The way we purchase things has changed—be it shopping for clothes or booking hotel rooms—it is now evident that the power is in the hands of the buyers. The market for cloud software purchases is no different.

Understanding buyer behavior with cloud cost management software

G2’s 2021 Software Buyer Behavior Report highlights that the power is steadily shifting to the buyer from sellers. Organizations are beginning to realize the importance of customer feedback, user experience, and value creation, making it necessary to keep the buyer's voice at the forefront. To do so, companies need to first understand their buyer better.

For cloud buyers, having a flexible and scalable software offering is critical. Based on workloads that need to be run and applications that need to be developed and tested, choosing the right cloud offering and being able to manage the cloud resources has become a must. In addition, since cloud costs are subscription based, understanding how the subscription costs and licensing costs work is mandatory. 

How does the changing software purchase dynamic impact cloud buyers and sellers? Let’s deep dive into the Cloud Cost Management category on G2 with respect to buyer behavior. 

The buyer persona is becoming a strong voice in the software purchasing process

The purchase of software now revolves around the buyer experience, giving rise to a trend toward consolidation. In the IT space, there are numerous software offerings such as infrastructure as a service (IaaS), cloud cost management software, remote support software, cloud management tools, and so on.

G2’s report highlights that buyers are looking for one centralized offering instead of varied software products that may cause confusion among users, higher spending, integration issues, shadow IT, and vendor lock-in problems. With the amount of time, money, and effort required to evaluate and decide on new technology, a mix of different, individual products might not be the best for an organization’s complex needs. 

Buyers now want an IT Infrastructure setup that does not just meet their IT requirements but is also easily manageable, scalable, and flexible to support different workloads.

G2’s Spring 2022 Grid^Ⓡ Report for Cloud Cost Management Software helps illustrate this buyer behavior. In the report, we have observed that buyers provided a Satisfaction score at an average of 88% for “Ease of Setup” of the software, an increase of 2% from the Winter 2022 Grid^Ⓡ Reports. This can imply that buyers are now looking for centralized software offerings that can be easily set up in their data centers instead of having to manage multiple offerings. 

Buyers also provided a Satisfaction score at an average of 88% for “Ease of Use” of the software. This drives home the point that the ease of installation of cloud cost management software now matters significantly to buyers.

The cloud management space, in general, is quite complex and confusing. Buyers need to manage public cloud deployments, private cloud applications, hybrid options, or a multicloud deployment and having one software offering that helps manage all these different deployments is necessary. 

For retaining existing customers, peer reviews are the way forward

If a review-based purchase meets expectations, we believe that the buyer would be comfortable making a second or third purchase. Vendors need to realize that the power isn't only with getting new customers but learning to retain old customers. In this regard, our survey highlights that the buying cycle doesn't end with the sale.

For software vendors, especially companies that do not rely on online reviews, these statistics can be worrying—how can they convince 60% of the buyers not to look for alternatives? Learning to understand what the buyer is looking for through reviews and improving the product offerings to align with these expectations is a great way to ensure buyer retention.

For example, G2’s Spring 2022 Grid^Ⓡ Report for Cloud Cost Management Software highlights that the buyers gave the lowest average Satisfaction score for “Product going in the right direction” at 86%. However, this is a huge jump from past reports, which was 83% in 2021 and 79% in 2020. 

These numbers illustrate that buyers are looking for better support in terms of understanding where the product is headed. Are there additional integrations? Are there additional support features? Vendors must clearly convey the potential plans they have for their product so that the buyers can align their renewals to meet their software needs. In the long run, buyers will remain loyal to software vendors when they feel all their needs are being met.

What’s next in the world of review-driven software purchase?

There is only one way forward: building trust. Building a genuine customer review base is the easiest way to achieve that trust from buyers.

As the power shifts toward the buyer, a vendor’s website is not enough; it's also important to have buyers' peers share their feedback. The value of honest, unbiased reviews is evident from the massive increase in reviews—54.42% between March 2020 to March 2022—for G2’s Cloud Cost Management category.

Per G2’s Buyer Behavior Survey, an overwhelming majority, 86%, of buyers across all segments said they use peer review sites when buying software. For the cloud ecosystem, we expect to see strong support being driven by peer feedback, to ensure buyers are making the best cloud deployment decision.

The voice of the buyers is growing louder. The way companies purchase software is changing.

Moving forward, the buyer persona is expected to become an influential part of the software purchasing process. At G2, we recommend sellers analyze peer reviews, understand the pain points, and focus on product direction, and buyers provide honest opinions to help the entire B2B software purchasing ecosystem.