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SaaS costs a lot – to the tune of $45M a year for the average organization. As such, you want to get the most value out of your software. Getting the best possible price on those tools is one of the great ways to do that.
In our last tip, we discussed running a license workflow 90 days ahead of renewal to make sure that you’re reharvesting inactive users and not buying shelfware. Once you’ve done that, you’re now buying fewer licenses than what you originally had.
So, guess what? The vendor is going to try to raise your unit price to retain that revenue and eat into your savings. That’s why it’s important to get a quote from the vendor a full 60 days before renewal with your new license quantity. Once you have that quote, you can run a price benchmark to use as leverage in your negotiation.
Let’s explore how you can do this with Zylo Benchmarks.
What Is Zylo Benchmarks?
Zylo Benchmarks provides license price benchmarks for the most popular applications, based on anonymized and aggregated data from real software agreements. It allows you to understand license SKU price and quantity compared to a cohort of companies of a similar size or purchase size.
Note that Benchmarks is not a standard platform feature, so you may or may not have this today. Reach out to your account team if you’re interested.
How Do I Use Zylo Benchmarks?
Let’s say you’re working on your Salesforce renewal.
In Zylo, you’ll open up Salesforce from the Applications grid, where you’ll see all the details about the application and contract. Then, you’ll want to jump over to the Benchmarks tab.
You’ll see a license price benchmark calculator. You’ll need to include:
- License type, or SKU
- License quantity
- Quoted unit price
For our example, we’re working with 500 Salesforce Platform licenses for a unit price of $230. Once you click the Configure button, it will generate the results of your benchmark. The spot where it says “You” is relative to the actual average.
- If you’re over to the right, you’ve got a lot of wiggle room to negotiate. In our Salesforce example, “You” are far to the right of average. That means there is room to negotiate.
- If you’re over to the left, you’re likely already getting a great price on that specific SKU. It may not be worth haggling on price, but you could consider asking for add-ons, like a sandbox account or support credits.
Ultimately, use this benchmarking data to hold your ground on the unit price for the amount of licenses you need.
How Do I Get Benchmark Data with Zylo?
There are a few ways Zylo provides benchmarks to our customers.
In-App Benchmarks
Access Benchmarks in app, where you can fully self-service and benchmark across the applications that we have available. To learn more, view the data sheet here.
Benchmarks as a Service
If you need more support, bespoke and custom benchmarks, and/or negotiation strategies, Benchmarks as a Service is probably the solution for you. View the data sheet here to learn more.
SaaS Negotiator
Finally, if you don’t have capacity to manage or negotiate all of your long-tail apps, SaaS Negotiator can help. Our team of procurement experts will work with you to scope out what negotiations we’ll own and make sure that we’re driving the best price on every single renewal. View the data sheet here to learn more.
Check out the Knowledge Base for more best practices and reach out to your CSM if you have any questions. They’re here to help! Stay tuned for our next tip, where we’ll talk about how Zylo helps you finalize your renewals and your setup for success when this renewal comes back around.
