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) answers these and other questions across the SMB SaaS product set, which we preview in this Benchmark Bytes series. And we recently entered a new chapter of this series, with highlights from the latest wave (8.0) of Modern Commerce Monitor.
After examining the ways SMBs find new SaaS products last week, we switch gears this week to examine The ways they benefit from the software. Are they streamlining operations, cutting costs, boosting revenue? These all represent the SaaS value proposition… but what parts are fulfilling that promise?
Data Dive
– Diving in, the biggest SaaS benefit reported by SMBs (53 percent) was that it saved them money.
– This is not only the most prevalent response but the SMB value proposition that has the most quantifiable outcome… so its impact is measurable.
– The bad news is that this result declined in its impact, down from 62 percent in Wave 6 (but up from 52% in Wave 7).
– Being able to spend more time with customers was the second-highest response at 46 percent.
– This is a strong value proposition for SaaS in that its automation frees SMBs up to do more valuable customer-facing work… something that especially resonates with proprietors.
– Like the top result (saving money), this result also declined from previous waves, down from 54 percent in Wave 6 (but up from 44 percent in Wave 7).
– Third on the list is greater capabilities offered by Saas, at 36 percent of SMB responses.
– This was down from 45 percent in Wave 6 and 41 percent in Wave 7.
– Other results included improved customer satisfaction (23 percent), revenue growth (23 percent), new customer segments (19 percent) and error reduction (18 percent).
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Long-Tail Opportunity
Stepping back, SMB online marketing – as well as operational and fintech tools – 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 accelerated in the Covid era as SMBs were forced into digital transformation. This sent them into the arms of SaaS providers (where many have stayed) 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.
