I’ve spent the last several years of my professional life in the SaaS field. Working in business development, alliances, and account management at a SaaS provider, it’s an exciting world, but one that comes with new challenges as well.
SaaS Applications are Only Effective if the Team Uses Them
On the buyer and user side of SaaS software, it can be a struggle to know what applications you have and more importantly, the value each app provides. For example, in an innovative sales culture, we’re always on the lookout for the next new solution to make sales more efficient and increase the time we can spend adding value to the buyer’s journey.
It seems that every month there is a new tool someone is encouraging you to use for calling, tracking cycles, creating content, honing messaging, etc. After a while, it’s hard to tell which are adding value and which are adding additional tasks to your day. In a surprise to me, my experience in account management was just as hectic. I spent so much time doing duplicate work in multiple systems that it took away time that should have been spent on strategic conversations with my clients.
Managing with Transparency and Measuring Value is a Win-Win for the Buyer and Seller
On the other side of selling SaaS software, it is equally a challenge to ensure your application is providing value to your client and most importantly, that they know it is providing value. At my prior company, working with partners and clients, it quickly became clear that maintaining visibility into their license usage on our software was a challenge for them.
Often, at the end of a term, we would have to go back to the client and let them know they were 10%, 20%, 50% over-provisioned on licenses. Think about it this way, how many times have you had to go ask a SaaS provider how many licenses you’ve provisioned and then tried to figure out who’s actually using them? It doesn’t make for the greatest renewal conversation for either party.
Optimizing SaaS Applications from One System of Record
When I learned about Zylo launching in 2016, it just made too much sense. I was working with Procurement teams seeing them struggle with this challenge, and being in sales I was feeling those pains from a whole different angle. Zylo solves for this challenge on both sides?! Count me in.
There is something to be said about being a part of something new: new to me, new to the market, a new approach to (essentially) a new problem. There is real excitement about the work we are doing and partnering with some forward-thinking Procurement, IT, and Sales Ops teams. People see the massive shift to SaaS/Cloud and are embracing it with an innovative way to operate in this new reality.
When we are reporting to our clients that they are spending twice as much on SaaS as they thought, or are showing them of all their redundant applications, letting them know how much licensing they’ve “over-bought” on large SaaS deployments or uncovering applications with low-utilization that prompts an internal training push, we can see we’re just scratching the surface and the most exciting things are still ahead.
Partnering with enterprises to actively manage their SaaS and Cloud spend to the right applications that are driving the most value in the organization fuels the excitement of our team every single day.
This is why I love selling a SaaS Platform for SaaS Optimization.
