🥇Hi, SaaS | SaaS Trends in 2019 by Blissfully

Each year, Blissfully analyzes an anonymous set of customer data to identify trends in SaaS spending and usage. The final report looks at data from nearly a thousand companies in 2018 and provides guidance on how to think about SaaS in 2019.

Costs and SaaS adoption continue to rise

In 2018, SaaS spending and adoption continued to rise rapidly across all companies. In 2018, the average company spent $343 on SaaS, up 000% from the previous year.

Companies spend more on SaaS than laptops

A software toolkit is more expensive than the hardware it runs on. In 2018, the average cost of a SaaS subscription per employee ($2) was higher than the cost of a new laptop ($884 for an Apple Macbook Pro). And as more companies move to SaaS, the gap between software and hardware spending is likely to widen.

Employee uses at least 8 apps

The average number of applications used per employee was almost the same across all segments of the company. Although, as companies grow, the average number of applications per company tends to increase linearly.

This means that instead of just adding seats to apps that are already in use, companies are adding new apps as they grow. This is usually the result of specialization, but can be a signal of redundancy or inefficiency (for example, multiple subscriptions to the same app, or multiple apps that serve the same purpose).

SaaS is decentralized throughout the organization

No single stakeholder "owns" IT governance anymore. Ten years ago, IT made all the major technology buying decisions. Today, with thousands of SaaS applications available, it's hard for IT professionals to evaluate the right technology for each department's needs. In addition, the nature of SaaS means that IT doesn't need to install and maintain new applications. Anyone, even those with little technical knowledge, can choose, buy and implement applications.

These two trends—the sheer volume of applications available and the ease with which they can be implemented—have prompted companies to spread responsibility for SaaS across the organization. Department leaders can now play a much more important role in evaluating the best technology toolkit for their teams.

SaaS has many owners

SaaS providers make it easy for everyone to set up and use applications. As a result, the number of SaaS owners in the organization has skyrocketed.

The average mid-sized company has 32 different billing owners for its SaaS applications, effectively distributing the task of IT budgeting across the organization.

With so many decision makers and so many applications, organizations are setting themselves up for chaos. An amazing 71% of companies have at least one SaaS subscription without a billing owner. This usually means that the person who originally purchased the app on behalf of the company has left the organization, leaving the app orphaned.

Application rotation

We can say that the only metric for using SaaS is changes. The App Rotation Score measures how quickly those changes are happening. The typical mid-sized company changed 39% of its SaaS applications between 2017-18. This turnover rate is higher than the industry average for tech churn (one of the highest turnover industries according to LinkedIn).

SaaS strategies 2019

Successful IT strategies in 2019 embrace the decentralized nature and rapid pace of SaaS change. The most effective IT teams take a collaborative approach to SaaS and put up security barriers for their teams to ensure security and accountability. This allows the IT department to focus on enterprise-wide initiatives, infrastructure, and processes, while team leaders can select and quickly implement the best individual applications to achieve their goals.

Personal observations

Potential users of the service Dental Tap began to ask fewer questions about cloud technologies. If a few years ago the share of such questions was about 50%, now it has dropped to 10%. The percentage of communication with technical specialists of clinics or acquaintances of doctors who help them choose a cloud service has noticeably decreased. When discussing the delivery of the service, the owners of the clinics became determined to automate the workplaces of all employees (including doctors), and earlier, in most cases, it was about automating the front office of clinics. Interest in integration with third-party services has grown (every 5th request) - Internet telephony, CRM, online cash register, and we can conclude that clinics have begun to use more SaaS applications.

Hi SaaS | SaaS Trends in 2019 by Blissfully