Get insights from SaaS Industry Experts
What is the future of SaaS? Nobody knows for sure, and its definitely hard to predict. We do know however that the SaaS industry is built and managed by some of our planet’s greatest minds, so the future of SaaS promises to be an inspiring one.
Our team from Stax Bill attended the latest SaaS North Conference which brought leading companies to Canada’s National Capital to talk all that is SaaS.
With so many industry leaders and visionaries together in one room, there is no doubt there would be some great conversation. So we couldn’t resist the opportunity to pick their brains to find out what they think the future holds for the SaaS industry.
Here are some of the many interesting insights:
“SaaS brings new approaches to the traditional business model. It is the future methodology that introduces better approaches to customer acquisition, user onboarding and customer satisfaction.”
– Leo Lax, Executive Managing Director, L-SPARK
“The future of SaaS will be defined by doing more with less. Today, technology is proactive but tomorrow technology will be predictive. Interestingly, 90% of all data has been generated in the past two years. I like to think about artificial intelligence and machine learning, not as a product, but as electricity that will power future tech.”
– Chris Makkreel, Head of Technology, Salesforce
“We are seeing more and more SaaS business models replacing traditional business models. This subscription-based service delivery model is expected to stabilize the market in the long-term.
Uber is an example of how a subscription-based service has disrupted a traditional business model as it provides an alternative to taxi services. We are also seeing financial technology companies disrupting the traditional banking model.
Another change is that on premise software will move to cloud which will benefit the world with more agile and flexible software solutions.”
– Michael Gregoris, Digital Marketing Manager, Roadmunk
“In the future, the direction of SaaS will largely depend on buyer and consumer choice. Businesses are taking note of buyer behaviour and switching to subscription-based business models.
From a company perspective, the goal is to provide many different applications to satisfy consumer needs and buying behaviors.
The future will also depend on creating an ecosystem that will allow businesses to integrate into a partnership-driven community.
The integrator will be the winner.”
– Grant Goodwin, President, AllRoads
“The future of SaaS is about the ability to strategically integrate with others and to create meaningful partnerships. Interconnectibility is key to being successful. This is a real challenge and a great opportunity at the same time.
It is also an opportunity for smaller, more agile companies to compete with the big guys – addressing a single challenge with one solution rather than being everything to everyone.”
– Greg Evans, VP Strategic Partnership, PageCloud
“We believe with an enabled SaaS future we have better access to funding which will allow for greater integration.
Bigger companies will invest in small teams and build new highly flexible products.
In the health and wellness sector, the largest demographic – the babyboomers – are about to retire. SaaS will play a major role in providing solutions to make retirement easier and more comfortable for our fellow senior citizens.
In addition, with the current immigration reforms, we will be able to access corporate talent from other countries. This will also contribute to supporting our aging population.”
-Team, Optimity
“SaaS is a powerful business model because it has the ability to scale, better predict revenue and operate at low cost.
All these factors make SaaS very attractive and lucrative for the investment community because of the high return potential.
The challenge, especially in the B2B space, is finding a way to effectively generate demand and market your product to the mass audience. In other words, make SaaS sexy.”
– Melissa Durrell, President, Durrell Communication PR Agency
“This is an incredibly exciting time for Canadian tech. SaaS has the potential to change the game with it’s disruptive business model.
This is a major shift for, not only startups, but also Fortune 500 companies.”
– Sarah Burt, Associate Director, Marketing and Nicole Coviello, Research Director, Lazaridis
“The market transformation towards SaaS and cloud is inevitable. There is great demand for SaaS and an incredible potential for growth.
One of the future benefits is cost savings. Software will no longer be a capital expense, it will be counted as an operating expense.
I encourage executive leaders to assess what they have, consider data an asset, become compliant and transfer their information to the cloud.”
– Team Ottawa, Stratford Managers
“In the past, tech companies were hardware-centric, building the “whole package” themselves. Hardware products would represent a version which would need to be replaced in the future eg. from 1.0 to 2.0 to 3.0.
With the revolution of SaaS, the tech approach is shifting. Software versions get updated automatically over the cloud providing increased value to customers with no complicated installation or onboarding practices.”
Christopher Beaudoin, General Manager, SMB, SoLink
“SaaS creates an exciting environment where it is possible to go from business idea to execution very fast. Many companies are adopting a lean startup mentality where a small team is dedicated to build a minimum valuable product (MVP) and then continue to build out features to land and expand within their targeted customer base.
As a result of this shift, we will see more startups, more conferences, greater interest from the investor community and more affordable technology for the general population.”
– Susan Richards, Managing Partner, Numbercruncher
“All service-based businesses will eventually move to SaaS and cloud.
From an economic development perspective, developed countries tend to have more service industries than less developed countries. As our society develops, worker populations shift away from industries such as manufacturing and towards service-related industries and careers.
From an efficiency perspective, businesses benefit in many ways from the SaaS model e.g. lower cost and system flexibility.”
– Michael Lenhardt, Senior Account Executive, CareWorx
“SaaS provides an opportunity to re-think how an existing business operates and more importantly it allows companies to scale very quickly. SaaS enables offshore companies to get into the game at a lower cost.
The trend is that SaaS businesses are adding more products to their portfolio to accelerate monetization. We are also seeing a shift in pricing. Compared to the traditional pricing where companies charge per unit, SaaS pricing will a offer pay-per-use model, which will be more appealing and accessible to consumers.”
Andriy Azarov, CEO, Nectar Desk
“Corporations will be able to operate in the world market without having to open offices in multiple cities. The benefit of having lower overhead will result in quality and more user-centric products.
With SaaS, we will see evolving pockets of tech powerhouses in places like Ottawa, and not just Silicon Valley or New York.”
– Mychelle Mollot, CMO, Klipfolio
“SaaS is still an early stage marketplace. Only 35% of business in North America offer their products and services via a subscription SaaS billing – recurring revenue model.
In the future, companies will incorporate artificial intelligence and machine learning within their products. This coupled with cloud agility and open API will define the market winners.
The future of SaaS will dramatically change how we do business. We are seeing buyer behaviors change as the subscription economy is slowly replacing the traditional business model. Buyers are choosing subscription services over outright purchases.”
– Tyler Eyamie, Founder, Stax Bill
“The timing for SaaS is absolutely right and we will see a lot of amazing things happening in the coming years.
In future, we will see a big transition towards simplicity. The importance of seamless integration, overall speed and agility of deployment will be the defining differentiators for industry winners.”
– Richard D. McBee, President and CEO, Mitel
