How ClearScore saved millions on SaaS with Vertice

The Challenge

Historically, SaaS procurement had been decentralized, with different teams independently negotiating their own SaaS vendor contracts. Inconsistencies quickly emerged in commercial terms and contract quality due to varying levels of expertise and, especially, limited access to benchmarking. 

Meanwhile, the technology team, despite trying to manage the complexity through detailed spreadsheets, was finding it near impossible to track spend vs. budget, prevent duplication in the SaaS stack, prevent non-compliant or unauthorised spending, or keep track of contract renewals, primarily as natural headcount turnover resulted in a loss of knowledge, leading to unexpected expirations or costly auto-renewals.

Overall, the tech stack proved unmanageable, with a constant threat of avoidable overspending.

The Solution 

Vertice’s first step was to integrate with ClearScore’s single sign-on (SSO) tool, identifying every SaaS tool that ClearScore users accessed through their work email accounts. This allowed the team to instantly see the breadth of the SaaS stack and identify tools that ClearScore was previously unaware of. 

Instantly, the team could identify opportunities for rationalisation, creating savings opportunities within days of engagement.

Led by a dedicated Customer Success Manager and Procurement Manager who understood the ClearScore business background and ambitions, the Vertice team was able to structure every new contract with both price and short- and long-term company objectives in mind. 

Vertice’s procurement team gathered all the necessary details for every renewal from ClearScore’s stakeholders, leveraging the wealth of data within the Vertice platform. Vertice then engaged with vendors directly, handling negotiations while preserving ClearScore’s vendor relationships and ensuring contracts meet budget and future needs. 

Vertice’s team ensured that they fully understood ClearScore’s corporate objectives and forward plans; the IT team’s departmental preferences; and ClearScore’s procurement preferences, such as payment terms and contract duration.

The final challenge was the creation of new workflows to reduce overall procurement cycle time and ensure continuous compliance. With Intelligent Workflows, Vertice provided a library of over 50 workflow templates, built on best practice plus the most efficient workflows seen across Vertice’s customer base. These gave ClearScore a solid grounding to develop their custom workflows from, adapting the templates to suit the business’s realities, such as adding alternative approval stages and intelligent re-routing options.

The Results 

Initially ClearScore aimed to save just over £450,000 annually across the £3.5m of SaaS spend under the Tech team’s remit - more than a 4x ROI on the Vertice fee. 

However, as ClearScore saw the depth of visibility that Vertice could provide on the IT team’s SaaS stack, and the skills of the negotiation team, they quickly decided to include SaaS tools from across the business, including the entire software stack for a recently acquired subsidiary, Aro Finance. 

This expanded Vertice’s remit to £5.7m of SaaS spend. 

The results to date have exceeded expectations. In a single contract renewal negotiation with an identity verification SaaS vendor, Vertice delivered £2.6m in savings - a reduction of 60% on the previous contract value, without any impact on the vendor relationship. 

This sizable financial saving is by no means an outlier. The team has also delivered a 76% saving on a market intelligence tool, a 60% saving on a CRM data management tool, and a 48% saving on a data analytics tool. 

Overall, Vertice has delivered a total of £4+m in savings - a more than 30x ROI. Tracking and measuring this progress was completely effortless, as every contract’s initial value, expectations, status and savings are all visualised on the Vertice platform and updated in real time for all users.  

Additional benefits have included greater confidence, control and visibility over the SaaS stack; improved vendor relationships; increased compliance in SaaS purchasing across the business; and enormous time savings in negotiations and more efficient procurement workflows.