From department-level informatization to enterprise-level informatization and then to industry-level digitization, China’s digitalization development has gone through three stages in the past 30 to 40 years, and ushered in the fourth stage under the catalyst of the epidemic: ecological intellectualization.
Among them, SaaS cloud service is undoubtedly the representative product of ecological level intelligence. Since Salesforce creatively proposed this development model in 1999, the SaaS business model has been quite mature in the past 20 years with the transformation of traditional software vendors, the entry of cloud service providers, and the emergence of independent SaaS vendors.
So, what are the new development trends of the SaaS market in the ecological stage of intelligent development? What are the changes in market competition pattern, user scale and user demand? What new products are SaaS vendors launching?
Recently, Haibi Research Institute, China Software network and China Software Industry Association jointly launched the 2021 China SaaS Market Research Report after a multi-party survey. It is hoped that this report will provide an observation window for the industry and help manufacturers and users to explore the answers to these questions.
The fast-growing SaaS market is still in its growth phase
“China SaaS Market Research Report 2021” shows that the global SaaS market size in 2020 is usd 101.5 billion, down 1 percentage point compared with 2019. It is expected to continue to rise in 2021 and maintain a growth rate of about 16% in the next two years. This was mainly influenced by the global epidemic, with the global SaaS market showing negative growth for the first time.
The Chinese SaaS market is an exception. ** In 2020, China’s SaaS market continued to grow steadily, reaching 49.82 billion yuan in 2020, with a year-on-year growth of 31.6%, accounting for 37% of the total size of China’s public cloud market. ** At present, China’s SaaS market is still in the growth stage, with only 5% market exploitation rate. It is estimated that in the next five years, it will enter the mature stage at a compound growth rate of 26%, the market size is expected to reach 167.2 billion yuan, and the development rate will reach 16%.
At the same time, the number of SaaS manufacturers in China has reached 4500, the number of SaaS enterprise users is 9.15 million, and the number of SaaS paying enterprise users is 1.02 million. Among them, the number of SaaS vendors of operation and management business is up to 1392, accounting for 31%; Secondly, office communication tools SaaS vendors and vertical industry-specific SaaS vendors accounted for 21% and more than 900. In comparison, the number of SaaS vendors in data analysis service category and information security management category is slightly smaller, 255 and 197, accounting for 6% and 4% respectively.
Specific to the actual business scenarios, Haibi Research Institute divides SaaS applications into six categories: operation management business, office communication tools, business process outsourcing, data analysis services, information security services, and vertical industry-specific categories.
** Among them, the business management SaaS market share is the highest, accounting for 40%, the scale of 200.06 billion yuan; Followed by the vertical industry applications market share of 26%, the size also reached 13 billion; Office communication tools accounted for 14%, and the market size reached 6.9 billion yuan. ** Meanwhile, business management is in the mature stage, office communication tools, vertical industry specific, business process outsourcing and data analysis services are in the growth stage of the industry development cycle, and information security management is in the initiation stage.
Different from the Internet era, the technology maturity gap between China’s SaaS market and the global leading market is basically the same, with a difference of only 0.22. End users think that the technology level of China’s SaaS products is only 0.06 lower than that of the world, and manufacturers think that it is 0.38 lower than that of the world. End users generally have strong confidence in the technical level of SaaS products in China.
Yonyou has become a big winner in the SaaS market
In order to set a benchmark and build the influence of the supply side, the event also selected a number of outstanding SaaS manufacturers, products and solutions from the dimensions of enterprise scale, personnel scale, customer number, technological advancement, and service reputation to help the healthy development of the industry.
YonSuite won the Top Prize of 2021 China Enterprise SaaS Service Vendor; Yonyou HR Cloud won the 2021 China HR SaaS Excellent Product Award. At the same time, in the overall competition pattern analysis quadrant of SaaS vendors, Yonyou, Oracle, Dingding and other stars in the quadrant; Yonyou YonSuite, YonBuilder and Yonspace were selected as recommended vendors in the business management category (internal management).
According to Haibi Research Institute, Yonyou has been focusing on the enterprise service market for 33 years, and is the leading manufacturer of digitalized services and home-made replacement of software for Chinese enterprises. Yonyou has obvious advantages in intelligent marketing, HR SaaS, fiscal and tax management, production management and other fields:
One is to have a complete and comprehensive collaborative office services, process driven enterprise administrative business;
Second, support multiple organizations, archive group management and control, standardize accounting, unify financial policies, rely on social platforms to interact, share and spread, and realize sales transformation through rights and interests incentive;
The third is to support the digital modeling of manufacturing enterprises’ factories, support the setting of multiple factories, which can facilitate the building of bill of materials, multi-level display and maintenance, etc.
Fourthly, YonSuite and YonBIP are advanced in technology. YonSuite and YonBIP, in accordance with the idea of openness and ecology, adopt new architectures such as cloud native, micro-service, Centralization and separation of data and use, together with IUAP platform and YonBuilder low-code development platform, to facilitate ISV partners and enterprises to develop, launch and expand applications quickly.
“SaaS+PaaS+ ecology”, “application + training + certification”, leading the development of cloud services
Indeed, yonyou is leading the development of cloud services in China through the layout of cloud services in these years, combined with the 2021 China SaaS Market Research Report. The first is the focus on growth companies. The report shows that: in 2020, growing enterprises have accounted for 66% of SaaS users, is an important customer base in the SaaS market, SaaS manufacturers should pay attention to the business layout and development of growing enterprises.
YonSuite is exactly the business innovation platform launched by Yonyou for growing enterprises in the era of digital intelligence. Based on the cloud native architecture, YonSuite can provide growing enterprises with integrated services including marketing, manufacturing, procurement, finance, tax, human resources, office and platform.
** Second is the layout for low-code platforms. ** According to the report, 50% of non-IT departments put forward purchase requirements for SaaS products, which indicates that IT departments are no longer the main source of demand for SaaS products. From the perspective of product development demand initiating departments, development, operation and management departments initiated the most demands. It can be seen that the emergence of low code has become an important trend for business personnel to participate in product development.
YonBuilder is yonyou’s low-code platform for enterprise IT departments, business people, ISVs, and individual developers. IT provides visual development capabilities with no code and low code to help non-IT departments develop personalized applications quickly and seamlessly integrate with Yonyou’s core systems and data platforms.
** Third is the emphasis on the SaaS ecosystem. ** Report data show that 82% of SaaS manufacturers choose to join the ecosystem alliance, and only 18% of SaaS manufacturers do not join the SaaS ecosystem alliance, indicating the high willingness of manufacturers to join the ecosystem.
Ecological construction is also the focus of Yonyou cloud service in recent years. At the beginning of this year, Yonyou officially launched the promotion plan for ISV partners. Recently, Yonyou launched the enterprise digital intelligence learning certification community “Skyscraper” to build a new “application + training + certification” cloud ecological service model.
Finally, there is the trinity of SaaS+PaaS+ ecology. The report believes that mobile and PaaS are important trends in the future development of SaaS technology routes, and SaaS vendors will also launch their own PaaS products and promote them in combination with SaaS products. This is exactly what Yonyou is offering:
YonSuite offers standardized SaaS services that enable enterprises to achieve 50% of their business innovation; Based on YonBuilder’s APaaS capability, Yonyou’s mature and large ecosystem can provide 30% of enterprise’s extended application needs for specific industries and scenarios. For the remaining 20 percent of personalized requirements, enterprises can also easily develop based on YonBuilder’s APaaS capability.
This means that yonyou has seized the initiative and will lead the development of cloud services in China, whether it is the current mature business management SaaS or the important development trend of future SaaS.