Analysts at BNP Paribas noted that Software as a Service companies are reorienting toward cross-selling and working towards lowering customer attrition, while more AI adoption is expected in 2026.
BNP spoke to Intuit (INTU), Salesforce (CRM), Snowflake (SNOW), Workday (WDAY), and Zoom Communications (ZM) before the companies went into their quiet periods ahead of their quarterly results.
“Software companies are still adjusting to the ‘new’ environment. With the days of easy upsells by simply adding seats having come to an end, SaaS companies are having to reorient towards cross selling more products, including AI add ons, while also working on lowering customer attrition. This requires smarter selling and customer management. In terms of AI, SaaS companies saw 2025 as a year of testing AI products, and are hoping 2026 will see more agents moving into production as budgets dedicated to AI are now available. In addition, SaaS companies are looking to ramp new business models this year,” said analyst Stefan Slowinski.
The analyst sees potential for leading SaaS providers to show stabilization of core businesses in 2026 (fiscal 2027) with new AI revenues potentially driving revenue growth acceleration. However, Slowinski doubts the companies will guide for that acceleration.
While investors may typically see the setting of beatable fiscal year guidance as a green light to buy, there seems to be little appetite to be early in buying a potential software recovery considering AI uncertainties, according to the analyst. Slowinski noted that the investors who have been doing so over the past five months, since the August 2025 SaaS smash, have not been rewarded. As such, investors may wait for those first quarter results in May to see evidence of stabilization.
Intuit (INTU)
Tax marketing. The analyst said Intuit has again started to market its Assisted offerings early to capture the 30% of people who decide how they will file even before the tax season. The company is again focusing on a local service, including launching a flagship store in New York City.
Slowinski said that there is no timeline yet for the Free Filing Modernization Summit, but they believe Intuit is discussing more about how the Trump Administration is backing Free File, looking to increase awareness, availability, and use, and how the government will start to collect data on free file usage.
The analyst added that Intuit is learning from its OpenAI (OEPNAI) ChatGPT partnership and is not ruling out similar partnerships with Anthropic (ANTHRO) and Alphabet’s (GOOG) (GOOGL) unit Google’s Gemini. The company sees these partnerships as important to increasingly be where the ‘eyeballs’ are, while Intuit helps bring personalization to the generic LLM responses, the analysts noted.
Slowinski noted that there are still uncertainties around MailChimp and IES ramp. The confidence in the double-digit revenue growth exit rate this fiscal year for MailChimp will depend on the visibility they get later this spring. With IES, it also remains early, with Intuit recently focusing on accounting firm collaborations.
Salesforce (CRM)
Slowinski said that in early December 2025, Salesforce confirmed that Net New Annual Order Value, or NNAOV, growth was now a couple of points above Annual Contract Value, or ACV, growth, and NNAOV growth will be above ACV growth for all of the second half.
The analyst noted that Salesforce continues to say that acceleration will happen 12 months to 18 months from the October investor day. So October 2026 at the earliest. Slowinski added that this leads them to believe that it is unlikely Salesforce will guide for growth acceleration in fiscal year 27. Investors will hope that initial fiscal year guidance will prove conservative, with the potential for beats as we go through the fiscal year.
“That said, the company continues to talk about headwinds to growth such as the comps for the contract expiration base, along with Marketing and Commerce that are still expected to be headwinds in FY’27,” said Slowinski.
Slowinski said that Salesforce is trying to determine what metrics to provide so that investors can better understand consumption trends and how they will help drive a revenue growth acceleration. In addition, the company’s communication around all of its various clouds, and the Agentforce contribution, has become complex.
“While we believe Salesforce will continue to guide for margin improvement y/y, and the company has a 2030 outlook that implies further margin improvement, we believe the company will focus on top line growth near term, with limited margin leverage near term, with a 15% jump in account executives entering FY’27, and a renewed emphasis on selling new product,” said Slowinski.
Snowflake (SNOW)
The analyst said they discussed the strategic rationale of the Observe acquisition. As an existing partner already built on the Snowflake platform, Snowflake expects Observe to start seeing synergies quickly.
“Snowflake is also highlighting how the services will not overlap with DataDog in real time monitoring, with Observe being more focused on root call analytics, ingesting data and performing queries. The acquisition price was likely well below the $1bn that has been reported,” the analyst added.
Slowinski said they believe Snowflake will be cautious with its fiscal year guidance in terms of mergers and acquisitions, or M&A, contribution as its guidance practices are to recent consumption patterns to forecast future revenues. That said, Snowflake may break out expected Observe contribution to fiscal year revenues, but not other acquisitions like Crunchy.
“Snowflake is not giving color on consumption trends over the recent holiday season. And while the market continues to hope for revenue growth acceleration (despite sell side consensus not modeling acceleration), we believe Snowflake will talk more to stability in growth, which is reflected in NRR,” said Slowinski. “Snowflake is learning from its Anthropic (ANTHRO) partnership, and feels confident that it will likely meet or exceed their $200m usage target. We believe we may hear more about joint Go To Market initiatives with Anthropic.”
Workday (WDAY)
Slowinski said Workday hopes to come under contract for the next phase of Defense Intelligence Agency, or DIA work, but that had not been confirmed by last quarter. Workday believes its work with the DIA will open other U.S. government business. For now, assuming the DIA business is not yet renewed, it will impact growth sequentially in fiscal first quarter (as highlighted last quarter). The company will also start to lap the addition of tenancy contracts to growth during the first fiscal quarter, the analyst added.
“We believe there will be much discussion this year around Workday’s new Flex Credit pricing model, including through new partnerships with Snowflake and Databricks, although meaningful contribution may not be before FY’28. We also expect more Workday agent roll outs, such as Payroll agents in H1. We also expect to hear more about mid-market initiatives, full suite selling, and getting the Sana product into the Workday community as an adjacency to Workday Learning,” Slowinski added.
Zoom Communications (ZM)
Slowinski said Zoom continues to see the weaker hiring environment in two key verticals (Financials and High tech) as a headwind to growth, with U.S. Federal having been a headwind too. And while churn continues to be a headwind, Zoom is confident in accelerated AI adoption as customers are more accepting of virtual agents handling tasks, the analyst noted.