Revenera Research: More than 30% of Software Suppliers Don’t Understand Their Piracy Exposure

Revenera, producer of leading solutions that help technology companies build better products, accelerate time to value and monetize what matters, today released the Revenera Monetization Monitor: Software Piracy and Compliance 2022 report. The third part of an annual series, now in its fourth year, this report identifies trends in software piracy, overuse and misuse.

“Software suppliers have a great opportunity to recover revenue from piracy and overuse, but only few know how to quantify and track that potential revenue stream. In an uncertain economy, technology companies can improve processes and gain more revenue from their on-premises software products,” said Nicole Segerer, SVP and General Manager at Revenera. “At a time when 58 percent reported overuse as a significant source of revenue leakage, it’s concerning that nearly a third don’t know exactly how much revenue they’re losing to overuse.”

Highlights from the Revenera Monetization Monitor: Software Piracy and Compliance 2022 report include:

• Greater visibility into the amount of revenue leakage is needed.
  • More than 30% of technology companies don’t understand how much revenue they leak:
    • 36 percent of respondents don’t know how much annual revenue is lost to piracy, the use of software that has been configured or tampered with to remove or bypass license enforcement
    • 33 percent don’t know how much revenue is lost to misuse, the intentional configuration of the software to enable use beyond the limits of the license, and
    • 32 percent don’t know how much revenue is lost to overuse, the use of software exceeding the limits of the license.
• The greatest cause of revenue leakage, responsible for losses of more than 30 percent of revenue, is misuse.

• Software suppliers must address multiple problems to minimize revenue leakage.
  • Tied as the most widespread problems that contribute to revenue leakage are overuse and ineffective licensing/pricing/packaging, each reported by 58 percent of respondents.
  • Some causes of revenue leakage are not clear to software suppliers. Top problems contributing to revenue leakage include inefficient monetization models, misuse, customer churn (user attrition that leads to revenue loss), and piracy, each impacting around half of respondents.
• Understanding how loss is occurring can help improve visibility into the amount of revenue leakage and take action to convert those opportunities.
  • Nearly a third (31 percent) of software suppliers indicate that they don't know how they are losing revenue to software piracy, overuse or misuse.
  • Methods of tracking loss include anecdotal reports from sales/support organizations (reported by 41 percent), audit programs (reported by 36 percent), telemetry/phone home data (31 percent), and whistleblower reports (reported by 24 percent).

Methodology

The 2022 Revenera Monetization Monitor Software Industry Survey was conducted by Revenera from mid-April through mid-July 2022. This research project looks at software producers’ software business models, pricing, usage and transparency. The survey was undertaken globally. Job levels of the 261 survey respondents were: director and above (31 percent), manager/team leader (35 percent), and individual contributors/consultants (34 percent).

 The previous reports in this year’s series are also available:

• Revenera Monetization Monitor: Software Monetization Models and Strategies 2022
• Revenera Monetization Monitor: Software Usage Analytics 2022