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’ SaaS functions most in demand last week, we switch gears to look at their adoption time horizon.
Specifically, the timeframe that most SMBs anticipate adopting online services is within 6 months (45 percent). That’s followed by 6-12 months (25 percent), 1-2 years (20 percent), and greater than 2 years (10 percent). These results were gathered in Fall 2021 so they reflect sentiments at the time.
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Data Dive
Going deeper, a few other insights jump out from these figures.
– As a reminder from last week’s Benchmark Bytes, the area that SMBs are most attracted to is finance and operations software support, at 40 percent of responses.
–That’s followed by supply chain (38 percent), CRM (38 percent), and payroll & HR software (35 percent). Marketing and advertising software scored lowest with 38 percent.
– When combined with these areas of anticipated SMB Saas adoption, the timing of adoption in the data above paints a more complete picture.
– Specifically, the most urgent and mission-critical business operations scored high for SMB demand.
– That squares with the fact the most popular time-horizon that SMBs report is the shortest one.
– With 45 percent of SMBs reporting that they’ll adopt SMB SaaS operational tools in the next 6 months, it’s good news for software vendors in that an adoption wave is on the immediate horizon.
– Winning that business will mean speaking to SMBs’ pain points
– This once again brings up last week’s data sets (and previous Benchmark Bytes installations), in terms of which software areas best scratch the SMB itch.
– The biggest urgencies are in functions that support day-to-day operations (think: supply chain management, payroll, etc).
– That’s contrasted by less mission-critical (but still important) functions like advertising and marketing.
– Regardless of the category, it’s good news for the SMB SaaS world that the biggest survey segment expressed an urgency to adopt within the next two quarters.
– Based on the timeframe in which the survey was fielded (again, Fall 2021), that means it’s now game-on to win that business.
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.
