Today, we’re working from… wherever. And—COVID-19 may be plaguing brick-and-mortar retail, but what’s the impact on subscription ecommerce? Plus, we’re eyeing Blissfully’s 2020 SaaS Trends Report.

Listen wherever you get podcasts:

  

Your top subscription news

Better get comfy

I am a sucker for a good ebook, so Trello’s Ultimate Guide to Remote Work immediately got me hooked. If you’re sick of hearing tips on fostering a more effective remote work space—skip on. 

But if you’re skipping on—you’re also avoiding the unavoidable.

Whether it’s due to the pandemic, or the fact that remote is revolutionizing the way we work, the more resources, the better. It’s about immersing yourself in the advice, the research, the data. 

And the Trello team believes that sharing is caring. (They won’t even ask for your email address to download this one.) They grabbed advice from the crews over at Litmus, Buffer, Evernote, Zapier, Atlassian, and more. 

It’s about debunking common remote work myths, highlighting remote work communication best practices, specific software recommendations, advice on finding remote jobs (although that shouldn’t be that hard right now…), and exploring the culture around it. 

If you’re not submerging yourself in the possibilities of remote right now, you’re doing yourself a disservice.

Working effectively on a remote team requires discipline from every employee, but especially from leadership. If leadership can’t do remote well, the whole company will fail—so C-suites, better listen up too!

You can click here if you're looking to download it. Let us know what you think and be sure to reach out to me at abby@recurnow.com with your thoughts on remote (even if you disagree, I want to hear it all).

Shop 'til you drop

Compiled by Grace Gagnon

COVID-19—the disease originating from the coronavirus family—has created widespread panic and fear around the globe. Schools are closed. Travel is restricted. Offices are mandating work from home policies. Not to mention the lack of toilet paper at local stores. 

While COVID-19 may seem like a topic strictly for health officials—it’s undeniably impacting businesses. Retail Dive reports that more than one third of U.S. adults are shopping less at stores and more than half say they expect to this month because of COVID-19. 

Here are the numbers according to Morgan Stanley analysts:

• • As of a week and a half ago, total retail traffic fell 9.1%.
  • Apparel retail traffic fell 3.9%.
  • Luxury retail declined by 14.7%.

My first thought here was, “Okay, people aren’t shopping in person, but thank goodness for D2C and ecommerce—where one can buy the things they need without leaving their home.” 

However, Wedbush and Morgan Stanley analysts contradict my thought process. Neither analyst groups believe ecommerce will make up for the decline in brick-and-mortar shopping. 

But I wanted to research this further. I found an article by Forbes which notes that some facets of ecommerce are indeed booming in China (where the disease originated). The article says that delivery services are thriving because millions of restaurants are still open for business, but people aren’t dining in as much. So the answer? Delivery. 

Additionally—video conferencing and remote working software companies are the superheroes amongst all the companies mandating work from home. There’s definitely a spike in sales for those platforms. 

While this article shines a light on how coronavirus has impacted ecommerce in China, I think we will see similar trends across the globe in the coming days.

Blissfully aware of what's trending in SaaS

Being cooped up at home for a weekend (or amid a pandemic) sounds like the perfect time to download Blissfully’s 2020 SaaS Trends Report and start scrolling. 

The TLDR: SaaS apps reign supreme across departments, but… waste is growing. 

Blissfully is a total SaaS management platform. They’ve worked with hundreds of companies globally to help them manage their SaaS across their orgs. They help companies automatically detect the SaaS products they're using across the entire organization, and use that information to optimize spending, improve security, and simplify IT operations. 

Because of this, the Blissfully team has access to some serious aggregate data. (We’re talking 10 years of data from over 1,000 companies.) And they’ve analyzed it to highlight some interesting trends. 

Here goes:

• • ~80% of the top 100 SaaS apps are HQ'd in the U.S., which is more heavily concentrated than broader tech.
  • About half of the top 100 SaaS apps are still private, with an average backing of more than $100 million.
  • The typical mid-market company uses 185 different apps.
    
  • And apparently, SaaS app usage across companies is up 30%, and spend is up 50%.

So if you’re a SaaS, I’d presume your ears are perked (or they very well should be…). Here's a link to the downloadable report in full.

That’s it for today's roundup. Don’t hesitate to reach out to me at abby@recurnow.com if you have input on any topic we cover or want to collaborate on a potential story. 

This has been a Recur Studios production—the fastest-growing subscription network out there. If you find use for this show, subscribe for more like it at profitwell.com/recur.