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The earlier you solve a problem, the easier it is to solve it in the long run. You shouldn’t wait till things get hard. Tackle them while they’re small and manageable. That was the moral of this SaaSMe 2023 session, as our panelists discussed establishing SaaS management.
And that’s not as easy as it sounds. You need to get everyone across your organization behind SaaS management for it to work.
So, let’s explore some of the key takeaways from our panel of leaders who led the charge to bring SaaS management to their organization and evangelized the impact. In this session, you’ll learn how to drive organizational buy-in, and how these leaders demonstrated the need for a SaaS management platform.
Our speakers included:
- D. Wayne Poole, Chief Operating Officer, Zylo (Moderator)
- Steve Gentry, Chief Security Officer, Clari
- Partha Ray, Director of Business Applications, Nintex
- Tassilo Festetics, Chief Financial Officer, Curology
Recognize Your Tipping Point
Almost every organization that adopts SaaS management does so after a certain tipping point. Or, if you prefer, an “oh shit” moment. Whether that point involves frustrations about application visibility or cost optimization, it’s all the same. You see something needs fixing. SaaS management is the way.
And recognizing your own organization’s tipping point is the first step in getting your organization behind a SaaS Management program.
Here’s some of what our panelists experienced with their own organizations.
Maturity, Redundancy, and Automation
Steve Gentry, the chief security officer at Clari, said their tipping point started with getting a handle on redundancy.
As a SaaS-first company, almost their entire tech stack is in the cloud. Even before the SaaS boom, we saw before the pandemic, Clari was looking at redundancy, how their company matured over the last 10 years, and how exactly they were buying applications.
“It was a maturity aspect as a company and not even directly related to finance,” said Gentry. “But of course, as the economy tightened up, being able to drive that and make that a secondary process as a two-time Zylo customer for me, as we were looking at ways to get a handle on this and the Finance team came to me with spreadsheets.”
Gentry went on to discuss the value of automation so organizations could get away from that spreadsheet management aspect. Getting Finance to see that value was a big push for them to stop doing manual management, and free up valuable time for their organization. And according to Gentry, that automated SaaS management was important to making Clari a more mature company.
Visibility
For Nintex, Partha Ray said that their tipping point was their complete lack of visibility into their SaaS.
Specifically, they found themselves discussing their license seats for a project management tool with their vendor account manager. Their organization at the time only had around 500 employees. However, the account manager was reporting over a thousand users. That just didn’t add up.
“It feels bad to know that that data is not available to you as a director of business applications, but you’re having a vendor provide that.” Said Ray, “So, that was the time I started researching tool sets to help me do this.”
Cost Optimization
Tassilo Festetics from Curology had a similar problem with project management software, with no certainty if all their applications were being utilized. This was in part also a matter of visibility for them, but the real pain point for them was the cost.
“I think we had six,” said Festetics, “Which again, everybody’s like, ‘Well, but it’s $15,000, it’s $20,000.’ Yeah, but you do that five times and it’s $100,000 that you could just take out and consolidate it.”
Build Your Business Case and Get Support
Understanding your organization’s tipping point is always a strong start to establishing a SaaS management program. You then need to take it a step further and build a business case for how a SaaS management platform can help solve those problems.
Building a Business Case
When you want to make the argument for why your organization needs a SaaS management program, anecdotal evidence will only take you so far. Executives want to see the evidence. They want to see a solid business case on how SaaS management drives value.
Your business case should demonstrate concrete evidence of how you can manage applications and what it can do for the organization. What’s more, you’re showing that evidence in the context of your organization’s use case.
“Ultimately folks,” said Gentry. “If you’re going down this path, work with your sales team. Get a POC done. We chose three applications that we wanted to look at usage data on. And again, Zylo was fantastic at doing targeted POCs. We set the parameters of the POC and then I was able to use that data, put it in front of folks, and go, ‘This is just the glimpse.’”
And according to Gentry, that glimpse was able to show the executive leadership team where spend was going and the potential that data had to help finance free up spend and drive real value for the organization, which made a strong case for SaaS management in the process.
Partha Ray echoed that point and continued to say that collaboration with their sales team, backed with data from Zylo, helped make the business case viable.
Get Organizational Support
At this point, you have the evidence to show what value you’ll get from the SMP and executive support. From there, it’s getting your SaaS management program implemented. That involves introducing the concept and getting stakeholders across the organization involved.
For Partha Ray, this came in the form of showing Nintex’s VP of sales operations the benchmark data they had available when it came time to renew a contract.
“If you send me the outreach contract from last time around.” said Ray, “I can see what we can find out from Zylo and so forth.”
This was even before they did a concerted launch for the entire company.
With that benchmark, Ray was able to find that the quoted pricing on that solution was noticeably higher than their peers. He put that information in front of the VP who was able to secure a $25,000 price reduction from the original quote.
They went on to use this story in their overall communication across the organization as they launched the application catalog – leading the program by example.
Why Adopt SaaS Management Now?
As our panelists discussed, the time for SaaS management is now. It’s no longer a nice-to-have solution. Managing SaaS, and doing it effectively, is an essential business practice.
According to Gentry, “You can’t run revenue off a spreadsheet.” SaaS management has become a priority for more than just avoiding waste. It’s about saving time, maturing a business, and utilizing data to drive value in the tech stack, which was a point Ray echoed in his experience.
“I can guarantee you as a company of 50, you probably already have a couple hundred SaaS applications that you’re running,” said Gentry. “Or maybe even only a hundred SaaS applications, but you’re probably also way overspending on things .”
For Tassilo Festetics, establishing a SaaS management program now is about getting the rest of the organization behind the importance of driving value in the SaaS stack.
“If I get on a call with a team,” said Festetics, “And ask them about whatever software they’re using… people get naturally pretty urgent because they feel like, ‘Okay. Oh. That seems to be something that’s important.’”
Get Started Managing Your SaaS Now
Establishing a SaaS management program is a business essential. As our panelists showed us in this session, it’s just a matter of getting your business bought in. Identify your triggering event, build a business case, and sell that business case to leadership. Then it’s a matter of utilizing data to get a handle on your SaaS.
And this effort is more important than ever. Otherwise, your organization will almost certainly:
- Overspend – Gartner predicts that the average organization will overspend on SaaS by 25% or more by 2026.
- Waste Money – According to the SaaS Management Index, an average of $17M in SaaS spend is wasted on unused licenses every year.
- Increase Risk – Gartner also states that poor SaaS management leaves an organization 5x more susceptible to a cybersecurity incident.
Check out our guide on getting your SaaS in gear to learn more about why SaaS management is so important to the modern tech stack.
And if you want to hear more from our panelists on their SaaS management journeys, you can watch this SaaSMe 2023 session right here.