The Biggest Challenge in SaaS

• The pandemic has had little impact on SaaS growth, meaning companies are still hiring.

• Companies are reporting that finding the right people is the biggest challenge.

• Companies must consider hiring for growth and culture and the length of their processes.

Software as a service industry has grown 500% over the last 7 years, removing the need for hardware acquisition, provisioning, and maintenance, making installation and running on individual applications obsolete. 

Companies are relying more than ever on SaaS technology to simplify and streamline processes. Organisations with over 1000 employees are reported to use over 150 SaaS applications. 

The United States has dominated the Software as a Service (SaaS) industry for many years and currently has 8x more SaaS companies than any other country (Source). 

Despite the US being home to many SaaS unicorns, such as Adobe, Zoom, and Salesforce, leaders in Europe, Israel, and Africa are expected to carry much of the next generation of SaaS innovations. This means more investment in these regions. 

Oakstone’s partner, Celonis, which is German-based, managed to secure the largest private SaaS investment globally—a $1 billion Series D. With a valuation of $11 billion, Celonis has claimed the award for the most valuable start-up in Germany and New York.

The pandemic may have brought an economic slowdown in many fields, but the SaaS industry was barely impacted by the uncertainty of 2020/1. The pandemic forced many businesses to rely on remote work, and the SaaS industry had the solutions to adapt to the times.

European SaaS unicorns have grown nearly 100% from 44 in 2020 to 81 in 2021 (source: Accel). EMEA SaaS companies are making history. However, they all face similar challenges.

Despite fast growth and promising funding opportunities, 21% of the European tech community thinks hiring talent is the greatest challenge in the next 12 months (source).

Why?

With so many successful companies in EMEA, the competition for great talent that can help organisations grow is limited. Fortunately, the new global approach SaaS companies are taking is helping them with this. 

In our opinion, there are three things businesses need to consider when building a best-in-class global team. 

Hiring for growth

• Someone who was a star employee when you were a 10-person company may not be the right person to lead a team of 50 or 150. Think ahead when hiring and hire people who can grow with you. 

Hiring for culture

• Company culture is perhaps one of the most important things about growing a business. Although companies are taking a more remote or hybrid approach to working models, it should not take your focus away from hiring for culture. The reputation of your company’s ability to attract great people can quickly diminish if you lose the focus of hiring for culture.

Hire quickly

• Oakstone Divisional Director Andy Strong explains, “In the race for top talent, you have got to be fast, approach things in the right way, deliver an optimal candidate experience and partner with clients to speed up their hiring processes – or you will risk losing top talent.

• Specialist SaaS recruiters approach all the top candidates three or four times a day, and so the longer you spend on a hiring process, the more roles you will present to them, and thus, there is a greater opportunity of losing that candidate.

• If you do lose a candidate – a precious resource today – because your hiring process is not fit for purpose, you could be waiting months to find another person who is good or better. Every month, an open vacancy costs the company tens, maybe hundreds of thousands of pounds/dollars/euros.”