first to jump in headlong. Of course, there’s some overlap between engineering and DevOps, but here are the top three favorite products among pure-engineering teams:
Just behind engineering, business ops stands out as a heavy user of SaaS products. It makes a lot of sense. Business ops pros are charged with keeping the whole organization humming along smoothly, and investing in tools that streamline, simplify, and facilitate communication is at the heart of what they do. Here are the top three business ops SaaS applications:
As marketing becomes an increasingly technical and KPI-focused discipline, it’s no surprise that technology has been relied upon to support growth. This ranges from the big marketing automation platforms to a plethora of tailored solutions for everything from landing pages to design. Some of the top SaaS products for marketers include:
If your customers are tech-savvy, you certainly better be as well. It took a little while for customer support teams to start adopting SaaS. In 2017, but it’s clear that the SaaS tools they are using are making a big difference. Customers today expect excellent support, and doing this at scale quite simply requires good technology. Some favorites for customer support include:
Time to get your financial house in order? In 2018, you’d be hard-pressed to do this successfully without the support of some excellent SaaS finance tools. While security and compliance concerns (and perhaps a bit of an old-school attitude) led to slow growth in this department — it has clearly taken off in recent years. The best apps for their money?
Building a SaaS product? You’re gonna want some SaaS products to help you manage the process…In fact, even companies who aren’t building technology themselves can benefit from some of the powerful product development and management tools on the market today. Below are three popular SaaS tools for product teams:
DevOps teams are natural early adopters, since they’re steeped in technology. Since DevOps teams are tasked with both development and operations tasks, it makes sense that their SaaS investments span the gamut, with a focus on simplifying infrastructure to support continuous application delivery. Here are some stand-out SaaS tools that DevOps teams rely on:
Human resources teams have been the slowest to start adopting SaaS. Recent growth comes from increasingly well-operationalized HR processes (like onboarding and offboarding) that require support in the form of technology to keep them running smoothly. Some big hits with HR professionals include:
Sales teams are continually measured and KPI’d on how fast, efficiently, and effectively they are able to sell. There’s always room for improvement and an opportunity to trim the fat. Technology can be a huge enabler here. The three most popular SaaS tools for sales are:
The SaaS explosion is a good thing. It’s easier to deploy and faster to adopt, and it doesn’t require IT or developers to get started. Even less tech-savvy team members can deploy many SaaS products. People prefer it because apps can solve a wide range of business challenges. But when an organization invests in a lot of apps, it can lead to chaos pretty quickly.
You have to consider how certain tools get along (or don’t) with other tools. You need to look for ways to streamline tech-heavy workflows. You need to ensure you are meeting security and compliance requirements and responsibilities, and treating customers’ data with the level of respect and sensitivity it deserves. You also need to ensure you are optimizing both operations and spending around SaaS tools, so that proliferation doesn’t equal waste.
Investing in software as a service responsibly means addressing these challenges. That’s the only way to ensure your organization sees a net benefit from all that amazing technology.
Sound hard? Don’t worry. Blissfully helps hundreds of companies effortlessly manage their SaaS vendors, across thousands of subscriptions and millions in monthly spend. Once installed, Blissfully displays both historical and up-to-the-minute accurate representations of SaaS usage, spend, and data management.
Blissfully offers:
You can view the full report and download a PDF at blissfully.com/saas-trends/2018-annual/
Originally published at www.blissfully.com.