Announcing the 2023 SaaSMe Award Winners!

At Zylo, our customers leverage the dynamic partnership of IT and Finance to power a successful ongoing SaaS Management program. These companies – big and small – are taking SaaS by the horns, driving down costs while increasing adoption and innovation.

We created the SaaSMe Awards to honor organizations and individuals taking this progressive approach to SaaS Management. 

On May 16, 2023, we presented awards in five categories. For each category, two winners were awarded – one enterprise winner and one high-growth winner. To add a cherry on top, we also crowned five new SaaS Superheroes.

SaaS Management Program of the Year

The SaaS Management Program of the Year Award recognizes organizations that have embraced an innovative and comprehensive SaaS Management approach, driving rapid cross-functional adoption of SaaS Management practices, and making SaaS Management core to how they run their business.

Enterprise SaaS Management Program of the Year: Salesforce

Salesforce’s Business Technology software asset management team initially started leveraging Zylo long ago, initially exclusively for their many mergers and acquisitions. Leveraging Centralized SaaS Discovery, they drove speed into their company acquisition process by gaining immediate, real-time SaaS visibility and utilizing Zylo to execute their software integration plan, rationalizing and merging apps from acquired companies. Over the past year, they have invested heavily in expanding their SaaS management program for the organization as a whole, building out Zylo as their SaaS source of truth, integrating with Okta for utilization insights, and mapping insights to their renewal calendar. With strong alignment up through their CIO, they are leveraging the data, insights and automation in Zylo to directly support the company’s goal of reducing their operating margin to 25% by 2026.

Growth SaaS Management Program of the Year: Calendly

Calendly’s organization’s SaaS management program is currently firing on all cylinders, with strong value across Procurement, Finance, IT and Security. Their team is doing it all – they’ve fully operationalized their SaaS renewal process, driving strong contract and owner coverage across their stack. On top of that, they’re automating license reclamation and deprovisioning across identified opportunities, and have rolled out their Employee-facing SaaS Application Catalog across the business. Zylo has become a key tool for Calendly to consistently identify and save money and lower OpEx, solving their historical headache of SaaS chaos.

SaaS Management Value Driver Award

The SaaS Management Value Driver Award recognizes companies that place adoption and optimization at the center of their SaaS Management programs. With a clear focus on driving overall utilization, they take a proactive approach to SaaS adoption, measurement, and monitoring while driving ROI by keeping their licensing right-sized and efficient.

Enterprise SaaS Management Value Driver Award: Phuc Vo, Biogen

Without SAM leader Phuc Vo at the helm, it is not a stretch to say that many of Biogen’s large value would not have been realized. Cost savings and avoidance is at the center of Biogen’s SaaS Value Framework. Over the past year, they have been instrumental in creating a highly successful team-sport dynamic – working across the company with significant app owners, and directly with procurement as well. In the first year of using Zylo, Biogen realized over $1M in cost savings, taking action on key app insights and removing unused licensing throughout their business. And they’re planning to successfully deliver those consistent results again this year.

Growth SaaS Management Value Driver Award: Adam Carpenter, Lumio

Over their first year with Zylo, Adam Carpenter, Sr. Program Manager, Enterprise Applications at Lumio, and his team leaned in significantly into cost savings and avoidance insights surfaced across their SaaS system of record. From using Zylo to track and identify redundant system rationalization opportunities to operationalizing Zylo’s License Reclamation Workflows to automate the license reclamation process, they’ve experienced significant ROI. One notable win: optimization across their 6 Salesforce orgs, where they achieved six-figures in cost avoidance at renewal. Add to that, they had a nifty win, reduced the number of project management tools across their business to drive another large optimization win. Looking ahead, this organization plans to expand their use of automation in Zylo and implement a governance program around SaaS renewals with their newly established Software Review Board.

IT Leader of the Year

The IT Leader of the Year Award recognizes the IT leaders that have taken ownership of SaaS Management, evangelizing it across the organization, and driving a more efficient business. While we recognize that SaaS management is a team sport, these individuals are brilliant leaders and action-oriented change agents within their organizations.

Enterprise IT Leader of the Year: Shravya Ravi, LinkedIn

Shravya Ravi, Manager, Asset Management at LinkedIn, has wasted no time building an enterprise SaaS system of record (that’s a lot of data and contracts). Real-time SaaS spend visibility and utilization metrics have been key in building trust and aligning ownership of applications to overall budget initiatives and targets. Shravya understood that getting that first step right was paramount. Internal strategic and high-spend renewals drove their initial integration priority, driving centralized visibility into licensing data used to prep for major negotiations. Now that LinkedIn’s central system of record is established, and they are driving license reductions programmatically across renewals, they’re looking to leverage redundancy insights to target consolidation efforts in similar categories and functions. Shravya is the epitome of a great leader, and as such has positioned the organization to build important, timely cost savings and governance value while working toward standardization of their stack.

Growth IT Leader of the Year: Siroui Mushegian, Blackline

This next winner is a no-brainer. A staunch supporter of Zylo and SaaS Management at their organization since day one, Siroui Mushegian and her team have made incredible progress in just over a year since purchasing Zylo. As Vice President, Information Technology at Blackline, Sirouri has developed Zylo as their single source of truth for SaaS. Siroui understands that SaaS Management isn’t just a one-time project – it is a continuous program. She has already realized cost avoidance through reclamation efforts and creating a more secure environment with SSO enforcement enforcement around newly discovered applications. With this Siroui’s leadership, Blackline is poised to build out one of the strongest programs we have seen.

Finance Leader of the Year

The Finance Leader of the Year Award recognizes the Finance and Procurement leaders who have taken ownership of SaaS Management and drive internal change to achieve meaningful business value – from cost savings and avoidance to efficient procurement processes and more. These individuals are shining examples of progressive thought-leaders and action-oriented individuals championing change in their organizations.

Enterprise Finance Leader of the Year: Tara Kalkwarf-McGee, SADA

Tara Kalkwarf-McGee is the epitome of a team player. As Manager of Vendor Management Office at SADA, hand-in-hand with IT, Tara worked to review at each aspect of the entire software vendor lifecycle from onboarding, renewal, termination, and payments – mapped against her key SaaS Management value areas of Cost Savings & Avoidance and SaaS Governance and Risk Mitigation. Tara is tenacious in their approach to cost management, from driving better negotiations at renewal and new purchases. She is pushing the envelope to drive aggressive cost savings. In fact, they’ve driven cost savings of more than six figures in the last 6 months, solely utilizing Zylo pricing benchmarks at negotiation.

Growth Finance Leader of the Year: Aaron Crow, MRI Software

We can’t say enough good things about Aaron Crow, Controller at MRI Software. Though his background is primarily in Finance, he has recently taken on the role of developing the procurement function with open arms. From establishing governance policies to control spend and curb unapproved purchases, Aaron has vastly improved purchasing efficiency and reduced risks from shadow IT at MRI Software. Not only has he driven this success, but the company has also fully adopted and evangelized the importance of driving value from SaaS management across the business. Over the last year, they realized a phenomenal $1.2M in savings! Aaron is results-driven, strategic, and willing to roll up his sleeves to address the problem.

SaaS Superhero of the Year

SaaS Superheros are our Zylo power users who are using the platform day in and day out! They know everything there is to know about Zylo and always want to do more. They’re dedicated proponents of SaaS management and tenacious leaders in driving value for the organizations they work for.

Lindsay Stokes, Netflix

Lindsay Stokes, ITAM leader at Netflix, is the definition of a SaaS Superhero. She has been absolutely essential in building out Zylo as a single system of record for SaaS for Netflix, allowing teams like IT and Procurement to quickly access key data points as they manage and renew SaaS applications. Recently, she led the charge of building out a robust renewal calendar and custom fields for Procurement to manage all SaaS renewals. And looking ahead, Lindsay is focused on using Zylo data to begin realizing significant optimization wins at renewal. She was a rock star on the SaaSMe Unfiltered podcast this past season. We admire Lindsay’s enthusiasm and determination to drive results.

Josh Ehlers, Instructure

Since stepping into his role as a Software Asset Manager at Instructure, Josh Ehlers has completely embraced SaaS management and Zylo. He is always looking to learn and identify opportunities to build or improve upon Instructure’s program. Josh’s focus on building a strong SaaS culture among the team has been instrumental in evangelizing the program across the business. Over the past year, he has completely crushed it. From building a strong foundation for their program and leveraging Zylo as their system of record for SaaS, to rolling out the App Catalog and achieving significant savings for core applications. Josh is thoughtful in his approach to SaaS management, and we’re excited to see their journey continue to unfold.

Julie Day, Blackline

Our next SaaS Superhero, Julie Day, is a true power user and superhero when it comes to Zylo and SaaS Management at Blackline. Since joining the team last year as IT Asset Manager, she has taken charge building a single source of truth for SaaS, resulting in 76% contract coverage and 50% ownership to date. Additionally, Julie is always in Zylo looking for the next opportunity. In 2022 this was primarily focused on rationalization, with a goal to trim 15% of their apps. And license optimization is next on the list! Julie is passionate and an expert in her craft, and we admire the energy she brings to SaaS management.

Larry Hibbs, City of Aurora, CO

Larry Hibbs, Technical Program Manager at City of Aurora, is rocking renewal operationalization through Zylo. In addition to having nearly complete contract coverage in Zylo, he is also using many custom fields to manage SaaS the way City of Aurora wants to.  As a large government municipality, this superhero is extending use cases with Zylo, solving for hard challenges like the recent federal regulation requiring government agencies to track subscription software, GASB 96. Considering he has taken 708 actions in Zylo this past year makes them a true power user, proving that active SaaS management is critical to success and driving value. All in all, Larry is one of the kindest and most thoughtful people we’re fortunate to work with.

Gibson Schnurr, Juni

Last but not least, our final SaaS Superhero for 2023 is Gibson Schnurr, IT Product and Application Systems Manager at Juni. Gibson and Juni came in hot in their first year of partnership with Zylo. As the IT leader, Gibson has grounded Juni’s SaaS management program on continual, centralized SaaS Discovery, where they uncovered 100 redundant/underutilized apps. Then, upon rationalizing those apps, saved €107K – just in the implementation phase of Zylo! Juni is managing SaaS their way in Zylo with custom fields to track onboarding, spend audits, governance, risk mitigation KPIs and more. Gibson also recognized that they could not cover all their renewals, leading to a deeper partnership with SaaS Negotiator services.

Congratulations again to all the SaaSMe Award winners. You are setting the standard for SaaS Management excellence and we’re honored to be part of your journey. The 2023 winners are in good company, too, joining the ranks of our 2021 and 2022 winners.