TM

BLISSFULLY

SaaS Trends 2020

SaaS Apps Reign Supreme Across Departments, 

but Waste is Growing

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Table of Contents

📖 INTRODUCTION: ABOUT THIS REPORT

About the Cohort of Companies

📈 OVERALL TRENDS IN SAAS SPEND AND USAGE

🤝 THE SAAS GRAPH: A BETTER WAY TO UNDERSTAND THE SAAS DATA MODEL

🗑 SAAS WASTE: NEARLY DOUBLING YEAR OVER YEAR

🌎 ALL DEPARTMENTS RUN ON SAAS

SaaS Decentralization Continues

Some Departments are More Reliant on SaaS than Others
💼 Business Ops
🤝 Sales
😃 Customer Support
💻 Engineering
📣 Marketing
* DevOps
+ Product
🔒 IT & Security
⚖ HR
💵 Finance
Additional takeaways for departments

⛏ CATEGORY DEEP DIVES

☁ Public Cloud
🖼 Design Apps

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🔬 BREAKING DOWN THE TOP 100 APPS

By location
By funding

HOW SMALL BUSINESS, MID-MARKET, AND ENTERPRISE DIFFER

🔑 KEY TAKEAWAYS FOR SAAS ECOSYSTEM STAKEHOLDERS

ABOUT BLISSFULLY


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📖 Introduction: About this Report

At Blissfully, we’re focused on the ways companies use software-as-a-service
(SaaS) to power business productivity, growth, and success. Each year, we release
Blissfully SaaS Trends Reports based on proprietary data from thousands of
companies around the world. 

SaaS is now the gold standard for businesses, from old-school accounting firms to
bleeding-edge artificial intelligence startups, and from small family-owned shops to
large multinational corporations. The usage of and demand for SaaS products has
grown dramatically over the years, and we see this trend continuing in 2020 and
beyond. 

Our 2019 annual report uncovered two key trends: that app turnover was higher
than employee turnover, with 39 percent of typical mid-size companies swapping
apps between 2017-2018; and that the selection of SaaS apps was increasingly
decentralized across departments.

Our 2020 annual report analyzes over 10 years of SaaS spend and usage data from
over 1,000 companies. We found that app usage across companies of all sizes is up
around 30 percent year over year from 2018 to 2019. We also uncovered that the
number of apps being used is up by around 30 percent. As app usage increases, so
too has waste — duplicate subscriptions have increased by 80 percent, while
orphaned app subscriptions are up almost 100% across companies of all sizes.
These numbers indicate not only that SaaS continues to proliferate, but that proper
SaaS management is still lagging and badly needed.

Read on to dive deeper into our key findings for 2020, an inside look at how small,
medium, and large organizations are using SaaS apps, and core takeaways for SaaS
builders, consumers, and investors to consider this year. 

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About the Cohort of Companies

Blissfully tracks billions of dollars in SaaS spend across thousands of companies,

from small businesses to large enterprises.

Blissfully’s users tend to be tech-forward, SaaS-first companies and early adopters,

but we believe nearly all companies will look like this within the next five to 10
years. In fact, according to our 2019 compliance report, in 2019, 68% of
organizations said they are mostly or all SaaS-driven at this point, with nearly 23%
saying they operate solely using SaaS apps today.

The companies in this year’s report represent a sampling of Blissfully’s customers

across three different organization sizes: 

• Small Business (AKA SMB), defined as a company with 1-100 employees

• Mid-Market (AKA MM), defined as a company with 101-1000 employees, and 
• Enterprise, defined as having 1,000+ employees

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📈 Overall Trends in SaaS Spend 


and Usage
Compared to 2018, Blissfully found that overall spend per company on SaaS
products is up 50%, which is impressive. However, it’s also worth noting that the
growth rate appears to be slowing. This is not too surprising, given that the cohort
represented here—early adopters of Blissfully—is likely maturing in their SaaS
adoption and solidifying how they use it to run their businesses. 

However, we think there’s still a lot of room for growth outside of these early
adopters as well. As a result, we do expect that all companies will eventually be as
invested in SaaS as this early adopter cohort.

Diving deeper, the unique number of apps in usage per company is up about 30%
year over year, with companies averaging 137 in 2019 vs. 2018. The average small
business uses 102 different apps, while each mid-market business uses an average
of 137 apps. Enterprises have, on average, 288 different SaaS apps in usage across
their businesses. 




Interestingly, spending growth is outpacing the number of unique apps,

suggesting that companies are spending more with their existing vendors—adding
more users, upgrading features, tacking on service plans, etc. This makes sense as
businesses both deepen their internal usage of SaaS and vendors raise prices over
time. 

We suspect this price increase is also due to consolidation in vendors (for example,
when one vendor buys another), which causes spending on a specific vendor to go
up, while reducing the total number of vendors in use. There’s a lot of M&A going
on in the world of SaaS. 

Increased spending on SaaS is further emphasized by the churn rate: Companies

are churning through more than 30% of their apps every year at this point in time.
Over time, many apps offer more and more features, whether through acquisitions
or internal expansion. This includes both big platforms like SalesForce and Hubspot
and smaller apps like Notion that offer enough flexibility in the workflow that they
may eat into market share for things like Google Docs, wikis, Kanban boards, and
project management tools. 

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As Jim Barksdale has said, "There are two ways to make money in business: You
can unbundle, or you can bundle.”

The pendulum may be swinging back for SaaS early adopters, as they adopt more
new products making their way to market, increasing the sheer number of apps in
use. But we expect plenty of consolidation going forward, too. 



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🤝 The SaaS Graph: A Better Way to

Understand the SaaS Data Model
When looking at the number of SaaS apps per company, the numbers seem
manageable. For example, a mid-market company (101-999 employees) uses 185
apps, while an enterprise company (1,000+ employees) uses 288. But when you
consider app-to-person connections, that number expands greatly—to 4,406 for
mid-market and 21,580
enterprise companies,
respectively. 

It’s clear that the bigger a

company becomes, the
more complex app-to-
person connections
become.

The SaaS Graph shows the

ways in which app-to-
person connections flow
and grow across
organizations. Every line
on the graph represents
the relationship between
one employee and one
SaaS app.

Each of these app-to-

person relationships
needs to be carefully and
securely managed. Every
single instance that an
employee signs up for or
1 Person ! App
CONNECTION

uses an app—whether it’s Types of Connec-ons

paid or free—introduces
the possibility of: Access Privacy Data Billing License Admin Contract
Sharing Recipient Owner

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• weak passwords
• loose security settings
• account sharing
• other security risks.

It also means that when employees leave an organization, revoking email access
and deactivating RFID badges is just the beginning of the close-out process; each
app that employee logged into needs to have that user deactivated, too. Companies
need to make sure they aren’t leaving the door open for a security breach, and they
also need to ensure they’re not wasting money on empty seats.

Additionally, companies operate in an increasingly-regulated landscape—globally,

nationally, and regionally. Whether it’s national regulations like SOC 2, 
international regulations like GDPR or local regulations like CCPA, companies of all
sizes are beholden to new requirements around data privacy. Poorly-managed SaaS
apps can quickly become a vector for legal, reputational, and/or security risks. 

To mitigate risk, companies need to track app-to-user connections, understand

how those connections relate to data, and create proper security protocols.

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🗑 SaaS Waste: Nearly Doubling 


Year over Year

Paid apps add up quickly—and with so many apps available, it’s easier than ever to
waste money on duplicate or orphaned apps. That’s especially true if companies
grow fast and add SaaS apps without a strategic plan, a set of protocols for app
sign-ups, or visibility into overlap between apps. 

For example, an employee might sign up and pay for an app their company already
uses, duplicating the subscription and payment. Or, in the event an employee who
owned a certain app leaves the company, a company might forget to reassign
ownership of the app—resulting in an orphaned subscription that no one is
accountable for.

Our 2020 report data shows that waste on both duplicate and orphaned apps is
growing year over year. This year’s report indicates that duplicate app
subscriptions increased by 80 percent from 2018 to 2019. The average number of
duplicate apps per company is 3.6 . Enterprise companies have the highest average
number of duplicate apps at 7.6, while small businesses show the least redundancy
with just 2.3 duplicates on average.

Similarly, orphaned app subscriptions are up almost 100% across companies of all
sizes. This is up from 1.4 apps in our 2019 report to 2.6 in our 2020 report.
Enterprise companies, again, have the highest number of orphaned subscriptions at
7.1, while mid-market companies follow at 4.3 and small businesses at 1.4.

Duplicate and orphaned SaaS app subscriptions are not only costly, but they also
create security risks. It’s true that mistakes like these crop up when companies are
moving fast, but we shouldn’t necessarily accept wasted spend as an inevitable
consequence. In 2020, companies large and small should analyze their app usage,
ensure they have an overarching strategy around which apps are used for what
tasks, and enforce policies around employee app usage during and after their
tenure.

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🔬 Breaking Down the Top 100 Apps

When it comes to where these apps are being built, SaaS is even more
concentrated in the U.S. than tech as a larger category. We took a deeper dive,
looking at the most common apps by spend and market share, and breaking them
down by different categories. 

By location
As the graph illustrates, almost two-thirds of the top 100 apps located in the U.S.
are headquartered in Silicon Valley, CA, with about 80% of all top 100 SaaS apps
located in the U.S. vs. other locations globally. This isn’t overly surprising, although
the concentration is even higher than many realize.

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By Market vs. Spend Share

Looking at the graph below, we can see the top 100 apps broken down by market
share vs. spend share. We’ve broken it down into four quadrants, and tend to think
of them as:
• Top-left - High Potential
• Top-right - Leaders
• Bottom-right - Mature
• Bottom-left - New entrants and legacy products

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By funding

The graph below shows the amount of funding the top 100 SaaS apps have received
to date. Nearly half of the top 100 apps are products from public companies (so the
funding amounts look small on the graph, because they are not funded by VCs or
other traditional private arrangements), while the other half are built by private
companies. In other words, there is still a lot of room for private investors to
participate in rounds of successful SaaS companies that have a lot of room for
growth. On average, private funding for the top 100 SaaS apps is more than $100
million. 

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SaaS Spending by Department

S&M
Sales
Marketing
Customer Support

R&D
Product
Engineering
Dev Ops

G&A
IT & Security
HR
Finance
Business Ops
2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019

SaaS Spending by Department

100%
S&M
Sales
Marketing
75% Customer Support

R&D
Product
50% Engineering
Dev Ops

G&A
25% IT & Security
HR
Finance
Business Ops
0%
2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019

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🌎 ALL Departments Run on SaaS

SaaS Decentralization Continues

In an earlier era of business, centralized IT departments selected technology for

the whole organization. Those days are long gone, and we have previously written
about the trend towards Collaborative IT. 

SaaS apps have been a great equalizer in tech access within companies. People
outside of IT are now able to select and adopt the products they want and need.
Employees and departments love being able to move quickly, find what works best
for them, and feel empowered to do their best work. On the flip side, this can
create a headache for IT departments, who have lost centralized control over what
technology is being used, and who may be facing “shadow IT” issues.

Regardless, we see the trend of decentralized SaaS continuing in 2020. For mid-
market companies, the number of billing owners per company has increased from
12 in 2019 to 21 in our 2020 report, demonstrating that more and more people—
often outside the IT department—are involved in selecting and managing SaaS
apps.

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Some SaaS Categories are Growing Faster than Others

Going hand-in-hand with SaaS decentralization is the widespread use of apps

across all departments. If you look at any modern organization, every department
uses SaaS products extensively. However, some departments are growing faster
than others when it comes to app use. 

The number of apps in usage has grown overall but at different rates. Some of the
more mature categories, like sales, which was an early entrant into SaaS with
SalesForce and CRM in general, is the slowest growing app category. On the other
extreme is IT & Security apps, which are growing at nearly 100% over the last two
years. This is not too surprising as security moves to the cloud and creates new use
cases, plus the explosion in privacy regulation by GDPR, CCPA, and others, creating
new security and compliance needs. 

Customer Support and HR continue their fast growth as well, likely as more legacy
apps move to the cloud and SaaS, especially in the HR world.

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💼 Business Ops

Across SMBs to enterprise organizations, G Suite and Slack are the top SaaS apps
in usage for business operations, both in terms of market share and spending.
These are relatively mature players in the field, and will continue to dominate.
Zoom, Calendly and Looker are leaders in the
s - By Market Share Top Business Ops Apps Business Operations department, though
Mid Market Enterprise Rank Market Share Spend Share
they are less entrenched than G Suite and
Slack. We see Adobe, Box, and PandaDocs,
1
among others, with strong potential to make
2 gains moving forward.
3
Business Ops
4

8
Growth

10

11

12

13

14 Market Share

15

16

17

18

19

20

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🤝 Sales

In Sales, SalesForce and Hubspot are the most popular SaaS apps, both in terms of
usage and spending. Hubspot is the most popular SaaS product for small
businesses, but SalesForce is preferred across mid-
Top Sales Apps market and enterprise organizations. LeanData,
Rank Market Share Spend Share
DiscoverOrg and others, while not as highly-ranked,
1
are mature and hold their place in the pack. We see
potential growth for Yesware and SalesForce.
2

3 Sales
4

8
Growth
9

10

11

12

13

14
Market Share
15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

24

T-25

T-25

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😃 Customer Support

SaaS app popularity in Customer Support departments varies depending on the

company’s size. Atlassian is popular on either end of the spectrum, winning the
small business and enterprise tiers, while
Top Customer Support Apps mid-market companies prefer Zendesk.
While Atlassian is the top app overall for
Rank Market Share Spend Share
market share, it comes in third place for share
1 of spending — when it comes to money on the
2
table, Zendesk occupies the top spot. We see
Zendesk, Intercom, and others in the upper-
3 right quadrant as leaders, and Qualtrics and
Solvy as mature and established players.
4
Atlassian has the most potential to grow in
5 Customer Support departments.
6
Customer Support
7

10
Growth

11

12

13

14

15

16 Market Share

17

18

19

20

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💻 Engineering

SaaS-forward Engineering departments have a clear preference — GitHub has the

largest share of the market. However, Twilio took the top spot for spending,
marking it out as a mature technology in our
analysis. SendGrid was in third place, both for
Top Engineering Apps
market and spending share in Engineering
Rank Market Share Spend Share departments. We see SendGrid, CircleCI, and
1 others as leaders, while IntelliJ Idea,
BrowserStack, and Docker have strong
2
potential to grow both market and spending
3 share.

4
Engineering
5

8
Growth

10

11

12

13

14 Market Share

15

16

17

18

19

20

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📣 Marketing

MailChimp, SEMrush, and Canva are the top three apps for market share, while
Marketo, Capterra and Clearbit have the
highest share of spending. Meltwater and
Top Marketing Apps
others are mature in the market, while
Rank Market Share Spend Share MixMax, Canva, Clearbit and others have high
potential.
1

3 Marketing
4

7 Growth

10

11

12
Market Share
13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

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* DevOps

PagerDuty, Sentry, and Namecheap are the top three SaaS apps for DevOps in
terms of market share, while DataDog,
CloudFlare and Sumo Logic dominate
Top Dev Ops Apps spending. We see Snowflake, MongoDB, and
Rank Market Share Spend Share others are mature in the DevOps
department. Namecheap, DigitalOcean and
1
Elastic have potential to grow.
2
Dev Ops
3

6
Growth
7

10

11
Market Share
12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

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+ Product

The top SaaS apps for market share in product management and development are
Typeform, Adobe Creative Cloud, and Sketch.
When it comes to share of spending, Adobe
Top Product Apps Creative Cloud takes the lead, followed by
Rank Market Share Spend Share Authenticom and FullStory. This makes
Adobe Creative Cloud the clear leader, while
1
players like Figma, Abstract, inVision, and
2 others have high potential.

3 Product and Design

7
Growth

10

11

12
Market Share

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

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🔒 IT & Security

Parallels is the top SaaS app in terms of market share for IT and Security
departments, which may be a reflection on the
Top IT & Security Apps Windows vs. Mac problem in organizations,
Rank Market Share Spend Share
with Parallels providing a solution. It is
followed by Solarwinds and KnowBe4 for
1 market share. However, in terms of spending
2
share, KnowBe4 comes in first place, followed
by Fleetsmith and Code42. In our analysis, we
3 see SolarWinds, Fleetsmith, and others as
leaders, while Cisco, OneTrust, Splunk, and
4
others have reached maturity. Players like
5 Code42 and Sequr have high potential for IT
and security usage.
6
IT and Security
7

10

11
Growth

12

13

14

15

16 Market Share

17

18

19

20

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⚖ HR

HR departments lean on LinkedIn, Gusto, and BambooHR, lifting those apps’

market share, but LinkedIn comes in third
place for spending share—HR juggernaut ADP
Top HR Apps is the top company for spending, followed by
Rank Market Share Spend Share Namely and then LinkedIn. We see Namely,
Freshworks and others as mature tools, while
1
LinkedIn, Gusto, and others are leaders.
2 TreeHouse, Workable, and Pingboard have
room to grow as high potential SaaS apps.
3
HR
4

5
35

6 33
32
33

30
29
7 27 27

25

8
Growth

9 19

16
15
10 14

11 11
10 10
11 9
8
7
6
5
12 3
4

13 Market Share

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

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💵 Finance

In the Finance department, two apps take the top two places for both spending and
market share: bill.com and Avalara. Recurly
comes in fifth place for both spending and
Top Finance Apps market share. Needless to say, Bill.com and
Rank Market Share Spend Share Avalara are the leaders in our analysis, but
QuickBooks is making its way toward this
1
category, too. Expensify is nudging toward
2 becoming a leader, while Xero, BareMetrics,
and Sift Science are high-potential apps
3
moving forward.
4
Finance
5

8
Growth

10

11

12

13
Market Share
14

15

16

17

18

19

20

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Additional Takeaways for Departments

As the graphs above show, there is variation between the popularity of apps versus
which apps see the most spend. Sometimes the most used SaaS app also garners
the most money spent, but in several cases above, the top-grossing app doesn’t
necessarily have the most market share. This is likely because certain apps cost
more than others, and companies use them to different extents.

While we do see consolidation in the world of SaaS, it’s also true that there’s room
for many different approaches to the problems that businesses face at varying
growth points, sizes and maturity levels. Our analysis showed this across
departments—in each category, there are a number of high-potential SaaS players
nipping on the heels of the established leaders.

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Small Business, Mid-Market, and

Enterprise
How SaaS Usage Grows Alongside Companies

It’s worth noting that, as companies get bigger, they tend to use more total apps.
However, they actually tend to use fewer unique apps per person. This may reflect
an increasing reliance on centralized IT and governance—as businesses grow, they
may tighten up various policies and procedures, and they have more room to hire IT
professionals in-house. Increased monitoring and centralization of SaaS
subscriptions determines what apps are available for use by employees. Let’s
examine the data in more detail. 

Apps per Company

300

200
Total Apps

100

0
1-100 101-1,000 1,000+

Company Size (Employees)

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It’s no surprise to see that there are more total SaaS apps in place and greater
overall spend on SaaS as companies grow. The average spend per company at each
size tier is the following:

Small Business: 5 Year Average SaaS Spend

$220,000

$165,000

$110,000

$55,000

$0
2015 2016 2017 2018 2019

Mid-Market: 5 Year Average SaaS Spend

$2,500,000

$2,000,000

$1,500,000

$1,000,000

$500,000

$0
2015 2016 2017 2018 2019

Enterprise: 5 Year Average SaaS Spend

$4,500,000

$3,000,000

$1,500,000

$0
2015 2016 2017 2018 2019

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As roles and tools get more specialized, employees tend to spend more time across
fewer tools, whereas earlier on in the maturity of a company, employees are likely
to be more versatile utility players. This explains the fluctuation in number of apps
per person vs. company size, which shows an inverse relation to the categories
explained above.

Apps per Employee

20

15
Apps

10

0
1-100 101-1,000 1,000+

Company Size (Employees)

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For this report, we define companies by size as small business, mid-market, or

enterprise. The profiles below are a snapshot of how these companies interact with
SaaS apps;

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🔑 Key Takeaways for SaaS Ecosystem

Stakeholders

SaaS Builders: The market is growing, but also maturing and

competitive

We’re still in the early innings of the SaaS market. We conducted a survey of IT
leaders which 25% said they were SaaS only. This number is projected to continue
to rise, likely approaching the vast majority of companies in the next  five to 10
years. 

That said, certain categories are maturing, with deep market penetration. These
tend to include the early categories, like public cloud providers and CRM and are
shown in the different growth rates by categories in the data above. 

In an increasingly crowded space, delivering value to consumers and positively

differentiating your brand matters a lot more. Luckily, companies are still very
willing to try new apps, especially when offered free versions. Our data shows that
companies use 3x more free than paid apps, so if your product benefits from
lightweight adoption and you can land and expand, think of a free tier like those
offered by Zoom or Slack. It’s important to think through what exactly should be
offered for free and when paid tier options should begin. Product usage data and
customer stories are valuable in helping you understand what parts of your
product are getting your customers in and what parts are keeping them there.
Knowing this can be good heuristics for which parts to leave free and which to
charge for. 

Finally, even though there are tons of apps, there’s still opportunity, especially in
areas that have been slower to move into SaaS, like IT, Security, Compliance, and
HR. These categories are seeing significant growth opportunities and will likely
continue to see new entrants to take advantage of this opportunity. 

Investors: Companies still need capital to get to scale

On the bright side, about half of the top 100 SaaS apps are privately funded. On the
other hand, those companies have raised on average over $100M dollars. We all
have seen that even though it’s easier and cheaper than ever to get a company off

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the ground, it still takes significant capital to build a significant, established

business. And therein lies the opportunity. As new companies push to be category
leaders, they will need private funding to make the transition. 

Additionally, we’re seeing opportunities for high growth in more niche markets and
categories as products get increasingly specialized. There’s really no limit to the
amount of niche markets that can be disrupted by software, and we expect to see a
lot more of this in the near future. 

Encouragingly, the other half of the top 100 SaaS apps are public companies,
deriving significant value from SaaS growth rates. These public companies will
likely continue to make acquisitions to strengthen their offerings and add
additional revenue streams.

In addition, we’ve noticed a great amount of new international investment

opportunities driven by two key data points. First, SaaS is even more concentrated
in the US than the broader tech ecosystem, across both public and private
companies. This, coupled with increasingly-regionalized privacy and compliance
requirements might create the opportunity for more localized SaaS vendors. 

SaaS Consumers: SaaS Management Still Lags—and Matters More

than Ever

SaaS solutions continue to arrive to answer the problems and questions that plague
businesses of all sizes. There’s no sign that software is going to slow down anytime
soon. The only question is how businesses will take advantage of this—or fall victim
to it. 

SaaS waste continues to grow as companies forget to cancel subscriptions or

create multiple subscriptions for the same app or category. We’re seeing an
average of 10 orphaned or duplicate apps at a mid-market business. This comes out
to about 5.4% of apps that are not being used to their full extent, amounting to an
average of $135,000 in wasted spend annually. 

The other significant challenge to managing a large number of SaaS apps is the
governance and compliance aspect. Our previous research shows that only 18% of
the top 1000 SaaS apps are SOC 2 compliant. Plus we have different regional
privacy regulations like GDPR and CCPA putting requirements on how companies
manage sensitive data. 

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And finally, we see that employees across every department are using more than
10 apps to get their job done. This means the coordination challenge of managing
people, apps, and the relationship between them (what we call the SaaS Graph)
gets exponentially more complex as companies grow and use more SaaS. 

Gaining the benefits of SaaS without the drawbacks—such as wasted spend and
security risks—means putting a real SaaS management strategy in place. A
management strategy can help ensure that SaaS is used responsibly, securely, and
cost-effectively across the business, no matter how you grow. Blissfully can help.

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About Blissfully
SaaS is taking over the business world, empowering teams to drive productivity
using apps they love. In fact, Cisco estimates that 75% of workloads will be SaaS-
only by 2021.

This rise of SaaS has distributed IT management across the entire organization,
creating an overall lack of visibility. While extensive tool sets exist to manage the
traditional IT stack—such as networking, infrastructure, and hardware -- there
hasn’t been an equivalent for the IT business operations (SaaS) stack.

Enter Blissfully. We were started to help companies continue to securely leverage

SaaS tools for increased business productivity. Our goal is to be a real-time source
of truth, giving teams visibility into their entire app ecosystem. We aim to simplify
and humanize IT operations so companies can focus on what they do best.

Blissfully gives you automated visibility into your SaaS apps, usage, and spend, along
with powerful workflows to manage change.

Request a Demo


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Blissfully SaaS Trends 2020

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