IT Teams

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9 Top SaaS Trends for 2024

Sreenidhe S.P

5th December, 2023

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SaaS has already proved to the whole world that it is here to stay. Companies prefer the SaaS model for the agility, scalability, flexibility, and convenience that it offers, especially in the current ongoing hybrid workforce. How this go-to model will transform in terms of innovation, pricing, or buying in 2022 is still a question for many IT leaders.

In the past two years, the pandemic has shaken the world to catastrophic proportions that have changed the working models of businesses as well as consumers. The increased usage of digital media followed by the exponential growth of technological advancements has glorified the new software delivery model "SaaS." 

Of course, it is not new. It has been there for a decade. But the fact that its growth has taken a spike just right after the pandemic shouldn't be neglected. 

The interesting thing about technology is that it never gets old. A new invention, innovation, or advancement keeps happening every day. This is true for SaaS as well. With new technological advancements, the SaaS model gets updated. 

In this blog, we will go through the new SaaS trends that are about to happen in 2024. Being aware of these trends will help you figure out the important software-related decisions that you need to make as an IT leader.

1. Machine Learning and AI Will Have a Major Impact on SaaS Offering

The OTT giant Netflix has apparently saved a billion dollars because of the machine learning algorithm for the combined effect of content recommendations and personalization. ML and AI will make Saas offerings more intelligent, which will help businesses have value through optimization, faster onboarding, and improved customer experience. 

For IT teams, it will help you in decision making and performing automated actions like employee onboarding and offboarding, software procurement, contract management, etc. This will not only save your time from recurring tasks but the work can also be done more efficiently than in a human-based system.

Similarly, the AI models will help pinpoint patterns in certain data, improving your experience and reducing the time it takes to find and use products.

2. Consumption-based Pricing Will Take a Bigger Picture

There will be a shift from flat pricing to consumption-based pricing in 2024. Businesses prefer the latter as it removes many barriers, reduces customer churn, and creates more value for the business. Since it is a win-win for both SaaS vendors and companies, this will be a prominent trend. 

An already prominent example is Slack, which uses a consumption-based pricing model. It has a fair billing policy that charges only for members who actively use the platform. If it finds that a previously active member becomes inactive, it automatically sends off a prorated credit to the organization.

By having a fair partnership with businesses, Slack says that it has helped create a more positive relationship that has helped the company become the most recognized communication platform for businesses.

In 2024, we can expect to see a rise in fair billing practices like the consumption-based pricing model, as it brings an equal value to the customers and the vendors, creating a strong relationship.

3. Employee Experience Will Be a Key Factor in Choosing Tech Tools

According to a survey by JAMF, 68% of employees have stated that technology choice makes them more productive, and of those who get to choose, 77 percent say they’re more likely to choose to work or stay at a company that offers device choice.

With this being said, businesses will start including this process in their organization as productivity is a key component that is expected from employees. 

A Quick Base report states that the IT leaders are managing these expectations by introducing a do-it-yourself problem solver that gives employees choice over their technology tools to complete a particular task. 

Even though organizations take so much time and effort to hire smart and talented professionals, it would be wasted if the employee can't give the productivity that is expected. Also, it doesn't make sense to hand over an outdated tool to tech-savvy new hires.

So, employers will essentially understand and start incorporating diverse decision-making that includes employees. 

4. IT Leaders Will Keep APIs in Mind While Procuring SaaS

APIs will play a key role in SaaS purchasing decisions this year. IT leaders will have APIs and integrations in mind while purchasing SaaS. The pandemic has made most businesses realize that being platform-agnostic may not help them achieve their goals as they used to. 

So, they need to move to the digital environment, where they can deliver personal processes like signatures and other paperwork. 

Tech leaders will start looking at what a particular SaaS tool can do to improve their efficiency, which includes what type of software they'll have access to and how well designed its tech stack is.

5. The Prominence of No-code Tools

For companies that don't have skilled developers or the budget to outsource IT support, no code tool is no short of a blessing. A Gartner study has found that companies have 40% of their employees from non-engineering backgrounds, and 80% of the programming tasks will be delivered without coding by the year 2024.

The rise in demand for no-code tools is basically due to the forced tech adaptation businesses had undergone during the pandemic. These no-code tools will help businesses adapt to the changing market shifts and sustain better. 

They are easy to build, and any technical customizations can be made within a few hours. They are also highly cost-efficient and flexible, where users can easily customize the group data structure. Most of these no-code tools support mobile apps, API integrations, spreadsheets, etc. 

6. Middle Buyer Strategy Expands

The business units will independently start procuring SaaS as software has grown more decentralized with SaaS. According to Gartner's research, 4 in 10 board of directors say that they're shifting the digital business budget to the line of business units. This is to grow the business faster, and this shift will change how CIOs procure and use SaaS tools across organizations. 

Line of business leaders can procure SaaS if the CIOs can come up with more influence-led organizations, like moving away from mandates to enabling businesses to buy securely. 

7. Growth of Micro SaaS Market

The Micro SaaS model offers one solution for a specific need. They are usually made for small teams, and their main focus is on profit and sustainability, and not expansion. During its entry stage, people thought this model of delivering one solution was too small to be a part of the market. But they have thrived and are becoming majorly adopted because, unlike SaaS, which offers plenty of solutions, micro SaaS provides one solution which is highly efficient, customizable, and cost-effective. 

You can invest in a good micro SaaS solution if it provides a solution better than what you have already been using. Many of the MicroSaaS solutions are add-ons to other SaaS solutions and are often used in conjunction with them, such as the Grammarly writing assistant tool for use in Microsoft Word or Google Docs.

8. More Vertical SaaS Firms Will Emerge

When SaaS companies emerged, they worked by solving one specific problem for multiple clients and industries. But, since industries like e-commerce have scaled, the needs have become vast, and they want software that could solve problems specific to their needs. 

So, as a result, we can see more SaaS offerings that will be targeted at the eCommerce industry. But this occurring is not unique to eCommerce. This is going on in almost every industry.

The benefit of deploying a SaaS that is tailored to the industry you work in is that it solves the problems and specific use cases of the industry that it supports. This, in turn, makes it easier to scale. A number of platforms like Veeva Systems have successfully scaled, and many more are expected to follow in 2024. 

9. Unbundling of SaaS 

Unbundling concept works on the mere assumption that not all companies use a software solution in the same way. Though SaaS tools come with long sets of exhaustive features, they can sometimes overwhelm smaller companies or even fail to address their specific needs. 

Instead of offering a long list of features (which can remain unused) to all customers, vendors will now unbundle them so that you can choose only the features (via modules) you need or want. This allows you to buy only the necessities and no longer need to feel beholden to a suite of apps.

Manage SaaS With Zluri

It is clear that SaaS will keep evolving in all forms this year. You need to ensure you have the necessary framework to manage the SaaS tools, or it might bring in unnecessary SaaS sprawl issues. 

In a study, we found out that the number of SaaS applications was four times more than anticipated by the IT leaders. In addition, the ease of implementation and the remote/hybrid workforce made signing up for SaaS apps easy, without IT's purview.

If you still are using spreadsheets or collecting invoices to manage SaaS apps and SaaS expenditure, then it is time to rethink. 

Zluri is a SaaS management software that helps you eliminate SaaS wastage, automate IT tasks and secure your SaaS ecosystem.

With IT decision-making becoming decentralized, a SaaS explosion has been happening in organizations. As a result, there has been a constant issue of over-spending, app-redundancy, and underutilization. 

Suppose yours is a bigger company with business units and more employees. In that case, you will be facing additional problems in the form of shadow IT that can push your company to severe security and compliance threats. Zluri has the solution for all these problems. 

Zluri offers control over your third-party SaaS application and helps you maintain security and compliance from a command center. 

It is best for the enterprise market with a company strength of 500-5000, but even companies with less than 500 employees can benefit from it. If your company has less than 50 employees, Zluri is entirely free.

Zluri: Key Features 

• Discovering your organization’s SaaS subscriptions: Zluri has the largest app library with over 120000+ applications. Zluri discovery engine uses five methods to discover all your apps with near 100% accuracy.

• Renewal Monitoring: With Zluri, you don't need to worry about surprise renewals. Zluri alerts about your upcoming renewals, giving you enough time to decide whether or not you need the app. You can decide that through the SaaS usage insights from Zluri.

• Applications Cost Optimization: Zluri helps you standardize your applications and eliminate budget wastage. Zluri traces your SaaS ecosystem and monitors, measures, and helps you take control of your SaaS spend. It also helps you find the hidden applications spend.

• Smooth Vendor Management: Zluri has an automated vendor management system with all the features needed to manage your SaaS stack. It maintains a SaaS system of record by integrating with your core business system, after which it prepares to maintain your vendor life cycle with your predefined workflows. 

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About the author

Sreenidhe S.P

Sreenidhe is a SaaS management expert and has a keen interest in ITAM and SAM practices. She is adept when it comes to SaaS Vendor Management and SaaS Spend management. Her knowledge of SaaS and SaaS management is self-thought and is based on a lot of reading. Before joining Zluri, Sreenidhe was working as a full-time journalist. She is also equally passionate about fashion and aspires to own a boutique someday.