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. After examining SMBs’ reasons for not adopting SaaS last week, we switch gears to look at their satisfaction levels.
Specifically, for those who have indicated that they use some form of SaaS to help run or market their businesses, how do they rate those services? We’re talking software that supports day-to-day operations – everything from payroll & HR to accounting & finance and marketing & advertising.
Data Dive
Going deeper, a few other insights jump out at us from these figures.
– Among the flavors of SaaS that SMBs commonly use, the greatest satisfaction (72 percent) goes to communications and technology solutions.
– This includes telephony services such as internet, phone, connectivity, etc..
– The fact that this was the highest-rated SMB SaaS area, was surprising as telephony typically has low customer satisfaction, due to quasi-monopolies (cable & telecom providers).
– 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.
– Next in order of satisfaction was accounting & finance (62 percent), payroll & human resources (59 percent) and marketing & advertising (51 percent).
– Accounting & finance not only scored well in overall satisfaction but also year-over-year growth (up from 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).
Localogy members can access full charts and SMB survey reports. Non-members can purchase reports.
Long-Tail Opportunity
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 accelerated in the Covid era as SMBs were 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.
And don’t forget that MCM, Wave 8 will be available soon…
