Product Update: Usage Analytics & Discovery
Joel Windels | FEB 02, 2023
4 min read
At Vertice and in the SaaS purchasing market in general, there is a lot of focus on the acquisition of new tools. Ensuring that buyers get the best possible price, benchmarking against competitors and facilitating a streamlined purchasing process are all core parts of how Vertice helps customers. Once a customer purchases the marketing automation product of their dreams, for example, what happens next? How does a business leader ensure that the technologies they are investing in are being utilized in the right way?
An average of 33% of licenses purchased are not even used by employees, and around 16% of users are on a tier beyond what their usage requirements suggest. This represents an appealing opportunity to the CFO, and supports any initiative to create a lean, effective business in what is an uncertain business climate.
The latest updates to the Vertice platform are aimed at solving exactly that, as well as allowing business leaders to discover which tools they are already using across their organization in a seamless and insightful way.
Usage Analytics
The typical modern organization uses in excess of 100 different SaaS platforms. That number is also expanding, with adoption of new products increasing every year – generating a growing expense in both time and money to the CFO and her team. Compounding the issue is a question that frustrates IT, finance and departmental leaders all the time – is anyone even using this product we just spent a fortune on?
Vertice Usage Analytics maps the information from contracts, such as the number and value of licenses, and compares it with real usage data. In practice, this means examining the 75 seats of LinkedIn Sales Navigator that the VP sales decided to purchase to better understand how members of the sales organization are adopting the new tool.
With these new updates, Vertice customers can now see how frequently any products in their SaaS stack are being actively used. Returning to the Sales Navigator example, it would allow leaders to see how many of those 75 Sales Navigator licenses are being used by sales reps.
This functionality comes with a number of benefits:
- Informing the negotiation of renewals and new purchases. Data that demonstrates actual requirements (eg. 50 licenses) compared with contracted capability (eg 75 licenses) generates significant leverage for the customer in reducing the cost of renewals. Customers can ensure that they are not paying any more for SaaS than the business truly needs.
- Identifying products that are being critically under-used, suggesting either poor management, limited utility or even a lack of awareness. It’s surprising how often the CFO and CIO are blinded to the full SaaS stack.
- Flagging users that may not need to be on a particular SKU or platform level, offering opportunities to further downsize agreements and ultimately save on SaaS.
- Supporting SaaS rollout and onboarding, providing features that can help understand the effectiveness of training and new purchases.
Comparing contractual agreements and accurate spend data with actual usage and real employee utilization has never been simpler. Vertice customers can get access to these continuously-updated insights for free, which are being released on a staggered rollout over the coming days.
SaaS Discovery
Ask any CFO to list all of the SaaS products that her organization pays for and 99% of the time the response will be a variation on ‘I don’t know’.
SaaS is largely self-provisioned, often leaving both finance and IT leaders unaware of every product being used by departments like marketing, sales and engineering. Getting a true inventory of SaaS is almost impossible, and involves spreadsheets, billing software and an awful lot of communication. These early 2023 updates to Vertice also include powerful discovery functionality, automating the process of mapping the SaaS landscape already being used.
With Vertice, customers can now automatically scan SaaS usage to reveal every product that employees are accessing with their corporate identity. Often this will showcase major investments the business has made, such as ERP or CRM. However, it will also highlight access to other SaaS, such as more specialized or niche products that never made it to the CFO’s inbox.
This discovery functionality can identify potential tool duplication – where multiple departments are using products with similar utility. This can help create a platform for renegotiation with vendors, consolidating contracts or right-sizing the overall SaaS mix. It may even highlight tools that are critically under-used or were purchased without correct due diligence. Removing these SaaS products can support money-saving initiatives as well as projects aimed at improving compliance.
For Vertice customers wanting to learn more about how to start using these features, which will be available to different customers over the coming month, please speak with your account manager.
If you are not currently using Vertice and would like to understand how it may benefit your organization, tell us about your SaaS stack here.
