It’s only mid January – but while many other business sectors are still in the preliminary stage of planning their year, the digital & tech sector is already done summing up the key trends which will predetermine the way we do business throughout 2019.
It comes as no surprise that G2 Crowd has already announced its choice on the Best Software Companies and Best Software Products for 2019. Over the past decade, peer-to-peer reviewing has made its quick rise from being just a trend spotter – to becoming a trendsetter. So today, everything you need to know about what’s hot and what’s not on the digital market is neatly visualized for your convenience.
Let’s take a quick look at what is probably the most promising ranking by G2 Crowd – the Top 50 of the Fastest Growing Products 2019.
So who got on the list and (more importantly) what does this tell us?
Nearly all top 50 products fall into one of the following three broad categories:
Collaboration platforms for project management, HR work and sales reps
This group includes the most recognizable brand names for anyone doing business online – Monday.com, Airtable, Salesforce CPQ and so on.
What does this tell us?
Obviously, having a CRM or an ERP system is not enough anymore. Businesses are constantly demanding more complex business solutions which are expected to be fast, easy to use and – and at the same time – provide complete automation, data auto population and multitasking all on one page.
If you visit the sites of these top companies, you’ll notice their front pages all contain the same magic word – “all-in-one”.
SMM, SEO and other means of online promotion
This is by far the largest group in the Top 50 Fastest Growing Companies.
It includes such well-known names as WordPress, Zoho Social and HubSpot Academy and also some of the relative newbies to the market, such as Drift and Drip.
So, what does this tell us?
On the one hand, businesses worldwide are still struggling with understanding the mechanisms behind online popularity. They are ready to learn, try new things and also ready to invest, both human and financial resources in digital campaigns.
On the other hand, with all these social network bots, scheduled posts and and website traffic analyzers, digital marketing is becoming one of the most intensively automated sectors – which means the very profession of a marketer has become more intense than ever before.
To answer a very frequently asked question – No, robots still won’t take your job (provided that you never stop learning from them).
Communication boosters
This is the group of least surprises: Zoom has been steadily on the rise with its video conferencing. LiveAgent, Freshdesk and Intercom are unquestioned leaders in the sector of customer support solutions, while Teamviewer has been providing remote access between devices for nearly 15 years by now.
What does this tell us?
We travel more than ever, we work from home (or from any other place, actually) more than ever, we may have offices in five different time zones at the same time – and digital communications are more than ready for all of the above.
They only become quicker, cheaper and more available in terms of options.
Apart from that, what stands out?
- Despite all the 2018 controversies, Facebook is holding up pretty firmly, at least in the market of business solutions. Both of its page management solutions got into the Top 50 which means that there is still no better way to reach out to a wider internet audience rather than this global social network.
- Surprisingly for many in our office and despite all the tense competition at the market of e-signing, only one e-signature solution got into the Top 50 of the Fastest Growing Products 2019 — SignNow.
Moreover, SignNow was also ranked #26 among the top 50 Best Products for Sales 2019, according to G2 Crowd.
And what does this tell us?
The answer to that can be found in the latest of the G2 Crowd reviews:
“We’ve researched similar software for a while before using SignNow. it’s easy to use, straightforward and the price/quality ratio is very interesting. Definitely recommend”
“We’d looked at lots of competing products, but couldn’t find one that justified the price. Still our clients were asking for electronic document signing. We had to find something, and SignNow was what we were looking for. The product is easy to use, both on our end, and for our clients. …We literally sent out our first contract within 20 minutes of signup, and we got the contract back about 30 minutes after that. That’s efficient”.
