After your security team discovers that there are 14 unauthorized design tools running on servers at the same time as finance teams fight with IT departments about a surprise 30% increase in costs related to core database contracts, rather than having a software problem, there is actually a process issue surrounding the purchase of software.
This includes incomplete software purchases, alerts on calendars for many things and poor pricing information.
This guide will show a breakdown of the SaaS buying platforms available to identify problems with the visibility of purchases and how to keep control of employee requests as well as to provide better pricing at time of contract renewal.
Developing a Standardized Process For SaaS Buying Platforms
Most companies purchase software incorrectly because they have not implemented a formalized process to acquire software that fits the unique needs of each company. It would be unwise to buy an application discovery tool for a group that really needs a strong negotiating position when it comes to pricing.
Vendors are often guilty of attempting to combine different types of tools.
Vendors will frequently have no problems advertising total control while their software only provides part of the puzzle. If your key concern is visibility of unknown inventory, you should focus on getting improved visibility of approved purchases.
If it takes six weeks to get an approval, a company will want to develop a smoother intake process and a more efficient method for organizing software requests. If you are paying significantly more than what the market would support, then you have to determine whether you have the right benchmarks and tools to provide you with the support needed to negotiate for a more competitive price.
Do not fall into the vendor trap! Organize your pain points by grouping them into the following categories. Once you have established your pain points, find the appropriate software tools to help you solve your respective problems.
These are the major categories on the pain point list:
Discovery and Visibility
By utilizing visibility tools and various systems, the procurement team can determine what applications your team members are actually using (often without approval), and therefore what they are spending money on, based on SSO, expense systems, and network data. As a result, if you do not have visibility into your team's applications and spend, you are unable to manage them.
The next step after identifying the application and spend is intake and orchestration.
Intake and Orchestration
Intake and orchestration are all about the application's internal workflow. For example, an employee may want to use a certain application, and he/she must request approval from the legal, security, privacy, and finance departments (all of which may have different approval processes) prior to using it.
Trying to manage this with email or chat applications is, at best, very cumbersome and often leads to issues later on (e.g., rejection after all approvals are obtained). With orchestration, the procurement process is automatically routed to the right department without needing to worry about managing manually via email or chat.
The next step is benchmarking and managed negotiation.
Benchmarking and Managed Negotiation
Sometimes, although a buyer knows the type of application(s) he/she would like to purchase, they do not know whether or not they are being charged an appropriate amount. As a result, many buyers mistakenly pay a higher price than what they need to pay.
Procurement teams use benchmarking tools to gather information from thousands of vendors regarding how much they paid in the past for similar applications and how much they expect to pay for them in the future. In addition, many of these companies will negotiate with the vendor on behalf of the buyer to obtain the best possible pricing for the buyer.
Lastly, internal marketplaces.
Internal Marketplaces
An internal marketplace is an approved software catalog allowing employees to view which software is approved for their company and request a license with just one click. Using an internal marketplace provides a level of safety and consistency as to which approved software is being used by employees.
The Complete Breakdown of Top SaaS Buying Platforms
Below is a list of vendors providing money-saving tools, including a brief description of who they are and the type of solution(s) they provide.
1. Spendflo
Spendflo is a complete AI-native intake-to-pay platform designed to support semiconductor manufacturers and other indirect spend. Spendflo provides a complete procurement experience for the semiconductor industry from request to renewal. It enables you to gain complete process control.
Spendflo's target audience is finance and procurement teams at fast-growing companies that require total oversight for high levels of spending on purchase orders and payables.
Spendflo uses its own case study reporting to publish public savings claims about its customers. The case studies provided by Spendflo report savings of $375,000 for Acumatica and a 30% reduction in software spend for Crownpeak annually. However, it's important to remember that these are unverified, vendor-reported claims and that all other pricing information follows your product tier and total apps managed.
2. Vertice
Vertice's software dashboard provides software for negotiating prices and the support of real people in the preparation and execution phases of negotiations. They have an extremely strong emphasis on pricing intelligence and savings models that can be implemented immediately.
They negotiate on behalf of businesses and target mid-market and enterprise with large recurring contract expenditures on software. Vertice is an option for those who do not want to handle vendor negotiations for themselves.
Recent reports from a partner indicate estimated savings of $3.5 million and a 60% reduction in pricing for ClearScore's identity verification service. Their pricing is available only on request and is based on a fixed amount per year.
3. Tropic
Tropic offers software requests combined with the extra legal, negotiation, and strategy assistance needed to help you obtain value from your purchases and meet your goals.
In addition to providing you with a process map for requesting software, Tropic supports you by providing expert legal advice and the necessary tools and techniques for negotiating effectively with sales and vendor representatives.
Tropic supplies you with unique value from its negotiation capability which helps to negotiate the best contract terms and conditions for technology companies and enterprise customers who wish to leverage their software ordering processes and maximize their purchase prices.
As always, you should be very cautious about making assumptions and trusting your instincts about pricing. While various third-party sources have said the estimated monthly cost for Tropic is between three thousand dollars (USD) and twenty thousand dollars (USD) per year, these numbers may vary significantly. You will need to contact the company directly to obtain an actual quote for services.
4. Zip
Zip is a leading company in the enterprise orchestration market, serving as a centralized web-based tool to facilitate company purchases.
Zip has been engineered to expedite purchase requests and streamline the approval process by automating the route taken by purchase requests between multiple departments (finance, legal, IT, security) and speeding up multi-department approval timelines.
Zip's capabilities go beyond just software purchases. Pricing is based on a quote; therefore, the primary focus of Zip is to speed up processes, rather than focus on a fixed dollar savings claim.
5. Sastrify
Sastrify's primary focus is to reduce the time spent on negotiating software renewals through access to benchmark pricing data that allows you to negotiate more effectively and eliminates the need for extensive internal procurement resources. By using Sastrify, you may be able to eliminate the additional 10% price increase that typically occurs each year.
They are popular with European-founded and global mid-market companies who have a high recurring software expenditure.
As a first pass, their pricing structure is customized to each client, as they do not have a standard public tiered system, and their published savings are primarily general statements rather than firm, verified case studies.
6. CloudEagle
CloudEagle's modular structure allows users to purchase only the tools they require by separating them into "manage," "govern," and "procure" tools.
The flexibility of CloudEagle's modular structure is appealing to mid-market and enterprise level purchasing teams. For example, if you are only interested in discovering your company's hidden applications (i.e., tools that you may not know are being used), you do not have to purchase the negotiation tool offered by CloudEagle.
According to third parties, CloudEagle begins charging during procurement at $2000-$2500 monthly, depending on employee count. They can reduce Salesforce costs by 15%, give Sapphire Ventures 30% savings on renewals, and offer their own proprietary documentation to support this.
7. Zylo
Zylo specializes in enterprise-level software discovery and spend transparency. It integrates fintech and SaaS applications with front-end payment integrations to reveal what you own (or do not own) as well as how much each item costs.
Zylo eliminates shadow IT.
Large enterprises leverage Zylo's insightful capabilities to remove duplicate applications from their inventory and eliminate uncontrolled spend on shadow IT applications. Zylo is an information platform that will allow you to visualize all of your enterprise processes running behind the scenes.
Zylo provides custom pricing. Adobe has used Zylo to identify more than 2600 applications and save them $60 million as part of one huge case study. This is a large claim for one case study, not an everyday expected outcome.
8. Zluri
Zluri connects your application inventory to your employee onboarding and offboarding processes. It combines a discovery feature with access control.
Zluri controls the lifecycle of users.
IT teams leverage Zluri to ensure that when a new hire starts they get the correct software right away, and when a new employee is terminated, they lose all access at that moment. Thus, Zluri prevents wasted licenses that are tied to employee accounts.
Zluri's pricing is purely quote-based. Within their standard search results no company has published data about the financial outcomes generated for Zluri's clients.
9. Torii
Torii is an intuitive tool for software discovery and automating IT workflow processes. Torii's main objectives are to eliminate shadow IT and manage how you utilize your existing licenses.
Torii tracks all spending that occurs through a corporate card.
Torii is an extremely IT-focused product. Torii can help you discover why employees are expensing tools that they've never received approval for. Torii's third-party cost estimates average $2.50 per employee each month, but you'll want to verify this with your own research. Torii has been rated highly on several review sites due to how easy it is to use.
10. Productiv
Productiv offers more than just tracking employee login data. Productiv offers features level engagement so that you can track whether your employees are actually using the software they convinced you to purchase.
Productiv gives you proof that the software is being used.
Enterprise IT and finance teams utilize Productiv right before they renew contracts. The data provided allows you to easily recognize which employees you can afford to drop down to a cheaper package if a significant number (40%) have not engaged with the core features in the past 90 days.
Pricing is based on quotes. Productiv's value proposition as a SaaS buying platform is the substantive proof of software usage it provides to assist you in negotiations.
11. Vendr
Vendr provides buying intelligence and managed negotiation and is a significant player in this field. They provide clients with both self-service data and premium negotiation support services.
Vendr negotiates directly with technology vendors on behalf of their clients to secure the best prices.
Companies that would rather have an outside organization handle the hassle of negotiating pricing with vendors use Vendr. They claim to have facilitated over 40,000 deals and have insight into $4 billion of technology spending.
Search results have varying pricing options, from no cost for a basic account to thousands of dollars for high-end enterprise tools, and Vertice has recently acquired Vendr, which modifies some of the ways they approach the market.
12. Varisource
Varisource aims to automate technology savings for all indirect spending for companies by monitoring technology savings associated with software, telecom, cloud, travel, and shipping. Varisource's mission is to eliminate overall waste for the organization.
Mid-market and larger-scale organizations use Varisource to gain various cost benefits, not just software governance, and claim to see up to 30 times their investment returned and cost savings realized in less than 30 days of using the service.
Varisource's approach is to share savings, i.e., there are no upfront fees for using the service; however, be mindful of the fact that companies claim to save between 25% and 30% through Varisource, but that claim has not been verified by an independent source.
13. SpendHound
SpendHound is a low-barrier approach for smaller enterprises to access benchmark data and negotiation assistance services.
SpendHound was designed for mid-market companies and specifically for organizations with fewer than 1,000 employees. For startups, SpendHound even has a free tier to make it an attractive option.
An enterprise plan with SpendHound typically costs $10,000 per year, but the software guarantees a minimum savings of $150,000 per user. One published experience resulted in $345,000 in savings after reviewing 200 tools.
14. NPI Financial
NPI Financial specializes in the enterprise IT sector, providing benchmark data for software, hardware, cloud computing, and telecommunications, down to the individual item level.
Because of their comprehensive nature, they work with large enterprises that have extensive and complicated IT systems. NPI performs a far deeper analysis than merely looking at software license subscriptions; they have access to the entire network of systems connected to the enterprise.
Pricing for NPI services is determined on a case-by-case basis. The company claims to have benchmark data on over 150,000 individual items and 1,500 specific vendors, and to share their findings with companies that experience an average of 10% to 40% savings from a single transaction.
15. SoftwareOne Marketplace
SoftwareOne Marketplace is an online platform for browsing, purchasing, and managing a company's software licenses. It acts as a marketplace to facilitate the purchasing process rather than a procurement or buying tool.
SoftwareOne combines all software purchases across multiple vendors into one vendor.
Companies use SoftwareOne to gain access to a single provider of licenses for all software from thousands of publishers spread across more than 7,500 software publishers.
Pricing for SoftwareOne is based on the licensing requirements of each individual product purchased rather than a blanket fee.
16. AppDirect
AppDirect is also a provider of infrastructure, which includes subscription commerce, marketplace, and billing solutions.
The company offers internal catalogues for all their subscription based services, including software.
Companies utilize AppDirect when they want to develop and manage their own internal IT marketplace for IT services offered to employees.
Pricing is custom for large companies and they estimate that AppDirect supports millions of cloud subscriptions world wide.
17. Flywl
Flywl is focused on cloud marketplace purchasing only. The company's purchasing interface allows users to track spending and pricing for cloud service providers, including AWS, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud.
Flywl assists companies in identifying the overall total cost for all the software they purchase through their cloud services.
Pricing is not listed publicly, however Flywl provides the ability for users of SaaS buying platforms to get a complete view of their cloud service spending, all in one place.
18. Pellucid Network
Pellucid Network is very specific in how they operate. Their focus is providing a streamlined approach to cloud service and AWS Marketplace purchasing.
The company uses commitments for future cloud use to provide additional discounts on cloud service pricing.
Enterprises utilize Pellucid to curate and manage their cloud service catalogues, manage private offers and ensure that all purchases they make with Pellucid count towards their overall cloud agreement.
Pricing is not available to the public. AWS gives you a way to track all your software you purchase on AWS.
19. SaaSyfy
SaaSyfy provides a curated marketplace of vetted vendors and an AI-assisted consultant that helps you determine what products may be the best option for you.
SaaSyfy provides you with a way to match the right tool to your exact budget. SaaSyfy is designed by businesses that didn't need assistance managing a complex internal workflow but did want help understanding how to buy software.
SaaSyfy does not post pricing on its website and focuses primarily on the discovery/selection phase of the buying process.
20. Tekpon
Tekpon brings together procurement services with a marketplace of verified software/tools, pricing transparency, and peer reviews.
Tekpon provides independent, neutral software research. Tekpon is primarily used by businesses that want a central repository for performing independent research on software with an added layer of assistance with vendor negotiation. Tekpon boasts a marketplace of over 6,000 verified software/tools.
Tekpon's procurement assistance appears to operate on a quote model, while procurement assistance is a service that Tekpon provides. Tekpon claims that their companies report 30%–40% average savings on a regular basis.
Making a Decision About Your Tech Stack
Ultimately, the market will tell you that every piece of software can do everything, which is not the case.
At the end of the day, you will decide on your final technology based on exactly at what point in the buying process you break down. If you have an IT team that is blind to software options, consider using a discovery platform among the various SaaS buying platforms; if your finance team is inundated with email, consider an orchestration tool; if you have clear criteria for what you are looking for, but are being offered terrible prices, purchase benchmarks and signs of negotiation.
Why would you pay a massive premium for a negotiation platform if your major software vendors refuse to negotiate?
Whenever you are negotiating a contract, always ask the vendor for hard evidence of their pricing. Specifically, ask how many recent, similar transactions they have had for your specific software tool, at your exact company size. You should not allow auto-renewals to determine your budget. You should gain control over your data, implement a stringent approval process, and make vendors compete for your dollars!
