The SaaS industry has seen a huge upsurge in the past decade. There have been massive shifts in all areas of businesses from on-premise to cloud solutions. All the business processes, be it marketing, sales, CRM, to even product development have started using SaaS products. SaaS statistics have shown that this will continue to happen in the coming decade.
With the immense power of remote work it brings to its users, the SaaS industry is going through immense evolution in all its products. The sudden hit of a pandemic to the whole world has only amplified the use of SaaS products giving much power and flexibility to the remote workforce.
It has been estimated that more than 30% of the remote workforce would continue to work in the same setup even after the end of the pandemic. As we move closer to the beginning of the year 2021, here are the top SaaS statistics and trends to watch in the coming times in the SaaS industry.
1. Customer experience is going to be a major competitive advantage
Customer experience has been gaining much prominence in the past decade. But 2021 is going to be even important for the companies to adopt customer experience as a major differentiator. In the past few years, it had already become the focus of around 50% marketers to champion the customer experience initiatives in their organization. But now, they are more focused on customer experience than just generating leads.
2. Cloud application services (SaaS) to reach $126 billions by the end of 2021
The SaaS industry’s market capitalization in 2020 is approximately $110 Billion and is expecting a growth of 14.5% in the next year. And by the year 2022, it is expected to reach $143 billion. Services that are seeing most adoption by the companies include cloud consulting, implementation, migration, and management.
3. Companies would invest more on additional services
As the trend suggests, it is predicted that companies would invest more in additional services along with their products. Tech giants like Salesforce have already set up the standards for offering more value to their customers. It is only a matter of time that others would start to follow the same trend. Services like customer success, business acceleration, admin assist would be a few of the major areas which new companies would adopt.
4. Inbound marketing strategy is going to grow for all SaaS firms
Although inbound marketing has seen a lot of evolution in the past few years, the bottomline remains the same – to attract customers organically and convert them to become loyal customers. Public relations would become a major area of focus for inbound marketing in 2021. Companies would strive to become thought leaders in their niche that ultimately results in more lead generations.
5. Data security would be more stringent than ever
It is not far since GDPR and SOC2 guidelines have become common security standards for most of the SaaS firms in the last few years. The data privacy issues are more relevant now than ever. Companies and government bodies would be more vigilant towards standards that are followed to secure customer data. 2021 is expected to bring complete alignment of ePrivacy Regulations with GDPR.
6. Worldwide public SaaS spending would more than double from 2019 to 2023
According to International Data Corporation (IDC), with a five-year CAGR of 22.3%, public cloud spending would grow from $229bn in 2019 to around $500bn in 2023. This includes the IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS industries. But SaaS would be the largest category capturing more than half of spending in the forecast. The major factors influencing such a humongous growth are the digital transformation initiatives in large enterprises in sectors like retail, telecommunications, and professional services.
7. User spending on business analytics apps would grow by 23% between 2017 and 2022
Business intelligence and data analytics have seen a steady adoption rate by the SaaS companies in the last few years. And it would continue to grow in the coming years. By the beginning of the year 2021, companies seem to be more ready to invest in business analytics tools like Tableau and Chartio. Gartner has predicted before 2017 in their SaaS statistics for software that user spending on such software would grow by 23% between the years 2017 and 2022.
Companies have increasingly realized the benefits of using marketing automation tools. It saves more of their time and helps in scaling to run large campaigns. Hence, more and more companies are ready to invest in such tools and it is expected to reach $25bn by the year 2023. These tools empower companies to implement more effective marketing strategies like running personalized campaigns for different customer segments.
9. Customer satisfaction and retention is going to be major focus
For any SaaS business, it is needless to state the importance of customer satisfaction and retention. Companies are becoming more and more qualified in implementing strategies towards these ends. Turning a regular customer into a loyal customer for a lifetime is the goal that every SaaS company is aspiring, for now, more than ever. Over 62% of businesses are willing to invest in solutions that offer positive customer experiences. This is an important SaaS statistic if you are considering investing in customer success in your organization.
10. More Micro-SaaS products will be hitting the market next year
With an increasing culture of digital nomads and solopreneurs, there is a sudden rise in the development of micro-SaaS products. These products are usually the ancillary products that work to support bigger SaaS products e.g. Grammarly for Google docs. They have very less or little funding yet can make a significant impact if they go viral. 2021 is going to see more such products being launched in the marketplace.
Wrapping up
With so many SaaS products being launched each year, as the above SaaS statistics show, there is an important need arising in the SaaS industry. Most of these products are designed to work in silos or with limited integrations. For example, different departments in an organization would be using different SaaS products for sales, marketing, CRM, customer success, etc. This might become bulky for an organization to work with after a certain point.
Hence, there is a growing need for an all-purpose, comprehensive SaaS product that can bring in the elements of all the departments on one single platform. That would be the business strategy for most of the tech giants in the near future.
But for the smaller firms, it is wiser to keep integration as a key priority while designing their SaaS product. It would help ensure the longevity of their usage in a multi-tech environment.
All in all, SaaS statistics show that 2021 is going to be a promising year for the tech firms and as we proceed, we wait to see new emerging leaders in the tech space.
Rakhin has over 10 years of experience driving business development and client services. In his prior roles, he stayed close to customers to understand their requirements and help them achieve their business goals. He is passionate about customer success.
Published November 23, 2020, Updated May 31, 2023
