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 during a global pandemic that has hit local businesses hardest?

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 the last installment examined SMB online-services adoption we switch gears to examine their biggest reasons for doing so.

The top reasons are saving time (72 percent), gaining capabilities/functionality (44 percent), mobile access (23 percent), saving money (22 percent), gaining simplicity (16 percent), security (13 percent), and enabling remote work (8 percent). These data were gathered in January and February so have some Covid-influence.

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What Does it All Mean?

Going a bit deeper, a few things jump out at us:

— As noted, the top driver for online services adoption is saving time, which is not a surprise. SMBs are famously time-starved and any online tools that can give them time back resonates.

— Not only was saving time the biggest response but it is also the biggest mover. It grew from 51 percent in Wave V of the research to 71 percent in Wave VI.

— The second-place reason, gaining capabilities, is flat compared to wave V at 44 percent of SMB respondents.

— The high ranking isn’t surprising as gaining new functionality in business operations is a common SMB priority.

— The third-place reason is likewise flat from Wave V: the fact that a given service is available on smartphones. At 23 percent of SMB responses, this continues to be an important consideration for highly-mobile SMB proprietors.

— Saving money is surprisingly far down the list at 22 percent of SMB responses. Given SMBs’ famous cash-flow challenges, we would expect price shopping for operational software to be a more prominent criterion.

— The fact that gaining capabilities is a greater priority than saving money indicates growing SMB emphasis on getting up to speed with digital capabilities at any cost.

— Another common SMB trait is the need for simplicity. However, in these survey results, adopting new digital tools because they’re “simpler or easier to use,” is further down the list at 16 percent of responses.

— This shows that SMB tech savvy is evolving.

— Lastly, there was a stark difference in remote work capability as an adoption driver between Wave V (36 percent) and Wave VI (8 percent).

— This tells us that SMBs are reopening and returning to physical-world operations so remote work capability is less of a priority than it was last year at this time.

Time to Shine

Stepping back, SMB online services adoption tracked by MCM continues to grow rapidly.  SMB SaaS startups and online services providers are correspondingly thriving with exit velocity, funding, and public-market performance. SMB SaaS is becoming a leading subsector of the broader SaaS universe.

Meanwhile, new SMB SaaS users shown in these survey results could represent permanent adopters — a concept that’s accelerated in the Covid era as SMBs are forced to accelerate their digital transformation. This sends them into the arms of SaaS providers to accomplish a range of operational and marketing functions.

We’ll return in the next installment to go deeper on other pandemic-driven areas of SMB technology adoption. That will include top goals and what types of SMBs are adopting. 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.