Pendo Data Suggests $29.5 Billion in Global Cloud R&D Investment Squandered When Software Features Go Unused

We’re excited to announce the inaugural Feature Adoption Report and four new analytics features that give product teams new ways to surface user insights and consume data. Read the release below:

SAN JOSE, Calif. AND RALEIGH, N.C. — FEBRUARY 5, 2019 — Pendo, creator of the leading product cloud for digital products and data-driven product teams, today released the 2019 Feature Adoption Report, a first-of-its-kind analysis of the economic impact of software feature adoption. The company also announced four new analytics features that extend its core analytics platform and make product and user data more accessible and actionable throughout software organizations and digital enterprises. Both announcements were made at SaaStr Annual 2019, the world’s largest conference for B2B software, held this week in San Jose. Pendo is a Diamond sponsor.

The research found that public cloud software companies collectively invested up to $29.5 billion in R&D costs associated with these unadopted or underutilized features, funds that could have been allocated to higher value features and unrealized customer value. The full report, which includes detailed methodology and recommendations for how to evaluate and improve feature adoption, is available for download here.

New Pendo features include:

Feature adoption analytics

Is the 80/20 rule true for feature usage? A new data visualization in Pendo helps product teams find out what percentage of tagged features generate 80% of daily use, which are used less frequently and which features aren’t used at all. This analysis helps product teams understand which parts of their products are creating delight, and which are collecting dust and need to be improved, promoted, or retired.

Revenue insights

A new data object in Pendo helps product teams understand the relationship between product usage and sentiment and revenue impact. Initially, Pendo will allow customers to see the revenue implications of positive and negative NPS scores, helping them prioritize intervention where revenue is at risk. Future releases will extend this capability into other areas of analytics.

Sharable dashboards

Pendo users can now customize their own dashboards and then share them with other Pendo users. Sharable dashboards provide an up-to-date view of important KPIs, helping rally key stakeholders around a shared view of product health.

Retroactive analytics for mobile

Pendo’s foundational auto-tracking and retroactive analytics capabilities are now available for native mobile apps. By installing a simple line of code into an app, product teams can begin collecting every user action and start organizing and analyzing the data, and then take action through Pendo’s user guidance and communication tools. Pendo acquired Israel-based Insert in September 2017 with the goal to offer customers a seamless experience across web and mobile. With retroactive analytics for mobile, Pendo now delivers these same foundational analytics capabilities across web, mobile web, and native mobile apps.

“Development teams for years have anecdotally known that there are many features in their products that customers simply don’t use,” said Todd Olson, CEO and co-founder of Pendo. “We’re excited to empower product teams to quantifiably measure feature adoption for the first time, and by sharing this report, to allow them to benchmark their products against industry norms.”

Feature adoption is a key theme of both of these news items—when users adopt software features into daily use, they develop habits that lead to loyalty and, ultimately, growth and advocacy. Pendo’s new features in this area help product and customer success teams understand adoption patterns and their implications for retention and growth. The feature adoption report shines light on the economic impact of underutilized features–for individual software companies and the broader digital economy.