Today it’s need to keep an eye on the newest trends in software development to do well and thrive. Software companies are always in motion, but it’s the trends that will shape your future. Watch out for these major developments to see if they have a lasting impact on how you do business today and tomorrow.
Collaboration Software
The number of full-time employees working from home is on the rise. This trend has been growing for years, but it’s only recently that many companies have found out what difficulties arise when everyone can’t get together in one place or use email as a means to communicate effectively between teams members.
Slack has quickly become king of mountain when it comes to team communication tools, with over 10 million users in just a few year times. However there’s still room for other players that don’t compete directly against them such as Zoom or Team Talk.
"Accessible Martech"
The trend of “accessible Martech” has been gaining momentum in recent years. One company that bucked this trend is Canva.
Canva is one of the most accessible and easy-to use Martech tools out there. You don’t need to be a graphic designer or have any product knowledge at all in order for you can create images that will look great on your blog posts, email newsletters and social media pages.
Of course we can’t forget the old school practice called “Martech.” But there’s an increasing number of startups taking on newer methods like customer experience (CX) strategy instead.
Vertical SaaS Products
The dirt cheap price of SaaS has made it popular among people who want to find a solution that fits their needs. But many are ditching one-size fits all products for microsolutions tailored specifically towards niche markets, which offer the opportunity for rapid growth in revenue as well.
Artificial intelligence
Artificial Intelligence is getting integrated into the software of all types, including many that you might now expect. That’s not to say your company needs a machine learning algorithm, but majority are expecting Artificial intelligence as an essential feature (especially in B2B).
More and more industries integrating artificial intelligence, for example: one company is using AI to predict when employees will quit based on how they interact with coworkers – while another uses it for personalized customer service responses.
Low-Code
Low-code platforms are quickly becoming the new coding standard for developing software. With no need to build apps from scratch, low code offers developers an easy way in which they can create their own app or website with little time investment on your part.
You can mostly use low-code platforms to build a lot of key features, ans if it’s needed you can manually code the rest. All depends entirely on what kind of developer skillset each individual has.
PaaS Platforms
Thanks to PaaS (“platform as a service”) platforms like AWS, startups can focus on what they do best: making awesome software.
In just 5 years since its launch in 2007, Amazon’s cloud computing arm has become one of the most sought after services available. I mostly thanks to largely due partaking companies’ ability not only host their applications but also provide other essential capabilities such search directories or traffic analytics tools.
Double Effort on Content and SEO
We know that it’s tough for pre-revenue SaaS companies to scale with. And the increasing numbers of these small business owners are tapping into content marketing and SEO in order get traffic or users without having any initial capital from investors. This makes them stand out amongst other competitors who rely heavily upon social media ads such as Facebook Ad campaigns which can be quite expensive depending on how much time you want to spend creating them.
The content marketing strategy has become a popular way for SaaS companies to reach their target audience. With Google’s organic CTRs still being quite high, this can be an affordable and effective method of advertising on the internet today.
To Fight Churn
SaaS companies have a very high churn rate because of the nature in which they operate. The most common tactics for improving customer retention include onboarding email sequences, “Concierge” support, tutorials on how to use new features or services, annual billing, improving the overall customer experience and etc.
But for majority of SaaS businesses it’s not enough, so the amount of solutions designed to combat churn significantly grow.
Employer Branding
SaaS companies in the Bay Area are taking a close look at their employer branding to attract top talent. Employer branding is an approach that companies can take make themselves look like great places work. It includes: Company’s core mission; Interesting benefits; Major media mentions; Revenue and user growth metrics; Team activities etc.
Many Silicon Valley SaaS CEOs have realized that they need more than just money when it comes on attracting developers and managers who want long term careers with them. So instead these business owners invest heavily into making sure employees feel valued.
Note-Taking Apps
When Evernote launched in 2008, it was an innovative way to take notes on your phone and see them later. It became the default note-taking app for hundreds of millions users around the world.
But now there are hundreds of apps vying over this space and each offering something unique. So, you’ve got lots of options when it comes to note-taking. There’s Google Keep and Apple Notes which are both free apps available on your phone or tablet – there’s also Microsoft OneNote if Word documents aren’t what float your boat.
And there are plenty of apps that improve the Evernote’s basic blueprint in some way. For example, Roam Research lets you take your research notes with ease by linking them together in one place. Markdown support makes it easy to formatting any text into an interesting article that can be published on Medium or elsewhere too-without having write everything from scratch every time. Lastly there’s Ulysses which offers goal tracking while also allowing direct publishing onto blogs such as this very website through its customizatability feature set.
Cross-Platform Organization Tools
With the growth of digitalization, companies are running into an increasingly common problem: data is often scattered in 100 different places. This can make it difficult to access information across an organization — a challenge that SaaS startups have started solving with new solutions.
Document management systems and digital asset management solutions are both important in helping teams access information more easily.The first group creates a single place for employees to find documents that are scattered across different cloud platforms, while the second serves as an easy – to manage library of visual design assets for marketing departments with tools like Adobe Creative Cloud or Sketchbooks Pro on Board.
iPaaS (Integration Platform as Services) is another type of product addressing the scattered data problem. Their goal isn’t to help users find documents and files. Instead it’s engineered with APIs that connect different pieces in one system so information can be accessed more easily by employees across departments or even outside organizations.
SaaS startups are increasingly focusing on login management as a problem that needs solving. Single sign-on software helps solve this by letting users sign in with sessions instead of having to remember passwords, while password databases store all your logins behind one master key – saving you time.