Lack of quality data and disconnected tech stack impacting Singapore businesses amid rising costs and competition: HubSpot Research

To empower businesses to scale in today's highly competitive economy, HubSpot has released over 200 updates to its customer platform in addition to launching Breeze, an embedded AI, and Breeze Intelligence, a data enrichment solution According to HubSpot’s research: High costs is the leading challenge faced by Singapore business (44%) with one in five (22%) saying it’s the biggest challenge they are facing. Intense competition (39%), rising costs of reaching audiences (35%), and channel saturation (34%) emerged as other top challenges in attracting and retaining customers among Singapore businesses. Less than half (43%) of Singapore businesses strongly agree that their data and systems are effectively interconnected to provide a cohesive and comprehensive view of their customers. The average business in Singapore has to switch between 58+ distinct applications just to manage their customer interactions. Nearly eight in ten (76%) of Singapore businesses also do not have enough data or the right data to make their AI usage effective, while about a third (34%) have not ‘started talking about generative AI at all’.

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HubSpot, the customer platform for scaling businesses, has released new data showing that many Singapore companies are contending with insufficient quality data and a disjointed tech stack even as costs and competition continue to rise.

Andy Pitre, EVP of Product, HubSpot, launching Breeze at INBOUND 2024
Andy Pitre, EVP of Product, HubSpot, launching Breeze at INBOUND 2024

Go-to-market teams—marketing, sales, and service—hold the keys to customer happiness, revenue generation, and ultimately business growth. But today, GTM teams are struggling to keep up, let alone drive growth, thanks to intense competition, increasing costs to reach prospects and customers, and channel saturation. To make matters worse, their tech stacks are falling short.

Nearly half of Singapore businesses participating in a HubSpot survey cited high costs (44%) as their number one challenge, with one in five (22%) saying it’s the biggest challenge they are facing. This aligns with data from the Singapore Business Federation, which identified increasing manpower and utilities costs as key contributors to business expenses.

The survey also found that intense competition (39%), rising costs of reaching prospects and customers (35%), and channel saturation (34%) are impacting the ability of Singapore businesses to effectively attract and retain customers, potentially limiting their growth potential. Inability to compete against their peers could create additional pressures on Singapore businesses, especially with the country recently ranked the world’s most competitive economy worldwide.

While technology has traditionally been viewed among Singapore businesses as a tool to augment competitiveness and allow them to punch above their weight, barriers remain when it comes to quality data and a modern tech stack.

HubSpot’s findings indicate that less than half (43%) of Singapore businesses agree that their data and systems are effectively interconnected to provide a cohesive and comprehensive view of their customers. This can significantly increase complexity in managing customer interactions and experience, with the average business in Singapore needing to switch between more than 50 distinct applications just to manage customer interactions. As a result, many businesses may struggle to gain a consolidated view of their customers, leading to disconnected data and a suboptimal customer experience.

“Needing to switch between more than 50 applications to manage customer interactions is not only detrimental to efficiency, but could also lead to inaccuracies as businesses try to align insights across disparate data sources. Having a single source of truth for customer data is essential to build and maintain meaningful customer relationships,” said Dan Bognar, Vice President & Managing Director of JAPAC, HubSpot. “Technology can give businesses a helping hand, however our findings show that data connectedness and a unified tech stack are presenting significant opportunities for local businesses looking to improve prospecting and customer retention.”

An overall lack of quality data could also have had an impact on local adoption of Artificial Intelligence (AI) powered tools. According to HubSpot’s survey, nearly eight in ten (77%) of Singapore businesses felt they did not have enough data or the right data to make their AI usage effective. Perhaps as a consequence, about a third (34%) have not ‘started talking about generative AI at all’.

“Operating in the world’s most competitive economy is no easy feat, requiring a delicate balance between manginging increasing costs, while delivering an impactful customer experience. At HubSpot, we are committed towards equipping businesses with applications that are easy to use, fast to implement, and delivered on a unified platform. This helps to align marketing, sales, and service teams with a unified view of their customer.” said Bognar.

To help businesses grow better in today’s environment, HubSpot is committed to building easy, fast and unified tools. That’s why, at INBOUND 2024 and in our latest Spotlight product launches, HubSpot has unveiled its easiest, fastest, and most unified version yet. Everything is built so that GTM teams can unlock growth for their businesses.

Our new, biggest releases include:

  • Breeze, HubSpot’s AI to power the customer platform. Breeze includes
    • Copilot, HubSpot’s new AI companion to boost productivity and make work easier.
    • Four AI agents to get work done fast, from start to finish, including Content Agent, Social Media Agent, Prospecting Agent and Customer Agent.
    • Plus 80 more features embedded across the platform, from remixing content to predicting sales forecasts.
  • Breeze Intelligence, HubSpot’s data enrichment and buyer intent solution. Breeze Intelligence includes:
    • Data enrichment which pulls from a database of over 200 million buyer and company profiles to enrich company and contact records in HubSpot’s Smart CRM.
    • Buyer intent to help customers identify which prospects are best fit.
    • Form shortening to increase conversion by automatically adding information Breeze Intelligence already knows.
  • Updates to Marketing Hub and Content Hub, the combo that’s giving marketers everything they need to launch full campaigns from start to finish, from finding an audience to measuring impact, including:
    • Tools to capture attention like Content Remix for video, which uses AI to turn a single video into a full campaign of clips, audio and written content.
    • Tools to generate leads and convert prospects like Lead Scoring to find high engagement, high-fit prospects and Google Enhanced Conversions to leverage first-party conversion data from HubSpot to improve campaign performance.
    • Tools to measure impact like the new Marketing Analytics Suite, which brings all marketing metrics and reporting in one place to improve campaigns and get results faster.

Learn more about our major launches with product deep dives:

BreezeBreeze IntelligenceMarketing Hub and Content Hub

Visit the 2024 Spotlight here.

About HubSpot

HubSpot (NYSE: HUBS) is the customer platform that helps your business grow better. HubSpot delivers seamless connection for customer-facing teams with a unified platform that includes AI-powered engagement hubs, a Smart CRM, and a connected ecosystem that extends the customer platform with over 1,500 App Marketplace integrations, a community network, and educational content from HubSpot Academy. Today, over 228,000 customers, like DoorDash, Reddit, Eventbrite, and Tumblr, across more than 135 countries use HubSpot to attract, engage, and delight customers. Learn more at www.hubspot.com.

Research methodology

HubSpot proprietary research
Singapore sample size: 102
Global sample size: 1893

Press contact
Yanchang Tan
Sling & Stone for HubSpot
yanchangtan@slingstone.com

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