As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, businesses and individuals needed to adapt quickly to navigate the changing collaboration landscape (working online, attending meetings virtually and collaborating with teammates remotely). Having experienced the benefits of a remote work model, many organizations decided to adopt the practice and change their IT strategies. 54% of companies worldwide looked to invest in better technology in 2022¹.

Advanced technologies play a significant role in allowing businesses to provide their employees with a conducive work environment that would promote creativity and productivity, so many companies have incorporated the use of collaboration software in their workplace. In 2022, about 90% of companies worldwide utilized collaboration tools to improve team communication². In the UK alone, 97% of companies stated that online collaboration tools were essential to their operations³.

While businesses saw the importance of utilizing collaboration software, so did individuals. Individuals use similar apps to help them stay on top of their personal goals. With the increased subscription to these tools, the global collaboration software market size is projected to increase from US$13.03BN in 2022 to $13.58BN in 2023, and at a compound annual growth rate of 4.2%. In terms of market share, Asia Pacific took over North America and became the largest market for collaboration software in 2022⁴.

In this post-pandemic era, the remote work culture is here to stay, and it will continue to drive growth to the collaboration software market, which is expected to reach $14.48BN in 2030⁵.

Implications to collaboration software providers

In this increasingly competitive SaaS collaboration sector, it's important to keep up with what your consumers want. As we’ve found in our Power Your Payments report, the key to a successful subscription model is convenience as customers look for quick and easy access to the products that they’ve signed up to receive⁶.

While it's beneficial for your business to digitalize your processes and enable easy integration of your collaboration software to web-hosted programs, team chat groups and calendars, what’s crucial to your customers is the convenience of accessing your software and ease of payment at check out.

With the right payments strategy, improvements can be made to customer acquisition and retention.

Simplifying user experience with payments

Whatever way you look at it, ESG is complex. You’re trying to analyze data from all sorts of sources, from carbon and environmental data – which is easier to grasp – to “non-financial” data such as social media posts, news articles and general sentiment, which is much more difficult to quantify.

What’s even more challenging is that there’s very little standardization of data collection, calculation and metrics; not to mention company transparency and the proclivity – and sometimes even incentivization – to “greenwash.” Couple all of this with regulatory requirements that aren’t completely clear and constantly changing, and it’s no wonder that many firms are unsure if they have the right technology in place.

However, having a clear and defined ESG strategy is essential to tackle the challenges ahead. Our Global Innovation Report found that 63% of financial and fintech firms are investing in technology to improve their ESG reporting and disclosures, while 61% are investing in technology to provide more granular ESG ratings of assets and securities.

That’s really encouraging to see because ESG continues to grow fast. It’s easy to wait for regulators. But you need to invest now to capture investors’ interest in ESG opportunities – and minimize the impact of ESG on your own business.

Simplifying user experience with payments

1. Optimize your subscription strategy

Payments play an integral role in the SaaS collaboration strategy, so it's important to understand your consumers' payment preferences. 67% of customers prefer to pay for subscription services on a monthly basis, while only 27% are willing to pay upfront⁷. This is because the subscription model makes it easier for your consumers to purchase a product instantly and provides them with the flexibility to add the cost to their monthly budget.

To reduce complexity and minimize frustration, make payments smooth and easy to manage for your customers.

At Worldpay from FIS®, we understand the connection between seamless payments and a convenient subscription model. We provide recurring payment solutions to help reduce friction and potentially increase customer satisfaction. We also have long-standing partnerships with leading subscription management platforms, which help automate the manual processes in the subscription business.

2. Be global, think local

Customers rely on collaboration tools to communicate with their colleagues, family and friends from all over the world, so it's essential that your services are easily accessible across different geographical locations. By allowing them to pay in their own currency or preferred alternative payment method (APM), you can help enable more seamless, locally-based transactions and reduce your cart abandonment rate.

We found in our Power Your Payments research that 42% would drop out if they can't pay with their preferred payment method and an additional 15% would hesitantly pay using another payment option but would not come back in the future⁷.

With Worldpay, you could grow globally without the complexity and accept payments across a wide range of APMs and currencies. Not only could you use a single API to access simple integration to scalable services and rapid, data-driven product enhancements at a global scale, but it could also all be done while simplifying the payment stack.

3. Ensure your customers' payment details are up to date

It's also important to help remove some friction from involuntary churn. This happens when customers lose access to your services unintentionally due to reasons like forgetting to update their payment details or their debit or credit cards expiring. In the SaaS industry, B2B and B2C churn rates in 2022 were 6.15% and 6.93% respectively⁸.

Businesses like yours could benefit from increased convenience and potentially reduce churn by ensuring subscriptions continue without interruption. One way you can do this is by keeping your customers' details up to date automatically and ensuring their subscription continues even after their card expires.

Worldpay's Account Updater can help simplify this process by automating card updating, allowing you to worry less about friction caused by declined payments.

4. Ensure maximum security

As more businesses and individuals rely on digital services, 80% of businesses in 2022 have expressed concerns over cyberattacks on emails and collaboration tools. This was a significant increase from 70% just last year as scammers continue to find new sophisticated ways to gain access to their victims' identities, online accounts and payment accounts⁹.

To help mitigate the risks of fraudsters getting access to your software, it's critical to identify and decline fraudulent transactions. Worldpay's FraudSight can help protect your business through a multi-layered fraud solution that combines data insights, technology and a team of experts that predict if a transaction is fraudulent. Earlier this year, FraudSight, powered by Featurespace, won the Card & Payments Awards’ “Best Technology Initiative” for 2022¹⁰.

Sources

1. CIPD (April 2022), An update on flexible and hybrid working practices
https://bit.ly/3GonDxV

2. Unify Square Report [Accessed 2022], quoted in: UC Today (December 2022), Essential Team Collaboration Statistics for 2022
https://bit.ly/3GVOrWc

3. Techradar (January 2022), Exclusive: We’re all far more dependent on Teams and Zoom than we want to believe
https://bit.ly/3V62LzG

4. The Business Research Company (January 2023), Collaboration software global market report 2023
https://bit.ly/3IBVSmV

5. Verified Market Research (December 2022), Collaboration software market size and forecast
https://bit.ly/3Zvrb91

6. Worldpay from FIS (April 2022), Flexible subscription payment processing options improves loyalty (download required)
https://bit.ly/3URzqtm

7. Recurly (2022), What subscribers want: Insights to future-proof your business (registration required)
https://bit.ly/3EePCO0

8. GoCardless (February 2022), Churn: a quick guide for subscription business
https://bit.ly/3EjjwAG

9. Mimecast (2022), Confronting the new wave of cyberattacks (download required)
https://bit.ly/3hIUDqp

10. TSYS (2022), The card & payments awards 2022
https://bit.ly/3X9bW4a