As part of the ritual of examining local commerce and SMB Saas strategies, Localogy goes right to the source: SMBs themselves. How do they feel about marketing and operational software? What features do they want? And how has their hunger changed in a pandemic? This is all a moving target.
Localogy’s Modern Commerce Monitor (MCM) Wave 6.1 answers these and other questions across the SMB SaaS product set, which we preview in this Benchmark Bytes series. After examining SMBs’ reasons for not adopting online services last week, we switch gears to look at their satisfaction levels.
Specifically, among all the flavors of SaaS that SMBs commonly use, the greatest satisfaction (72 percent) goes to Communications and technology solutions. That’s followed by accounting & finance (62 percent), payroll & human resources 59 percent and marketing & advertising (51 percent).
Localogy members can access full charts and SMB survey reports. Non-members can purchase reports.
Data Dive
Going deeper, a few other insights jump out at us from these figures.
– The top area of SMB satisfaction (communication and tech solutions) was somewhat surprising, given that it includes telephony services such as internet, phone, connectivity, etc..
– These areas traditionally have low customer satisfaction, due to quasi-monopolies (think cable & telecom providers) that offer them.
– Not only was this the greatest area of SMB satisfaction but it was the biggest mover on the list, growing from 39 percent in Wave 6 to 72 percent in wave 6.1.
– Growth in satisfaction in this category is likely due to customer service initiatives among these players, as well as the rise of challenger services such as Google Fi.
– Another possible explanation is that SMBs have a greater appreciation for connectivity for remote service fulfillment in the Covid-era.
– Accounting & finance services likewise performed well in both overall satisfaction (62 percent) and growth over Wave 6 (49 percent).
– This is likely due to these functions’ importance to any business and the degree to which software can alleviate common pain points in areas like taxes and bookkeeping.
– The same can be said for payroll and human services (59 percent satisfaction, up from 40 percent in Wave 6).
– These are core functions that have the unique mix of high stakes, complicated fulfillment, and the opportunity for software to alleviate friction.
– Honorable mentions further down the list include POS/Payment processing (50 percent), CRM (44 percent), and supply chain services (42 percent)
– The latter is obviously more relevant today, given global supply chain impediments. We’ll see if this is reflected in the next survey wave…
Time to Shine
Stepping back, SMB online marketing – website-based or otherwise – continues to grow rapidly. SMB SaaS startups and online services providers are correspondingly thriving as it continues to grow as a leading subsector of the broader SaaS universe. There’s a long-tail opportunity at play.
Meanwhile, new SMB SaaS users could represent permanent adopters – a concept that’s accelerated in the Covid era as SMBs are forced to boost their digital transformation. This sends them into the arms of SaaS providers to accomplish a range of marketing and operational functions.
We’ll return in the next installment to go deeper into Localogy original survey research. That will include SMB goals and success factors. Let us know what additional insights jump out at you from the above data, and stay tuned for more breakdowns in our Benchmark Bytes series.
