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According to IDC, SaaS spending eclipsed on-premises software last year, comprising 60% of software spend. That makes deploying a strategic SaaS Management strategy is more important than ever. Benchmarking metrics are a foundational piece of that strategy, giving you a pulse on the state of your SaaS stack and informing decision making.
Today, the average enterprise now pays for an average of 650 SaaS tools. And because of decentralized purchases by individual employees — not IT — companies that skip on SaaS Management drastically underestimate the scope of their SaaS portfolio, pay for redundant and underutilized tools, and experience unnecessary auto renewals and risk.
A centralized SaaS system of record brings these apps out of the shadows, and helps organizations take control of unmanaged SaaS, reduce spend, and improve optimization efforts. But what if you could add an additional class of insights to better understand how your SaaS portfolio, applications, and price compare to similar companies like yours?
In fact, organizations of all sizes increasingly use SaaS benchmarking to level up their SaaS governance efforts, and see how they match up against their peers. Read on to learn more about the benefits of using benchmark data to evaluate your SaaS stack.
What Exactly Is SaaS Benchmarking?
Simply put, benchmarking involves evaluating and comparing data against internal or external sources to optimize processes and improve performance.
For example, your existing SaaS Management platform likely shows how many licenses you hold for each application, utilization data, and cost. Benchmarking adds an additional layer of context, allowing you to see how your organization stacks up against companies of similar size and industry.
Key Benchmark Metrics for SaaS
When you add benchmarking to the SaaS Management mix, you open a whole new class of insights. It allows you to compare the valuable cost and utilization data against similar cohorts, so you can better understand your complete SaaS investment, and in turn make data-driven decisions to improve performance and reduce costs.
When thinking about benchmark metrics for SaaS, you want to focus on three core areas to drive the greatest impact: portfolio, popular applications, and price.
Portfolio
From a high-level view, you want to see how your application breakdown, spend, and sprawl stack up to similar organizations. Even if your current SaaS Management platform offers real-time insights, benchmarking validates the data further to help you understand if you employ the right number of tools, or spend more (or less) on SaaS than similar companies.
For example, a portfolio SaaS benchmarking prompt might alert you to the fact your organization spends 20% more on cloud software than your cohorts.
Popular Applications
Have you ever wondered which applications your competitors use? Or, maybe you lack the time to seek out new SaaS tools? Either way, a SaaS Management platform with on-demand benchmarking serves as your personal research hub, and does the work on your behalf.
A robust SaaS benchmarking tool allows you to search for popular tools by category, subcategory, and even function. You might use these insights to discover why your competitors always seem to gain the competitive edge, or see which sales platform they employ. Maybe you just want to know the most popular CMS across your industry? SaaS benchmarking easily unlocks these key insights.
Price
Wouldn’t it be great to not just assume but know for sure whether you’re paying a fair price for each license and app? A SaaS Management platform with real-time benchmarking not only lets you know what your competitors pay for the same SaaS tools, you can also set your own benchmarks by license price, application, and license type.
Not only can you support budget planning by running quantity and cost scenarios, SaaS benchmarking lets you take renewals to the next level as you come to the table with full understanding of how your current pricing compares to similar companies.
Unlock Actionable SaaS Insights with Zylo Benchmarks
At Zylo, we analyzed billions in SaaS spending and compiled years of anonymized data on the benchmarks that matter the most — portfolio, popular apps, and price — and now deliver these insights to our SaaS Management platform on-demand.
With Zylo Benchmarks, you can view high-level insights or apply filters to look deeper and compare benchmarks by category, subcategory, and even function. You can drill down into specific applications, say Zoom for example, to see how your organization’s pricing and utilization data compare to similar companies, or filter by business unit to see how your sales team or marketing team’s portfolio compares to your competitors.
Ready to add a new class of insights to your SaaS Management strategy and see how Zylo Benchmarks can help you better optimize your software portfolio? Schedule a demo today!
