SaaS is still open for business, but it takes more time to buy and sell

“The Great Restructuring” It went ahead and Layoffs.fyi tracked 80,000 lost jobs in tech in January 2023. Gartner predicts that software spending will increase by 11.3% this year, but my company’s internal data leads me to be somewhat more bullish.

The fourth quarter of 2022 and the first quarter of 2023 show a steady increase in both spending and requests for new purchases. We analyzed over 2.5B in SaaS spending from 18,000 deals across 2,500 vendors and expect SaaS spending to grow 18% this year.

However, as software costs continue to rise, buyers and sellers will face significant challenges in coping with the impact of layoffs and fundamental economic uncertainty on the software market.

The main thing? In 2023, SaaS will still be open for business, it will take a long time to buy and sell.

Flat renovation is the new “switch”.

One of the most direct and immediate impacts of recent technology cuts on the SaaS sector has been the decline in seat licensing. A quarter of a million strikes equates to tens of millions of individual seat licenses lost to SaaS providers.

We’ve seen average contract value (ACV) increase in some of the most popular software categories. This includes cloud data integration (which includes products such as Fivetran and Celigo) as a category at 82%, mobile device management (which includes products such as Jamf and Kandji) as a category at 84% and project management tools (including products such as Asana). and Monday.com) increased 78% as a category. Even so, we expect SaaS providers across the board to see a squeeze on innovation, not expansion.

Vendors can expect distinct declines in both growth rate and share of wallet (the amount a customer spends on a particular piece of software from a competitor). We’ve seen suppliers try to make up as much as 20% (compared to the usual 3-5%) of lost revenue. The sooner SaaS providers can normalize the idea that even a flat renewal is a big win in this economy, the better off they’ll be.

Reduce the impact of discounts on purchase and renewal cycles

Over the past six quarters, renewal cycles have consistently been longer than 60 days. In the year The fourth quarter of 2022 represents growth, with renewal cycle times decreasing 11% –– from 63 days in Q3 to 56 in Q4.

Unfortunately, we predict that continued layoffs and restructuring will improve that number in 2023. Early Q1 data confirms this hypothesis, with renewals increasing 2% to 57 days and net new sales cycles increasing 10% to 46 days.

According to a survey by SAP, 55% of companies with more than 50,000 employees said that staff shortages have significantly reduced their procurement activities. Two-thirds of those same companies blame increasingly fragmented teams for delays in purchasing decisions.