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Have you ever just renewed or let an app auto-renew because you just didn’t have the time, data, or process in place to make that decision?
Organizations encounter an average of 200 SaaS renewals a year — approximately one per business day. So it’s not surprising that renewals slip through the cracks. Without an effective SaaS management strategy, these renewals often come as a surprise, leading to uninformed contract negotiations and unplanned and unbudgeted auto-renewals.
Each application contract holds valuable SaaS data related to pricing, license, and renewal terms that are critical for maintaining accuracy and helping you effectively manage renewals and overall SaaS spend. But often, the purchaser accepts contract terms without a second thought. And with individuals taking charge of SaaS acquisition, it becomes challenging to centralize contract data into a digestible and helpful format.
Zylo offers a better way.
Introducing Zylo Contract Center
Zylo recently released Zylo Contract Center, a powerful new contract data management experience both at the application and portfolio level. With Zylo Contract Center, customers can manage their SaaS contracts more effectively to take control of renewals and ultimately drive cost savings.
“Contract data management is a critical component of effective SaaS management, yet it can be a real pain point for organizations,” says Zylo VP, Product, Ian Runyon. “With the launch of Zylo Contract Center, we are providing our customers a streamlined and effective way to manage complex SaaS contracts, including renewals, to achieve accurate, data-driven cost savings and license optimization for their organizations. We believe this new feature, along with our industry-leading SaaS discovery capabilities, sets us apart in the market and further solidifies Zylo’s position as the go-to platform for managing SaaS spend.”
With a seamless integration with Coupa Contract Management, approved contracts are updated nightly, allowing users to discover apps before a payment is even made. Zylo contract data is automatically kept up to date.
Zylo Contract Center Benefits
Zylo Contract Center offers organizations the following benefits:
Save Time
Ditch the manual and error-prone process of tracking SaaS contract details in a spreadsheet. Storing SaaS contract information reliably in a centralized system of record reduces time spent tracking down important information like total contract value, software features and benefits, and overall number of licenses or users.
Optimize SaaS Stack
According to Zylo data, the average organization only uses 56% of its provisioned licenses. With contract details in place, quickly view which applications you currently employ in your SaaS inventory. Deprovision or downgrade underutilized licenses in real time, and use the available information to guide future software acquisition decisions to avoid redundant and duplicate applications.
Save Money
SaaS optimization offers opportunities for netting cost savings. For example, simply examine total users as stated in contract agreements and compare them to your actual user base. If you discover excess users, rightsize the licenses upon the next renewal (or earlier if possible) to realize savings.
Prep for renewals
The average renewal takes eight hours of preparation. We recommend professionals start the process 60 to 90 days in advance to gather all information necessary for negotiations. Centralized access to up-to-date contract information puts users in the driver’s seat when it comes to SaaS contract renewals.
“Every SaaS contract is unique and getting an understanding of your SaaS contract portfolio can be overwhelming,” says Chris Smith, Purchasing Manager at Entrata. “Zylo’s Contract Center empowers our team with visibility into the key contract terms, without the need of complicated BI work or manual data manipulation, to quickly understand all contracts, take control of renewals and deliver consolidation and cost savings to the company.”
Inform Contract Negotiations
With more time to prepare for renewals, stakeholders come to the negotiation table armed with data and confidence. Not to mention, they avoid getting hit with auto-renewals that weren’t baked into the budget.
Contract details show the application owner, who should provide context around why the application is critical and what they’re looking for into the next contract timeframe. They can also provide valuable information on the vendor relationship — such as whether there have been significant outages or CSM churn — which can be leveraged in negotiations.
Other valuable data that fuels renewal negotiations includes utilization data, user sentiment, growth expectations, and price benchmarks.
An Improved Contract Experience
Ultimately, Zylo Contract Center improves the contract experience for customers by better organizing contracts and aligning them with contract lifecycle management (CLM) providers. And with proactive discovery capabilities, users can rest assured knowing Zylo discovers 100% of SaaS applications and spend, including new SaaS entering their estate before any exchange of money occurs.
Start managing your SaaS contracts today. Schedule a personalized demo to see how Zylo streamlines SaaS contract management for large enterprises and small businesses alike.
