Dive Brief:
- More than half of decision makers expect their software spending to increase next year, according to a report from software marketplace G2. The company consulted 756 decision-makers with responsibility for, or influence over, purchase decisions.
- Large companies plan to keep adding to the software stack to support hybrid work. Three in four decision-makers from companies with at least 1,000 employees will be on the market for an additional five or more software tools this year, the report found.
- The number of people involved in a single purchasing decision rose 20% year-over-year, according to G2. More than one-quarter of companies say they expect the number of people involved in decisions to rise again in 2022.
Dive Insight:
A pandemic-era wave of software deployment was aimed at solving urgent gaps for businesses. Apps that automated staff onboarding or facilitated online collaboration let companies keep running through the lockdown phase.
But companies aren't done stocking up on software, and IT budgets are set to grow at most businesses next year. Part of the increase has to do with businesses preparing for a longer-term hybrid work scenario than previously expected.
"Prior to the pandemic there were always distributed workforces," said Alexandra Schrecengost, founder and CEO of Virtual With Us. "But now, a lot of their teams have dispersed even more so."
Collaboration tools become necessary to keep the workforce connected. Collaboration tool adoption in the enterprise has risen 44% since 2019, according to Gartner statistics. In the coming year, companies will continue to rely on software solutions to improve engagement and company culture, said Schrecengost.
Despite a minor contraction from two years prior, the acquisition of software solutions still makes up 28% of the enterprise IT budget for next year 2022, according to Spiceworks Ziff Davis. It's the second largest spending category, second only to hardware spending.
Another driver of software spending in the year ahead will be an increase in the number of potential enterprise buyers, the G2 survey finds.
"In the past we would have said that IT was firmly in control of IT buckets of all that spending on B2B software and other technologies," said Tom Pringle, VP of market research at G2. "What we're seeing more and more now is business stakeholders, for example marketing, operations or sales organizations, are engaged and involved in these purchases."