5 Interesting Trends in SaaS Businesses You Need to Know in 2024
Undeniably, SaaS is the future of software.
This sector is sweeping the tech industry like a storm as it continues to experience astronomical growth driven by technological advancements.
In fact, Precedence Research projected the global SaaS market size to hit USD 1,251.35 billion by 2034, highlighting the increasing demand for SaaS going forward.
With stiff competition and customer demands at an all time high backed by changing market dynamics, SaaS business owners are
pushed to explore new trends, all in an effort to stay ahead of the curve in 2024.
Think, AI, machine learning, and edge computing. They are increasingly becoming popular in SaaS space and for the right reasons.
In this article, we will discuss interesting SaaS trends in 2024 that should be on your radar if you want to gain competitive advantage and meet your customers' growing demands.
Let’s get started.
1. Integration of AI and Machine Learning
AI is ruling the IT industry.
And no wonder it found a place in the SaaS sector as well and changed it completely.
Remember when ChatGpt was launched in 2022, it made groundbreaking shifts and the world noticed. Everyone noticed the massive potential it had in simplifying work, enhancing efficiency, and boosting productivity.
Since then, forward thinking business leaders have ridden the wave, incorporating this impressive technology into their operations.
In fact, according to a McKinsey survey, 40% of respondents say their organizations are planning to increase their investment in AI, underscoring the increasing demand for AI.
AI and machine learning have grown to become integral parts of SaaS offerings. Providing this feature for your customers empowers them to drive operational efficiency, enhance product functionality, and boost customer satisfaction.
For instance, CRM solutions like Hubspot and Glassix provide conversational AI paired with ML to help businesses automate redundant and time consuming tasks. It allows them to save time and operational costs, enabling their staff to focus on important tasks like customer support.
Similarly, your business can leverage this trend in 2024 to make data-powered marketing automations.
ML and AI can spot trends and patterns helping you to improve your promotions and marketing.
Additionally, you can predict customer behavior and demands allowing you to make appropriate adjustments and stay ahead of your competitors.
We have seen how revolutionary AI is and therefore providing this tool to your SaaS consumers helps them solve their problems, leading to enhanced customer satisfaction, and of course more revenue.
2. Advancements in Document Scanning Technology
How do you manage your business documents?
Like other aspects of most businesses, document management has also been digitized and continues to evolve with more innovations.
Here is the thing: with growing customer demands and large volumes of documents, manual verification and data entry is just not it.
So what is the solution? Enter document scanning technology.
It has made the dream of an entirely paperless office possible, enabling businesses like yours to scan paper documents and create electronic copies of them.
At the top of the list of benefits is time and cost savings.
Time saving doesn’t seem much on the surface until you look at the implications of manual handling of paper documents. For starters, you are at risk of errors and security breaches that can be expensive.
Actually, Study by Great Expectations found that 91% percent of data professionals admit that data quality issues affect company performance, highlighting the importance of accurate document scanning.
OCR and smart document scan are among popular document scanning technology revolutionizing how we handle paper documents.
The latter, for instance, can detect text and convert it into PDFS, identify crucial information such as dates, and can even compress large files for easy sharing and storing.
Optical Character Recognition on the other hand recognizes text from scanned documents and converts it into a machine readable text format.
When powered by AI, these tools are even more powerful, simplifying how we capture, record, and store information.
Simply put, document scanning technology takes manual labor out of the equation, freeing your staff from manually studying each document to determine its contents and manually enter data into a database.
3. Rising Need of Digital Marketing Experts
Some things are better left to the experts.
The increase in demand for software as a service in 2024 has also brought about a surge of SaaS entrepreneurs looking to solve consumer problems and make money.
This means high competition.
And while competition is great to ensure quality standards and innovation, it comes with its fair share of challenges—standing out in a crowded industry among others.
In fact, the global SaaS market size is expected to reach USD 1,228.87 billion by 2032, growing at a CAGR of 18.4%, indicating a massive growth that is likely to stiffen competition in this sector.
Involving digital marketing experts has become a popular SaaS trend in 2024, enabling business leaders to remain competitive and secure a place for them among top players in the industry.
Hiring an SEO agency, for instance, can help your business develop and execute SEO effective strategies to help you improve your online presence.
In addition to that, they conduct market research, keyword research, and assessment of your sites to identify bottlenecks and ways to funnel more traffic that includes potential clients.
Surprisingly, investing in the best SaaS SEO agency to refine your strategies, may be more cost-effective than doing it on your own.
Well, upfront costs may be high but the long term benefits are worth the investment.
For instance, optimizing your website will continue to improve your brand and add value for years and years.
Think of such an investment as an opportunity to free up valuable time and resources to focus on your core competencies, like developing your software or increasing productivity in your day to day operations.
4. The Rise of Edge Computing
Edge computing can improve performance and speed.
It is not exactly a new concept, as more IT businesses have been expanding beyond data centers to refine how they access data.
In fact, Gartner predicts that three-quarters of enterprise-generated data will be created and processed at the edge by 2025, underscoring the growth of edge computing and its benefits to businesses.
We've already seen and experienced the benefits of caching, one of edge computing applications that enables us to access information much quicker. With caching data is stored in temporary files for easy access.
Simply put, edge computing is a distributed computing model that places core functionalities such as data storage, computing, and data analysis closer to the source.
How can this benefit your SaaS business?
Imagine being physically closer to servers than ever and your data being processed near you. This means that the distance your data has to travel is reduced leading to faster response times.
It is worth noting that subscription based businesses like SaaS stand to benefit more. Firstly, you can provide continuous updates, security enhancements, and new functionalities delivered directly to edge devices.
And because scalability is a critical aspect of any business, riding on this SaaS trend in 2024 gives you the power to quickly and effectively respond to sudden growth without having to invest in expensive hardware.
However, reduced latency is just the tip of the iceberg. Other benefits include quick insight processing ensuring intelligence is put where it is needed.
Additionally, without the need for sending all data to the cloud or a centralized data center, you can reduce network congestion while reducing associated costs.
You will be winning on nearly all fronts.
5. Enhanced Cybersecurity Measures
Security is critical for SaaS businesses.
With security threats at an all time high, Saas businesses have no option to tighten their cybersecurity measures if they want to safeguard their reputation and build customer trust.
Recent years have experienced an increase in cybercrimes in the form of phishing attacks, deep fakes, and cloud targeting, threatening to burn businesses to the ground.
Actually, according to ITRC Annual Data Breach Report, the number of data compromises in 2023 are at an extreme high having increased by 78% since 2022, highlighting the need for security compliance and strong measures.
Well, these overwhelming statistics justify why enhanced cybersecurity measures are among top SaaS trends in 2024. SaaS consumers prioritize their security and would want to partner with businesses that share the same priority.
Therefore, it is essential now more than ever to take data security with the seriousness it requires. Even so, regulations such as NIS-2 (Network and Information Systems Directive 2) now require all SaaS companies to adopt stringent cybersecurity measures.
This is aimed at ensuring enhanced overall security posture of digital services.
An obvious but key strategy to enhance cybersecurity is implementing multifactor authentication to restrict data only to authorized personnel.
This zero-trust security architecture requires users to verify their identity at every stage to reduce risk of data breaches.mOther measures you can implement include regular security audits, data encryption, and advanced threat detection and response.
It is worth noting that their synergy provides a more holistic approach to security, enabling your SaaS business to boost customer trust.
Conclusion
Do you see how you can enhance your SaaS business?
The SaaS industry in 2024 is rapidly evolving and characterized by a priority of meeting clients demands.
In fact, a survey by Khoros found that 65% of customers would change to a different brand because of a poor experience, emphasizing the need to adopt new strategies to meet increasing demands.
A range of trends continue to shape the future of this industry AI and advancement in document scanning technology to the rising importance of digital marketing experts.
Leveraging these SaaS trends in 2024 can boost your business’s efficiency and performance, empowering you to stand out from the crowded market.
