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Before the age of SaaS, IT departments bought and deployed all applications, maintaining full control, visibility, and security of the software stack.
Today, software purchase and deployment are decentralized with LOBs purchasing up to 69% of SaaS subscriptions annually. As a result, on average, companies underestimate the number of SaaS applications in their stack by two to three times.
Unfortunately, relationships between IT and LOBs are often broken: IDG reports that 58% of LOB respondents CIOs as strategic advisors – an increase of 30% from the previous year. Therefore, IT and Procurement need full visibility into the SaaS stack to build IT collaboration and inform business strategy within an organization.
Armed with Zylo, Procurement and IT leaders access a complete SaaS repository, enabling the discovery of all applications, visibility into application usage, renewal planning, and increased security.
Cost Center Reporting Informs SaaS Spend Strategies
Cost Center Reports enable Zylo users to parse out application spend by cost center and identify all contributing cost centers to a particular application.
Cost Center Reports use existing cost center taxonomy from the ERP and Expense Management systems to report on which cost centers are responsible for what software and reveal opportunities to streamline purchases. These reports display applications, spend, and renewal dates across one or many cost centers.
With these reports, IT and business units quickly identify what SaaS subscriptions are in use and how they can optimize their SaaS stack. Users discover every cost center that pays for a certain application and all applications that are paid for by a particular cost center.
Additionally, discovery identifies duplicative spend across cost centers that is common in large enterprises. Cost centers inform optimization of overarching spend strategies within a particular business unit and across the enterprise.
Cost Center Reporting Informs IT Procurement Roadshows to Increase Collaboration
Without full visibility into a software stack, Procurement meets blindly with business owners. Procurement roadshows are spent focused on gathering information on what software had been purchased, reactive and missed renewals, and attempting to plan for the coming year.
As a result, procurement is viewed as a cop and another roadblock to business results rather than a necessary strategic tool. To become a strategic partner, procurement must reverse this reputation.
With Zylo, procurement teams are armed with an up-to-date report of attributed application spend. By simply displaying the Zylo Cost Center Report to a business unit during roadshows, procurement automatically provides insight into a business unit’s SaaS stack and a foundation for collaboration.
Saving time and energy, procurement teams now focus on guiding the business in strategy rather than parsing out a SaaS stack. Coupled with the Views feature, procurement teams are able to hold business units responsible by providing this level of visibility automatically in real time.
Armed with accurate and timely information, procurement is offered a seat at the table and is viewed as a strategic partner.
IT Bolsters Cross-functional Alignment
Granular level visibility into application spend enables IT to drive cross-functional alignment. Business units are able to view spend across their organization, strategize, and roll-up their individual strategy into greater IT initiatives. Cost Center Reports equip IT to partner with the organization to drive efficiencies and best practices.
Additionally, Cost Center Reporting further reveals Shadow IT and duplicative application functionality.
For instance, one of our customers recently approached a Slack renewal. With our Cost Center Reporting tool, they discovered that four different cost centers were purchasing the same software. The Zylo admin contacted the necessary parties and began driving an enterprise-agreement of Slack — driving collaboration across the business, saving money, and ensuring application security.
Drive Strategy for the Future
The ability to break down applications by cost center enables business leaders a new level of execution at the functional level that drives cross-functional alignment
A departmental level data approach allows each business to set and understand their strategy in a much clearer and faster way, enabling collaboration between IT, Procurement, and Finance to make the best decisions in a shorter amount of time.
While continuing to provide macro-level strategic solutions, Zylo is now a solution for every individual business unit that owns software. Zylo is for the business — at the macro and departmental level.
To learn more about how your organization can benefit from viewing application spend across cost centers, request a demo today.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Cory Wheeler
As Zylo’s Chief Customer Officer, Cory is responsible for helping our customers drive ROI and SaaS Management success with Zylo. He helps companies of all sizes effectively discover, optimize, and govern their SaaS through Zylo’s platform and services. Prior to founding Zylo, Cory spent 15 years in finance and procurement, managing categories and sourcing teams at Arthur Andersen, BearingPoint, and both Takeda and Astellas Pharmaceuticals. He built the procurement organization at ExactTarget, and managed the integration with the Salesforce Marketing Cloud procurement organization in 2015. He and his family reside in Indianapolis, IN, where they can be found cheering for the Purdue Boilermakers and Chicago Cubs.