The real "Red Sea" of the Chinese market SaaS has not yet appeared

SaaS-based enterprise applications, fully capable of being called personal social products, efficiency tools, the common development of traditional enterprise software products, it seems that inadvertently, domestic SaaS-based enterprise applications have sprung up mushroomed companies . On the other hand, with the advent of mobile Internet and cloud computing, these SaaS-based enterprise application companies also provide opportunities for entrepreneurship and development. Whether it's an entrepreneurial team of 35 or a traditional well-known software company that already has some strength, even some individual product managers at a well-known Internet company are optimistic about this blue ocean for startups, so it seems that the Blue Ocean has quickly become the Red Sea .

From a friend who consulted at Deloitte, he learned that they have viewed the next two to three years as an explosion of SaaS businesses or teams. He told me: In the next two to three years, the average CAGR of SaaS enterprise software market in the world will reach over 30%.

The "store" has, the customer is not up, SaaS's real "Red Sea" has not yet appeared

However, in my opinion, the current situation is not the Red Sea, how to say? This is actually like a food market has just been established, we all spend money to rent the facade, and not many customers to buy food. At present, all kinds of companies doing business applications are in a process of creating a market, when the market is formed, allowing users to have the choice when the Red Sea is really the time to start forming. In this regard, I will do some analysis on the following aspects:

1, based on the concept of business 2.0, a variety of similar domestic products emerged

Enterprise 2.0 concept is a stranger, I see it as a SaaS class enterprise application ancestor. As early as in 2006, Andrew McAfee, an associate professor at Harvard Business School, put forward this concept. According to personal understanding, Enterprise 2.0 covers a wide range of areas, including the following two categories: yammer, chatter, and jive in 2010, which are based on internal social networking Similar to twitter's corporate social platform; product segmentation after 2011, have also led to project collaboration for the purpose of the project collaboration platform, such as: Trello, Podio, Basecamp and so on.

The above two categories are the main representative applications of the concept of Enterprise 2.0. After coming to China, many domestic companies or entrepreneurial teams have seen the prospect of Enterprise 2.0. According to domestic demand, SaaS-based enterprise products can deduce more "localized" forms and functions, which can in fact be regarded as an innovation. According to the product orientation of a simple classification of: corporate social platform, Yammer abroad, the domestic have tita, enjoyable customers; project collaboration category, foreign Trello, Basecamp, domestic teambition.

2, product demand strong

According to a survey conducted by Microsoft that commissioned Ipsos for 302 corporate employees in China, 84% of Chinese corporate employees think that social tools can help them increase their Efficiency was significantly higher than the global average of 46%; 47% of Chinese employees thought their company underestimated the importance of social tools; 79% of employees believe that socialized collaborative tools are conducive to promoting employees on the job 80% of Chinese employees want to be more involved in the decision-making process of enterprises to introduce new technologies and new tools; 61% of employees said they are willing to pay for using SaaS-based enterprise collaboration tools, To improve the efficiency of enterprises and low cost.

Although the scope of the above survey is small, and the attributes of the surveyed enterprises also have a great impact on the survey results. But at least for Microsoft interested parties (Microsoft runs primarily PaaS and SaaS in cloud computing), the results of this survey are undoubtedly good news for SaaS companies - although not yet a large number of customers have purchased, but domestic companies The potential demand for social platforms is a reason why teams of all sizes, big and small, are pouring into the field.

3, survival is a challenge, profit is more challenging

Since this field in China is still in the stage of creating a market, whoever can survive in the end, who will surely make great profits in it?

Companies of all sizes and start-up groups have their own means of development and weapons. Some have taken huge amounts of venture capital and have made software use completely free. Some have wildly promoted themselves through experienced marketing methods. Some believe that they can make better experiences. Products to win users.

A few days ago, I met two of them at the Beijing Communication Show. One was a social networking platform for corporate customers. The executives of the company mentioned that their team strengths are that their core members have many years of experience in enterprise products. While the other is a relatively younger teambition team, represented by the project collaboration platform, who are more focused on providing a better product experience and visual sensibilities.

Want to cut into cloud computing from SaaS class enterprise software tide, either in the marketing system, talent reserves have other people can not immediately have the resources, or through the product itself to the customer a better experience. This competition is a resource and product competition, according to personal point of view, the product experience to better grasp the user's heart, the user must have the world. The survival time can not be ignored, more than a few days to survive means to gain a foothold in the market. At this stage, survival is far more important than profit.

From a market perspective with Chinese characteristics, it may be abundant financial support, completely free on the basis of ensuring that the product is easy to use will become the mainstream trend after the market competition for access to the Red Sea.

Due to the problems of data security and reputation preservation, as well as the prolonged accusation of free use of pirated enterprise products by users, the popularity of such cloud-based SaaS products in China will take some time to precipitate in order to create a climate. This trend is like the original shopping in Taobao, like the need to gradually form, when the credibility of the gradual improvement of the mechanism, users will be able to peace of mind more convenient and efficient way of working.