Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) is the third biggest expense for any high-growth organization. This can be anywhere from several hundred thousands to over $5 million each year, based on a Spendflo Research report. If there is one consensus among finance leaders, it is that there is significant wastage that goes unnoticed. In this blog post, we present eight concrete ways in which you can minimize wastage and improve your bottom line. 

Top 8 tips to slash SaaS wastage

Conduct a usage audit 

A SaaS usage tracks, analyzes and assesses an organization’s  SaaS stack. Typically, organizations track how many licenses they own and who initiated it. However, that is merely cursory. We recommend a complete audit of the various ways in which each SaaS tool is being used. This might include:

• No. of active and inactive users with licenses
• How often they login to these tools
• What use cases do these tools serve
• How important is the tool for their everyday tasks
• How comfortable are they will using the tool
• How useful do they find the tool
• What license do they have (and the corresponding pricing model)

While an initial audit is great, you also need to have a mechanism for continuous SaaS usage monitoring. 

(Re)negotiate with vendors

Situations change for every organization. Especially as we’re facing an economic downturn, an organization’s ability to incur expenses are likely to change as well. Therefore, procurement and finance teams must prepare themselves to negotiate or re-negotiate SaaS contracts based on their current situation. This might involve down-sizing the number of licenses or downgrading to a less expensive plan. 

Spendflo’s expert buyers specialize is finding the best product and deal for every need, while delivering up to 30% savings. 

Cancel unused subscriptions

Unused subscriptions are tools that have been purchased and unutilized or under-utilized. This could results from auto-renewals that are charged renewal conversations or inactive accounts being charged because the end-user is using an alternative. 

Avoid this by keeping track of your tech stack in real time. Be alerted to unused/underused licenses regularly. Perform regular sentiment surveys to renew, retire, re-negotiate or retrain/replace tools.

Consider multi-user licenses

A multi-user licenses is when the subscription is assigned to an organization in which several users can use the same license. While few SaaS vendors offer this type of license, choosing one enables better predictability of expenses. For instance, you might get a multi-user license for a fixed fee for 20 users. On the flip side, you might end up paying more than necessary because the fees are fixed.

Avoid overprovisioning 

Overprovisioning is buying more resources than you currently need in anticipation of future scale. For example, you might need a CRM platform for email marketing. But as a package, you end up paying for landing pages, paid ad tracking, and other features that you dont need from this tool. 

Avoid overprovisioning by clearly identifying your needs, use cases and goals and choosing the tool that helps address them. This would give you better control and cost savings.  

Consolidate tools

SaaS sprawl is ubiquitous. Organizations and teams use a number of tools with overlapping features, duplicating costs. From time to time, conduct audits of the various features that each tool offers and identify opportunities for consolidation. It also helps to choose tools that do a wide number of tasks instead of specialized tools for each.

Train users

User adoption plays a critical role in realizing ROI for each tool. Therefore, it is  the responsibility of the organization to train and enable employees to take full advantage of the tools at hand. You can train users with how-to videos, articles, blog posts, demos, etc. 

Choose Spendflo

Spendflo is an all-in-one SaaS buying and management platforms that empowers CFOs to minimize wastage and save costs. See how Spendflo can eliminate wastage and optimize the SaaS landscape. Book a demo now.