Audience Research of the Online Accounting B2B Product for Entrepreneurs

This paper researches audience of the online accounting B2B-product for entrepreneurs which is presented on the cloud software-as-a-service (SaaS) market. The spread of cloud software has increased since COVID-19 pandemic and necessity to organize remote work. Nowadays, it is maintained due to the trend of business digitalization among entrepreneurs. The purpose of this project was to identify segments of the software users in order to further revise the product’s positioning and prevent customer churn. The relevance of this work was confirmed by considering external market factors and analyzing the current state and customer base of the product. During the project implementation, theoretical base about SaaS market and communications with B2B-audience as well as customer journey map were studied, and the current strategy and competitive environment of the product were researched. Moreover, the data analysis of the existing product users was carried out in several stages. The data for the analysis were provided by the project client. The tasks of data analysis comprised of audience segmentation, clustering users and forecasting the status of clients' subscription renewal. During the first stage of data analysis, all available user subscriptions to product tariffs were examined; the second stage was focused on the study of "test" users used the product during a trial period. K-Modes, K-Prototypes, DBSCAN and Hierarchical Clustering algorithms were used for clustering; RandomForest Classifier, LogisticRegression, XGBoost and CatBoostClassifier were used to build a churn model; the relationship between the features was checked by determining the Chi-square test of independence. As a result of the project, current users’ segments and insights about their customer behaviour were identified; features which are important in predicting of users churn also were shown. This report also suggested some recommendations to the brand client for product development and for adjusting communications strategies.