As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to escalate across the globe, businesses across industries are finding increasingly innovative ways to stay afloat—some more successfully than others.
Major industries including transportation, insurance, and the energy sector are suffering the biggest hit. On the contrary, software & services, healthcare equipment, and food & staples retail are among the top-performing industries.
Here we look more in detail at the software and B2B SaaS sectors and how they’re coping in response to the pandemic.
Software vendors
In the midst of the pandemic, the software and subscription industries have shown a great deal of resilience.
G2 released an interesting chart of the fastest growing software categories during this pandemic. It shows that audio and video conferencing, telemedicine and virtual education rank the highest. That makes complete sense since businesses are trying to shift their operations online.
Source: G2 Crowd
Subscription businesses
A recent report from Zuora shows that 53.3% of software-driven subscription providers haven’t seen any notable impact to their customer acquisition rates. Moreover, a healthy 22.5% of brands within the sector are reaping the rewards of an accelerated subscriber growth rate. The report points out that subscription revenues will be growing 5x faster than S&P 500 Industry benchmarks.
While subscription services are on the rise, in addition to providers in the eLearning sector, consumer IoT and sports-based services are slowing down, significantly.
Here, we can't ignore the risk of an economic crises that will probably hit us hard during and after the peak of the pandemic. Subscription businesses will probably face higher churn rates as people will be in cost-saving mood.
In these uncertain, isolated times, we need digital technology to remain connected, informed, and entertained. As such, software and subscription service providers that offer a seamless user experience (UX), a rich content library, and well-thought pricing models and strong focus on customer retention will be winning in the current climate.
B2B SaaS providers
As you can see from the chart from ProfitWell, B2B SaaS growth rates have slowed down during the pandemic. Growth has shown signs of slowing down, but not in any significant way.
Source: ProfitWell
There is still some demand for providers in this sector at present, but when businesses have realigned their business models in response to the crisis, B2B SaaS momentum may well pick up again.
We are living in challenging times. There’s no set solution to navigating your way through the COVID-19 pandemic with success, but what is comforting to know is that the video and subscription business is among the most resilient out there.
Right now, there is everything to play for—and if you make the right strategic moves now, you’re likely to come out of the other side of the pandemic fighting.
To keep in touch with innovative streaming and subscription management approaches, go to our COVID page.
