As we covered in last week’s blog, CIOs need ultimate visibility into cloud spend and usage in order to make the best decisions for the organization. Along similar lines lies the issues of management of these applications. Gaining visibility is certainly the first step in building a strong foundation, but even with visibility into all facets of subscription software internally, CIOs can find it difficult to manage if all of the information is stored in multiple spreadsheets or ‘silos’, especially if the data originates with a 3rd party.

According to the 2017 State of the CIO report, CIOs are increasingly spending more time on strategic initiatives. In fact, 50% reported they spend most of their time on “Transformational” activities while just over 30% are considered “Strategic” while the remaining 20% are strictly “Functional”. At Zylo, the majority of our customers are led by Transformational CIOs that take an active role in managing one of the larger (and growing) expense areas in their organization, cloud applications, as a strategic opportunity to transform their organization.

CIOs Must Keep Up With Innovation While Managing IT Growth

40% of CIOs spending their time on ‘Transformational’ initiatives in the report say that they’re focused on aligning IT initiatives with business goals and another 30% are seeking to implement new systems and architecture. Leading conversations around cloud spend management at the leadership level can create a bridge to line of business owners and allow the CIO to connect IT budget and priorities directly to those business-driving initiatives.

CIOs Need a Cloud Intelligence System of Record

With full visibility into cloud apps that their organizations spend money on and use, CIOs have the opportunity to radically reshape their organizations. The CIO has no shortage of responsibilities, ranging from helping the organization reach specific revenue growth targets to simplifying IT to leading product innovation and finally to reducing spend. But without actionable data, how can the CIO make these transformations? Data is only good if it’s actionable and presented in a clear manner, and we know that’s easier said than done most times.

Enter a cloud intelligence system of record. What could this type of platform actually do to help the CIO better manage SaaS and cloud applications? Let’s examine a few components:

Executive Dashboard: Having all provider-specific data in one single platform, versus many siloed platforms, CIOs can see cloud metrics alongside spend and application trending detail to make data-driven decisions.

Renewals: With proactive visibility and alerting, as well as application level data ownership, CIOs are in a much better position to negotiate and get the best contract terms available.

Supplier Relationships: Effectively managing supplier relationships is now possible when the contact information, quotes, contracts and notes about the relationship are stored with the current contract spend and application utilization information. The days of asking a provider to share utilization detail in order to negotiate a deal with that same provider are over.

There’s a Better Way For CIOs

At Zylo, we believe the discovery, management and optimization of cloud licensing can make IT strategic. Interested in learning more? Download our latest ebook entitled, “5 C-Suite Executives Weigh In On the Future of the Subscription Economy”.