SaaS has been gaining in popularity for over a decade
Enterprises of all sizes, historically, have been slow to adopt SaaS
However, there are three forces driving a 180 change of SaaS in the enterprise:
- Societal Forces:? The pandemic had everyone working from home leaving access to legacy systems difficult if not impossible.? Social climate has elevated to emphasis relationships and empathy driving demand for better experiences and Social responsibility
- Technological Forces:? Cloud services, no code/low code, and minute innovation cycles across platforms have made it easy to deploy SaaS apps making for fiercely competitive landscapes and, digital marketing (MarTech) has saturated the enterprise markets and has the C-suite ducking for cover;? Furthermore, Gartner reported earlier this year that nearly 80% of enterprise CIOs have shifted majority of budget from datacenter to SaaS
- Economic Forces:? Roller coaster global economic downturns during the pandemic and today’s fear of a looming recession has CIOs and buyers looking for economical solutions coupled with declining prices due to competitive forces furthers the push to SaaS.?
Referencing the forces of change, here are six trends that aren’t going away and changing how Enterprise SaaS goes to market, scales, and raises capital.
- Middle buyers - On Average, Enterprise organizations are managing a portfolio of over 230 SaaS apps.? Add that digital marketing saturation has the C-Suite (the traditional target buyer) ducking for cover thus giving middle managers more authority and buying power (in short, who your buyer is and how to reach them is constantly changing);?
- Digital Marketing - MarTech has saturated the Enterprise SaaS marketing space and has C-Suite decision makers harder to reach, making it more difficult to engage and lengthening sales cycles
- Experience matters - Like the UX boom in B2C apps over a decade ago, the demand for clean and modern user experiences is now at the Enterprise level and more importantly, the full lifecycle experience provided to customers far outweighs product features, even price
- AI/ML is expected -? No one is that impressed with AI this and ML (Machine Learning) that's in part because they don’t understand it and more so because EVERYONE and EVERYTHING is apparently driven with AI/ML so…. It’s no longer a marketing/messaging bonus, AI/ML is just expected and buyers and consumers hope SaaS marketers will quit talking about it?
- Vertical SaaS - This refers to promoting and going to market with a feature or sub-set of a product to get your foot in the door instead of a bulky bells and whistles SaaS platform that does everything and takes 2+ months to integrate into the Enterprise.? Vertical SaaS is a product-led approach to getting the product in the hands of users and customers then constantly showing value through the technology so adoption increases.? Then, you upsell your next feature, then the next, and so on, and so on....
- Partnerships & Alliances - Traditionally Enterprise SaaS was closed systems and competitive advantage was in the code and bells and whistles under the hood.? However, today, for reasons mentioned above (plethora of SaaS apps, vertical SaaS, etc.), your Enterprise SaaS platform better integrate with other platforms, and cross-selling with partners and alliances is the optimal distribution strategy and highly lucrative.
At first you didn’t know how to go to market.? Now, even if you do know how to go to market, you better have the knowledge, experience, and creative mind to combat the forces and trends above or you’ll go nowhere fast and never get off the ground.??
At Brilliantly we have our finger is on the pulse of the InsurTech/FinTech industry. Brilliantly is a growth firm of interim and fractional CGOs positioning?#InsureTech?and?#FinTech?startups for A-Round by increasing top-line revenues and driving bottom-line efficiencies. You can find out more about?Brilliantly?or on the web at?https://brilliantlysaas.com/?
